Hi I'm Kaelynn and I'm a Politics and IR student here and I'm going to be showing
you around the Politics and International Relations Department
and introducing you to some people and societies
so we're gonna start off by going to a first-year lecture
with Andreas who teaches Politics, Theories and Ideologies and
this is an example of what a first-year lecture would look like
So today we're going to start thinking about
the idea of social justice
John Rawls is definitely one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century
we're gonna see how liberty and equality and rights can come together in
an architectural kind of plan on how to organise society at least in principle
So now we're going to go meet the Politics Society
Hi everyone Hi
We meet weekly to discuss current events
global issues, international, domestic politics
So last week we were discussing the rise of China and whether it can rise peacefully or not
It's all about getting your opinions out
that's from where we see the diverse culture that surrounds Goldsmiths
It's nice to have people from different cultures
because they can provide a direct point of view
It's really stimulating
Thank you so much for talking with me.
Thank you, bye
So we're just gonna head into Warmington tower
I'm going to introduce you to one of my lecturers, Raj
and Sanjay who runs the Centre for Postcolonial studies
Hi Kaelynn, come in, sit down. How are you?
I'm good What would you say this Centre adds
to the experience at Goldsmiths
When we say we study the world we actually mean the world because
when I moved to this country eleven years ago I was a little dismayed to
discover that you could do a politics degree which was basically a degree
about Europe and European thought
and frankly I don't think it should be possible to do that
The categories that we use and that we teach our students
have a long mostly European history that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them but
it means we should use them critically in a way that a carpenter might examine
his or her tools regularly the people involved in it come from many
disciplines across Goldsmiths and indeed internationally
we do a whole lot of things guest speakers, guest talks
we had a very successful film series
we have a series running at the moment on the Middle East
a series of invited guest speakers and undergraduates are
encouraged to come to that and many have been coming
Thank you so much See you next term, bye Kaelynn
Hi Kaelynn Hi Raj
What would you say is your approach teaching contemporary Japan
There's a tendency to think about Japan as this sort of exotic
homogeneous island country and what I want to demonstrate is that Japan is
absolutely integrally tied to many of the discourses of nationalism, imperialism, race
Look at the ways in which the occupation actually affected
the people who were occupied
we take questions of culture really seriously in
thinking about politics and with regard to Japan then, we've got to look at manga
anime and you know the most dominant cultural forms
that people consume in Japan today
First year I took the main modules where you get a grounding in
political thought but then I decided to choose more postcolonial theory things
like Rough Politics, Politics of Vision so different options to
expand your own view on what is politics
See you in class
So next we're gonna go to the Political Economy Research Centre
Hi, can you guys tell me a little bit about PERC?
It brings together a number researchers who are working on different areas of political
economy and it hosts a number of public events we've been running a lot of
events around what are the effects of the financial system on the
sustainability of the planet
The kind of broad research ethos
and the broad spirit of PERC
is felt by the way that what we're teaching is how the world isn't a given
so what we do when we're teaching when were researching is to say
how did we get like this, why have we got like this, whose gained out of this
and on that basis what are the opportunity for change
and how is it gonna necessarily change
Hi, so how do students encounter PERC research?
We try to use PERC as a way of keeping
students in touch with what we think are the kind of live newsworthy political
and economic debates of the moment
some of our Political Economy students
created a new student society, two or three years back called New School Economics
to address issues that they consider to be of pressing concern to them politically
Hey. Hi Ben. So you're the president of the Society.
Yeah, it's a really good community to be involved in
we've managed to integrate anthropologists some sociologists
some straight-up econometrics students
kind of disrupting the narrative that economics is a purely
numerical and mathematical formulation
I think one of the, you know always going to be one of the greatest strengths of Goldsmiths
is that you're gonna have economists and sociologists
and anthropologists actually being able have these conversations with each other
and really interesting and innovative things come out of it as a result
Thank you so much Will
The Politics and IR department here is both a unique
blend of traditional politics as well as postcolonial theory
there's a diverse student body here that will make you feel welcome
and there's always room for debates