Modules

Year 0 Foundation Year
Alongside direct preparation for an undergraduate degree in Sociology, you will take two modules with our Centre for Academic Language and Literacies (CALL). These modules will help you develop the broader academic and research skills required for undergraduate study.

Reading and Writing Your World
Building Your Research World
Culture and Society in Postwar Britain
Our Lives through Objects
Empires, Nations and Lines on the Map: Postcolonial Perspectives on Global History

Year 1
This will introduce you to sociological knowledge and training, but it will also offer an understanding of criminology in the context of the nation-state.

You will take the following compulsory modules:
Modern Knowledge, Modern Power
Methods of Worldmaking 1
Crime, Control and the State 1a
Crime, Control and the State 1b
Culture and Society

You'll also take one of the following
Culture and Society B
Critical Readings: the Emergence of the Sociological Imagination 1B
Imaginative Criminology

Year 2
This year will give you the chance to explore crime and criminology in a global context, considering crime and global inequality, migration, international relations and trade, and state crimes and human rights. This learning will help to frame your final year dissertation research.

You study the following compulsory modules, including The Goldsmiths Elective. This module is interdisciplinary, and gives you the opportunity to study another discipline from a list of relevant modules in other departments across the University.
Methods of Worldmaking 2
Criminal Justice in Context
Governing Everyday Life
The Goldsmiths Elective

You'll then take 3 optional modules from across the Department of Sociology. The list of optional modules is produced annually, and may include the following:
Sociology Work Placement
Goldsmiths’ Social Change Module
Law and Contemporary Society
Religion, Crime, and Law
Crimes Against Humanity
The Making of the Modern World
Gender, ‘Race’ and Crime
Explaining Crime
Knowledge and Subjectivity
Social Change and Political Action
Leisure, Culture and Society
London
Sociology of Culture and Communication
Central Issues in Sociological Analysis
Migration in Context
Food and Taste

Year 3
Your final year will be a mixture of compulsory and option modules as well as an in-depth dissertation in a subject area of your choice.

You will take the following compulsory modules:
Confronting climate crisis
Dissertation

You will also study 5 option modules. Option modules offered recently include:
Citizenship and Human Rights
Race, Racism and Social Theory
Law, Identity and Ethics
Globalisation, Crime and Justice
Crime, Control and the City
Crimes of the Powerful
Privacy, Surveillance and Security
Social Theory Through Film
Identity and Contemporary Social Theory
Analysing the Complexity of Contemporary Religious Life
Visual Explorations of The Social World
Childhood Matters: Society, Theory and Culture
Thinking Animals
Migration, Gender and Social Reproduction
Subjectivity, Health and Medicine
Thinking with Others, Philosophy and Cultural Difference
Experiment Earth Sciences Politics Disasters
Police, Prisons and Power
From Criminal Justice to Social Justice

Please note that due to staff research commitments not all of these modules may be available every year.

Assessment methods

You’ll be assessed by a variety of methods that broaden your academic skillset, depending on your module choices . These include coursework assignments such as essays, presentations, critical commentaries, and personal reflections as well as seen examinations.