Goldsmiths is a top-ranked institution focussing on research across the social sciences, arts and humanities, and globally recognised for creative, critical and collaborative approaches to studying contemporary society.  Goldsmiths’ researchers use research as an opportunity to build a better world through knowledge and action. Goldsmiths supports innovative doctoral research across each of the SENSS six thematic areas and welcomes ambitious PhD proposals that address grand questions through innovative methods and practices. 

Advanced Methods in Social & Economic Research  : Subject areas supporting applications in this thematic pathway at Goldsmiths include Art, Design and Visual Cultures, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Psychology and Sociology. Applications in this area will generally take one of two directions.  The first builds on expertise at Goldsmiths in using administrative data to address questions about social divisions and intersectional inequalities and in advanced quantitative methods and computational data analysis across psychology and neuroscience.  The second develops interdisciplinary approaches that integrate art and social sciences in novel ways to address contemporary issues and dilemmas through research and practice.         

Digital Social Sciences  : Subject areas supporting applications in this thematic pathway at Goldsmiths include Anthropology, Art, Design and Visual Cultures, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies and Psychology.  Applications in this thematic pathway will benefit from and build on extensive research expertise across a wide range of substantive topics ranging from AI and media futures to technologies of humanitarianism and that enable and employ a variety of methodological approaches ranging from digital ethnography and data visualisation to film and performance. 

Health, Wellbeing and Social Care: Subject areas supporting applications in this thematic pathway at Goldsmiths include Anthropology, Educational Studies, Psychology, Sociology and Social Work.   Applications in this thematic pathway will benefit from and build on research expertise across a wide range of substantive topics including maternal health and child protection, community and youth studies, therapies and thanatology (studies of death) and that across the board advance both critical intersectional approaches and encourage and enable creative, innovative and collaborative research, policy and practice. 

Justice, Institutions & Social Change : Subject areas supporting applications in this thematic pathway at Goldsmiths include Anthropology, Art, Design and Visual Cultures, Educational Studies, Law, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Psychology, Social, Therapeutic and Community Studies and Sociology. Applications in this thematic pathway will build on research expertise across a wide range of substantive topics that range from migration, social movements, and urban inequalities to criminal justice and that advance both critical intersectional and social justice approaches and perspectives and innovative methodologies that may include ethnographic, archival, multimodal and practice research and cut across disciplinary boundaries. 

Resolving Uncertainty & Addressing Crises : Subject areas supporting applications in this thematic pathway at Goldsmiths include Anthropology, Art, Design and Visual Cultures, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Politics and International Relations and Sociology.  The research of staff in these subject areas takes a pluralist and critical approach to the study of contemporary capitalism and draws on a variety of methodological approaches. It is diverse in the topics it addresses, which have included, for example, media and the future of democracy, political economy and global change, social, economic and ecological crisis and instability. Applications in this pathway will benefit from and build on the research expertise of staff in these and other topics. 

Sustainability & Climate Emergency : Subject areas supporting applications in this thematic pathway at Goldsmiths include Anthropology, Art, Design and Visual Cultures, Educational Studies, Media, Communications and Cultural Studies, Politics and International Relations and Sociology.   Applications in this thematic pathway will benefit from and build on research expertise across a wide range of substantive topics from urban ecologies and biomaterials to climate change and resilience studies.  Research in this area advances interdisciplinary and multimodal research and practice that draws together creative practice, citizen science, science and technology and more than human approaches to investigating the worlds we live in and inhabit.