Postgraduate Studies
An introduction to postgraduate study with the Centre.
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MA Global Politics: Theory & Activism
This programme challenges views on global politics, considering the roles of international civil society, activists and non-Eurocentric understandings of politics. Applying academic knowledge to real-world situations will give you practical and professional opportunities throughout the degree.
This degree will help you develop critical skills beyond Eurocentric views of international politics. You'll learn to engage with different perspectives and question the boundaries between politics, culture, ecology, religion, and the economy.
As you delve into current global issues, you will explore the emergence of new geopolitical powers in the Global South, the widening gap between the rich and the poor, the afterlives of neoliberalism, the influence of feminism in shaping politics, initiatives to revive democracy in the face of authoritarianism, the significance of memory in establishing a fair international system, and the pressing need for novel understandings of development in the face of ecological devastation.
You'll learn about the impact of activism and activists on global politics. You will analyse and critically assess the emergence of new forms of politics and resistance in international politics. The programme will encourage you to think creatively about new forms of political mobilisation, organisation, and transformative ideas like "decolonisation".
For further information, read the Programme Page, or email the programme convenor, Francisco Carballo.
The Department of Politics and International Relations also offers an MA in Art and Politics, allowing many students to delve into postcolonial and decolonial themes.
PhD Research Programme at the Centre
Staff members from the Centre for Postcolonial Studies are available to supervise new PhD projects. Their research expertise and availability for doctoral supervision can be found on their staff pages.
PhD candidates affiliated with the centre
Emily Gresham Beamer
Emily is a PhD candidate in the Goldsmiths Politics Department. Her doctoral project explores the emergence of drone-based mapping technologies in frontiers of forest governance, particularly in the forests of the Global South. Her research takes up these mappings past their operationality to remote governance networks, engaging themes of data sovereignty and alterity to claim their endurance beyond the calculative encounter. Emily’s research is fully supported through a CHASE studentship with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
Annabell Knapp
Annabell is an activist and PhD student in the Politics Department, working on the project "Live Usefully, Die Rich: American Philanthropy on International Development." Her research revolves around American philanthropy and its impact on international development throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, which will be done by analyzing case studies of various American philanthropic foundations. Her research begs whether philanthropy can complete the development project set out by President Truman in 1949 and whether it is a viable option to dismantle systems of oppression and poverty through its development projects.
She is also active in the Palestine movement through campus organizations and various non-governmental organizations based in the United States. She advocates for a Free Palestine in both the UK and the US
Tania Gomez Perochena
Tania is a Peruvian sociologist, activist and PhD student funded by the South East Network for Social Sciences (SeNSS-UKRI). She is one of the founders of the ecofeminist collective Ecorazonar, which has received project grants from Oxfam and the Antipode Foundation. She is a research assistant at the PostSocialist Art Centre at UCL. Her PhD project aims to bring forward the methods of crafting alliances beyond human limits in anti-colonial political action. This will be done by following the alliances between indigenous and non-indigenous allies, which transformed the struggles for land into a defence of a life-web in Latin America. Twitter: TaniaDanielaGP
Marc Peacock
Marc is a PhD candidate researching the rise of the left in Latin America and its challenge to US hegemony. The research aims to assess whether US power and dominance in the international system are in decline.
This study analyses recent political trends and election outcomes in Latin America, focusing on the rise of left-wing parties known as the "pink tide." It also examines these parties' strategies to gain and maintain power and US efforts to maintain hegemonic control in the region.
Marc's research background combines economics and politics. He has experience teaching economics to undergraduate students as an associate lecturer at the Institute of Management Studies.
Susuana Amoah
Susuana is an artist, curator, cultural activist, and a PhD student in the Department of Art. Susuana is also a member of the Black Curators Collective and is the Campaign Manager at the Free Black University. Her research explores decolonial curatorial practices in public contemporary art galleries. This research project analyses how the standardisation of European modernist theories and curatorial practices has contributed to cultural colonialism. The project also examines how decolonial praxis can be used to undo institutional racism in these spaces. Twitter: @blackgallerina
Despoina Penny Demertzi
Despoina is a visual artist and PhD researcher. Her doctoral project is titled "Decolonising the Self: Decolonial AestheSis (Mirror Touch Synaesthesia) and The Photobook Phenomenon as Participatory Praxis," Her research aims to develop an understanding of decolonisation based on synaesthesia. As a photographer, she has collaborated with Anders Petersen, Stratos Kalafatis, Atelier Smedsby, Christian Caujolle, Mimar Sinan FUAM Research Center in Istanbul, and the Studio Vortex.
Recent PhD Graduates
Mitxy is a PhD candidate funded by the Mexican Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and associate lecturer in the Department for Politics & International Relations.
Her research focuses on transborderism and its policy implications at the U.S.-Mexico border, putting particular emphasis on transborder students living in the Cali-Baja Region. Her research stems from a critical engagement with contemporary border studies, migration, and international cooperation. Contact: m.menesesg (@gold.ac.uk).
Ruben is a PhD candidate with the project “Counter-Investigations: towards a framework for truth production in Mexico”, partially funded by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Teconología (Conacyt) of Mexico. His research revolves around journalism in Latin America and the innovation of narrative frameworks for transformative investigations. He has collaborated with the Centre for Investigative Journalism (CIJ), the research agency Forensic Architecture, and the network for journalists in Latin America CONNECTAS. Twitter: @ihuertaz
Katharina's PhD thesis is entitled: 'Struggling for another form of life: Decolonising the Degrowth Debate'. This research connects contemporary socioeconomic debates in Latin America with radical environmental and economic thought in the global North.
The discourse and practice of sumak kawsay (good living in Kichwa and Spanish) in Ecuador can be understood as an articulation of alternatives to development. Sumak kawsay require economic restructuring towards a social solidarity economy in harmony with the natural environment.
Similarly, the Degrowth school of thought aims to re-situate the economy within planetary boundaries through a decrease in production and consumption, combined with a revaluation of the reproductive labour of women and nature. This project fosters a dialogue between the two, weaving an 'ecology of knowledges' into a decolonial politics of Degrowth based on epistemological and ontological pluralism.
Maelenn’s research project is entitled 'Mate: from Griezmann to the yerbal'. Mate, which both designates the tea made out of yerba mate's leaf and the jar that contains it, has initially been consumed by the Guarani people in the Parana region. Today, more than one litre of mate is consumed daily by millions of people in South America as well as in the Middle East.
In these regions its consumption is synonymous with hospitality and sociability. In Europe and North-America, however, the ongoing commodification of this "authentic" beverage relies on the promotion of the plant’s healthy properties.
This research aims to follow the route of mate, from the football fields where it is currently more and more seen, to the site of the plantations located at the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. This research traces mate’s global itinerary and compares it to other stimulant substances, wondering why it didn’t succeed in the world market in the same way in which coffee, tea or cacao did.
A vital element of this investigation is to look the various spaces (and meanings) of mate’s consumption, juxtaposing the resilience of a Guarani ritual with the emergence of a new “magic potion” in the era of mass health-food consumption.
Vanessa is a PhD-candidate at the Politics Department at Goldsmiths where she works on forms of frontier capitalization of the Sahara Desert in Egypt. Her work centres around issues of critical ecology, urban and environmental transformation, postcolonial theory, the desert, the Middle East and Egypt in specific.
Next to her PhD research, Vanessa runs Konesh Space, a migrating platform for critical and creative spatial practice.
Vanessa has received a number of grants and awards for her academic work including the CHASE DTP scholarship of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Alan Little Memorial Award as well as grants from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the German-French University (DFH).
Tancrède Fulconis' research project is entitled “Policing the Political: Universalism, Exception, and Othering in (Post)Colonial France”. This dissertation explores the relationship of the French Republic to itself in the aftermath of the formal end of colonisation.
While the Republic continues to see itself, in the lineage of the enlightenment, as the bearer of a long universalist tradition in the “values of the Republic”, the (post)colonial exercise of othering provides a sinister counter-narrative which undermines the stability of the Republic’s self-reference.
Furthermore, this project challenges the prevalent conception that the violence of colonisation epitomised a betrayal of the “values of the Republic,” when instead, these values are shaped by their manifestation in the various moments of ruptures that form the ipseity of the (post)colonial Republic.
Tancrède identifies four time periods, revolving around the major states of emergency in Metropolitan France. These periods are moments of qualitative changes in the co-constitution of the Republican subject and its constitutive ‘other’, and mirror imperatives to police the intelligibility of political demands emanating from the margins.
Lydia Ayame's reserach is titled, 'All the Blacks Are Men, All the Whites Are Women, But What About the Greens? An Intersectional Analysis of Environmental Activism in the UK and France'.
Her research asks how an intersectional framework helps us to understand environmental movements and examines the relevance of social categories to environmental claims.
The project seeks to recentre and highlight the presence of marginalised voices in our collective environmental struggle which, no doubt, constitutes a vital moment in our global history.
Contact: Lhira001@gold.ac.uk
Twitter: @LydiaHiraide