You may already be working in a social funding environment, or wishing to learn more about the world of philanthropy and social investment. The course is suitable for both aims, as a boost to your existing career or to facilitate a change in career direction.
Most of the examples studied on the course are from the UK, but international examples give a broader perspective, meaning your learning is transferable to any culture or jurisdiction.
As a student on this course, you will develop a clear understanding of the principles and practice of philanthropy and grantmaking. And the importance of all aspects of risk assessment, probity of applications, ethical frameworks and relationships with external communities and agencies.
You’ll examine grant-giving and other investment categories such as loans, endowments, contracts, social bonds and impact investing.
The course provides a solid background in the history and theory of philanthropy and grantmaking (with examples both from the UK and abroad). Beyond the theory, you’ll study the application of social investment practice as a business process.
The MSc course is taught on a part-time basis over a period of two years (30 months for those who chose to start with the PgCert in April due to the structure of the timetable).
Students initially enrol on the Postgraduate Diploma with the specialist area of their choice, and confirm their intention to complete the MSc at the end of the first year.
The focus for those starting with the PgCert is on the Specialist modules which is balanced with the sector context provided by the core modules on the PgDip.
The Postgraduate Certificate is offered on a part time basis and is taught over a period of six months. The Certificate consists of five modules: Introduction to Learning Principles and Practices of Grantmaking, Management of Grantmaking and Shadowing/Fieldwork.
The Postgraduate Diploma is offered on a part time basis and is taught over a period of 12 months. The Diploma consists of four core modules, plus three specialist pathway modules. The core modules are shared by all five Centre for Charity Effectiveness postgraduate courses.
Upon successful completion of the diploma, you will be given the option to continue to the MSc. This requires completion of the Research Methods for Managers module.
This can be followed by a further six months of personal, supervised research and the presentation of a 15,000-word dissertation.
Alternatively, you can opt to take a taught Masters which allows you to choose specialist modules from one of the other Charities programmes.
Students are selected on their professional experience, and generally continue working in their full –time role whilst undertaking this course.
There is a growth in the number of entrepreneurs starting businesses with social and environmental purposes. This exciting MA will enable you to develop a critical understanding of and practical insights into modes of social enterprise.
There is an urgent need for talented individuals who can design novel solutions to our most profound societal challenges.
This international MA provides practical and sociological tools to individuals motivated to develop alternative economic practices and frameworks to meet such challenges. These might include (but are not limited to) social enterprises, collaborative innovation networks, hubs, digital platforms, support intermediaries and/or policy proposals.
Benefitting from the MA’s timely educational content as well as from its firm roots in London’s rich networks, our students go on to become thought leaders in the burgeoning social innovation field, advancing it in a creative fashion from their chosen angle. Past graduates have gone on to create their own social enterprises or to work for prestigious organisations such as the Yunus Institute and Social Enterprise UK, while some have elected to carry out advanced research into social innovation.
The MA in Social Entrepreneurship is one of the few graduate programmes in the world dedicated entirely to the study of the fast-moving field of social entrepreneurship and innovation.
It will equip you with a strong understanding of foundational theories of entrepreneurship, innovation, social problems and policy (with organisational sociology as the base discipline) while supplying practical tools in relation to entrepreneurial modelling and SROI.
There is also a marked emphasis on creativity, which means that you will have considerable scope to choose the precise topics you wish to tackle and the approaches you wish to apply. Teaching on the course is interactive and seminar-driven rather than based on the traditional model of long lectures and limited discussions.
The programme will introduce you to key concepts in the historical development of social enterprise and innovation and to its changing role in society and the economy. Seminars and talks will be given by social entrepreneurs, as well as leading professionals.
You'll learn innovative approaches to developing an enterprise, and gain confidence in revenue generation and financial modelling.
A significant amount of the learning is delivered through group projects and activities. This is designed to develop your individual communication skills and teamwork.
The programme consists of five core modules:
In addition to these main modules, we also regularly invite external experts from intermediaries such as UnLtd and other educational institutions such as the University of Oxford to ensure our students get access to a wide range of cutting-edge topics in the field. Social and alternative finance is among the key areas examined in such guest lectures; social innovation cases from particular country-contexts such as, for example, South Korea, Japan and Colombia also feature frequently.
We are occasionally able to provide additional training in related fields (such as accounting) in the form of short-term workshops to strengthen our students’ educational experience at Goldsmiths and at the University of London. We also encourage you to become members of various social entrepreneurship/collaboration hubs around London for learning and networking purposes.
The MA in Social Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths is quite unlike traditional business/management-driven courses in the field: on the one hand, it allows scope for a far deeper examination of the theoretical and practical foundations of social innovation; on the other, it provides unique access to an expanding learning community (formed by our students and our wider, growing network) engaged in real-time research.
Equally important is the fact that students are consciously encouraged to, and supported with, forming their professional public profiles, through things like:
Because our students possess diverse, highly relevant knowledge that they have accumulated prior to coming to Goldsmiths, real efforts are made to integrate this knowledge and experience into the collective learning processes.
One relevant tool that we employ here is an interactive peer-review process that we employ to raise the quality of student output, which means that often student essays (not just dissertations) are of publishable quality. Furthermore, we take full advantage of our location within London’s bustling community of social innovation by engaging with leading intermediaries, practitioners and (junior as well as senior) thought leaders.
The skills you'll develop throughout the MA include: entrepreneurial knowledge and skills; a critical understanding of the interdisciplinary nature of social entrepreneurship; the ability to critically examine the conditions required for innovation and entrepreneurship to make a strong impact on societal problems; the ability to apply entrepreneurial approaches to projects; effective business and communication skills.
It is intended that students completing this programme will seek employment primarily in two areas.
Firstly: self-employed in their own social enterprise or a member of a team of an SME developing from an existing or new practice.
Secondly: within government or NGO organisations concerned with developing the infrastructure and environment for new social enterprises to flourish.
Find out more about employability at Goldsmiths.
This course provides a thorough theoretical and practical grounding in the key aspects of investment and risk finance, delivered in an intensive learning environment. You will learn how to apply the knowledge and theory you have gained in class to real-world problems facing the international financial services industry and the corporate financial management community. This practical application of investment and risk principles is one of the main strengths of this programme.
The learning and skills development is integrated with resources available in our Financial Markets Suite (FMS), a state-of-the-art virtual trading room environment. The FMS is interfaced with the Bloomberg system, a leading source of economics and capital markets information available to the global professional financial community. Provision of this Bloomberg resource, along with the academic and professional career development opportunities are the main reasons why our students prefer to select this programme.
The Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI) – a financial services professional body, has recognised Westminster Business School as a Centre of Excellence based on the taught elements of this course. All students enrolled on the course are eligible for the student membership of the institute. Some of the benefits include free attendance at CPD events, accessibility to industry news and online resources. Students on the course are also eligible to sit the CISI L3 derivatives examinations.
The course has been in existence since 1999 and has continued to evolve to meet the changing educational needs of the investment and risk finance professional. It's delivered by qualified academics and professionals who have worked many years in the industry and are actively engaged in research and consultancy.
The course consists of core modules which help you acquire the ability to perform quantitative investment and risk analyses on a variety of financial instruments and structured products. You'll also learn how to use capital market products in both investment and risk finance applications. As a result you will develop good transferable skills and solve financial problems in a group setting.
The research and project modules are designed to develop your research abilities and create opportunities to explore finance subject areas of your own interest in more depth. This will enable you to apply the analytical and technical management skills you will encounter to real-life situations.
A highlight for many students are the social events organised throughout the course which provide an opportunity for networking with fellow students and alumni. Students on this course also benefit from free access to part of the material on the course reading list.
The following modules are indicative of what you will study on this course.
Core modules
Choose two or three of the following:
Core elective modules
If you take two core elective modules, you then need to choose one option module.
Option modules
You may also take another module from the postgraduate portfolio, at the course leader’s discretion.
Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, CISI
All students on our full-time Business Masters courses can apply to undertake the PG/MBA Internship Programme, which forms part of the Reflective Practitioner Module.
The internship allows you to test drive a career and explore one of your career interests before you complete your Postgraduate studies!
Completing an 8-12 week accredited internship helps students gain invaluable work experience. This fantastic work experience can be taken in addition to option modules. Students are responsible for finding their own internship with the support of the Business Experience Team.
To express an interest in the module, students must submit a completed application form and a copy of their updated CV. This will give students membership a dedicated website that offers exclusive access to internship vacancies, one to-one CV guidance appointments, mock interviews, employability workshops and much more.
Students can apply to London-based organisations and have the flexibility to take their internship in the summer period or alongside their studies.
Every year we receive very positive feedback from both postgraduate students and employers and expect that the internship programme will continue to remain popular amongst our students.
Find out about postgraduate internships
This course is designed to prepare you for a variety of roles. Career choices include security and financial analysis, trading and fund management, capital market sales and administration. The skills you will acquire through the teaching and learning experiences combined with a post-graduate qualification in this area of finance will allow you to expand your career in a dynamic and rapidly evolving global industry. Our graduates go on to develop careers in treasury and front office positions in investment banks and securities companies. They occupy management positions as financial analysts, finance and sales administrators or similar jobs in the global financial services sector and the corporate finance world.
The degree provides a full-time course for those seeking positions in Finance and Investment. The programme is based around the three main classes of capital investment activity - equity markets, fixed interest markets, and derivative markets.
Participants in the MSc Finance and Investment programme can also use the dissertation component to concentrate in-depth on a Finance and Investment topic according to individual interests and career requirements.
The MSc Finance and Investment degree is intended to enable students to:
The MSc in Finance and Investment programme is a full-time degree studied over a period of calendar year commencing late September, and a part-time degree can be studied over a period of between 2 and 4 years. In each case participants take taught modules and prepare a dissertation. Students without the relevant English proficiency are required to do a Summer pre-sessional programme before gaining entry onto the postgraduate programme.
Classes are in the form of either two or three hour teaching/learning sessions, including some small group teaching, during normal semesters.
The structure of the MSc in Finance and Investment programme is modular, with individual modules each having weighting of 15 credits. One credit represents 10 hours of student work, meaning that a 15 credit module represents 150 hours of study including formal teaching, independent study, revision, and the preparation of assessments. The MSc degree requires the successful completion of 180 credits, 120 of which are taught modules, and 60 credits a finance related dissertation.
All students undertake core modules relating to finance. The remaining modules offer a choice of electives that allow the student to focus upon advanced finance and management modules that are most closely associated with his/her career aspirations.
More information is available on key facts about the delivery of the programme.
Semester 1 modules
Students must take all modules in this group
Semester 2 modules
Compulsory:
Students must take a minimum of 15 and a maximum of 30 credits from this group
AND a minimum of 0 and a maximum of 15 credits from this group
Summer
This degree offers opportunities in a variety of careers in Accountancy,Auditing, Business Development, Financial Advice, InvestmentManagement, Marketing, Mergers and Acquisitions, Procurement, Research,Risk Assurance, Tax Consultancy and Trading.
Designed to evolve your decision-making capabilities and awareness of best practice in investment strategies and performance evaluation, our Finance and Investment MSc will prepare you for a career in investment, trading, financial analysis, fund management, banking, financial services or financial consultancy.
This course will equip you with a thorough grounding in the theoretical and practical aspects of economics, finance and investment. By the end of the course, you will have the skills necessary to use advanced tools and quantitative techniques to appraise financial opportunities.
As part of this course you will also have access to our real-time trading room, streaming up-to-the-minute data from Reuters.
This course is part of our Finance MSc programme. All students complete the same core finance modules, then from the end of the first term you will be able to tailor the course to your individual strengths and career aspirations through option modules and the option to specialise in one of five areas.
The other specialisms offered are:
The course is composed of three phases:
All modules on the course involve both taught sessions and guided independent study. For a typical module, approximately 30% of the total hours comprise taught activity, 10% is guided study and supervision, and the remainder is independent study.
Modules
Core modules will give you practical background knowledge in key finance subjects. From term 2 you will be able to tailor your course through a choice of specialisms and option modules. The specialisms currently offered are banking, accounting, investment, economics and risk management.
Core modules
Specialism modules (choose two)
Option modules (choose one)
Completion of your final project (dissertation) takes place throughout the summer after teaching finishes. You submit your project in October and receive your MSc award in December.
In the final phase of the course, you will complete a dissertation relating to finance and investment.
The dissertation will be 10,000–15,000 words long. It will address a financial markets problem which will require you to undertake research leading to implementable recommendations based on sound analysis and judgment.
Alternatively, you may wish to carry out a more theoretical dissertation relating to a financial markets topic of personal interest. You will receive help from your appointed dissertation supervisor who will monitor and support your progress. The dissertation is submitted in October.
As part of your course you will have access to modern computing facilities and specialist computing packages, for students on the Market-making and Investment Strategies module this includes access to our real-time trading room, fed by up-to-the-minute data from Reuters.
One of a handful of such facilities across the UK, our trading room sessions are supervised by guest traders and provide you with the opportunity to apply your skills to real markets and real data, and make use of simulation software to recreate the pressure of a trading floor.
We also invite guest traders to discuss curriculum topics, pass on their trading experience and supervise trading sessions.
We highly recommend students join our thriving Student Investment and Trading Society, which is established and run by students for the purpose of organising social and networking events, arranging talks by visiting industry experts and facilitating annual trading competitions against other universities.
Experienced, professionally qualified lecturers and small class sizes will ensure your learning needs are supported. Online learning tools and libraries also ensure academic journals, e-books, business articles and other resources are available to you 24/7, both for use at the university and at home.
You will also have access to our Careers Service, including CV checking, mock interviews and advice on setting up your own business.
A postgraduate qualification from Brighton Business School will help you to specialise and stand out in today's highly competitive job market
Many of our Finance and Investment MSc graduates go on to work in investment, trading, financial analysis, fund management, banking and financial consultancy.
The course is also ideal preparation for continuing your studies at MPhil or PhD level, or working as a professional researcher in finance.
The general objective of this programme is to communicate an anthropologically-informed understanding of social life in both Western and non-Western societies. By confronting students with the remarkable diversity of human social and cultural experience, its aim is to encourage them to question taken-for-granted assumptions and to view the world from a new perspective.
Through a set of core modules, comprising about a third of coursework credits, students are provided with a comprehensive grounding in classical as well as contemporary debates in social anthropology and are introduced to the distinctive research methods and ethical positions associated with the discipline. Students then complete their coursework credits by choosing from a broad range of around 50 different modules offered around the Faculty of Humanities. Through these options, students apply the social anthropological theories and methods learnt on the core modules to particular substantive themes and topics. Diploma students complete their coursework in May and formally graduate in July. Over the summer vacation, MA students carry out research for a 15,000 word dissertation that is submitted in September. They then would normally expect to graduate formally in December.
Most of the coursework optional modules have been organized into pathways based on particular themes and topics.
Go to the Study Details tab for more details on the Culture, Ethnography and Development pathway.
Pathways are designed to ensure both an academic and timetabling fit between the options. Students are encouraged, on the basis of past experience and/or future goals, to select a pathway shortly after registration in consultation with the programme director. MA students' dissertation topics will normally also relate to this pathway. In addition to the Culture, Ethnography and Development pathway, there are currently 5 others.
Please note that it is not compulsory to select a pathway and all students will be awarded the same generic degree, MA in Social Anthropology
Contact:
Programme Director: Prof Karen Sykes
Tel: 0161 275 3992
Email: [email protected]
In each semester, students take two 15-credit core modules, and a selection of optional modules that they select shortly after arrival. Many optional modules are worth 15 credits, though some are worth 30 credits. In total, students are required to achieve 120 coursework credits. Over the summer vacation, students are required to write a dissertation which is worth a further 60 credits.
In total, some 50 optional modules are available, not only in Social Anthropology but in a broad range of other disciplines across the Faculty of Humanities, including Visual Anthropology, Archaeology, Museum Studies, Latin American Studies, Development Studies, History, Sociology and Drama. Drawing on this broad range of disciplines, a number of pathways have been devised in order to maximize the academic and timetabling coherence of the options chosen by students.
The Culture, Ethnography & Development pathway provides you with the opportunity to study the history, theory and practice of development in a broad variety of social and geographical contexts, encouraging you to think of development critically as a complex transformative process that has cultural as well as economic and political consequences. You may select from modules covering a broad range of topics, including:
Most modules are assessed by means of an extended assessment essay. Typically, for 15 credit modules, these must be of 4000 words, whilst for 30 credit courses, they are normally of 6000 words. Certain options involving practical instruction in research methods, audiovisual media or museum display may also be assessed by means of presentations and/or portfolios of practical work. In addition, all MA students are required to write a 15,000 word dissertation.
Practical support and advice for current students and applicants is available from the Disability Advisory and Support Service. Email: [email protected]
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