London Consortium

The London Consortium
The London Consortium
Established	1993
Students	125 (2011/12 total)
Location	London, United Kingdom
Campus	Urban
Director	Steven Connor
Affiliations	Birkbeck, University of London
Website	www.londonconsortium.com

The London Consortium is a graduate school in the UK offering multidisciplinary Masters and Doctoral programs in the humanities and cultural studies at the University of London. It is administered by Birkbeck, University of London, one of the constituent colleges of the University of London, and falls under the Humanities list of courses at Birkbeck. [1] The London Consortium is a collaborative program composed of Birkbeck, the Architectural Association, Institute of Contemporary Arts, the Science Museum and the Tate Gallery.

History[edit]

The Consortium was founded in 1993 by the late social philosopher Paul Hirst (1947-2003), Mark Cousins, Peter Humphreys, and Colin MacCabe. Until 1999, the British Film Institute was part of the Consortium. After the BFI removed its involvement (due to policy changes and external pressures at that institution), it was replaced by the Institute of Contemporary Arts [2]. In 2007, the Science Museum joined the collaboration, with its Head of Research, Peter Morris, contributing as a core faculty member.

Faculty[edit]

The Consortium's permanent and adjunct faculty include figures such as the psychoanalytic theorist Parveen Adams, cultural theorist Steven Connor [3], architectural theorist and philosopher Mark Cousins, Tate curators Marko Daniel and Richard Humphreys, film theorist and producer Colin MacCabe, artist and writer Tom McCarthy, and film theorist Laura Mulvey. Past supervisors and visiting faculty have included cultural theorist Stuart Hall, psychoanalytic theorist Juliet Mitchell, writer Marina Warner, and psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Its current chair is the lawyer and writer Anthony Julius [4].

Academic Programmes[edit]

The Consortium offers courses taught by faculty from across all five constituent institutions, including professors from Birkbeck and the Architectural Association, curators from the Tate and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, as well as external faculty drawn from various institutions in London and across the UK. Classes are taught in venues at Birkbeck, the Tate Modern and Tate Britain, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, and the Science Museum.

Masters[edit]

MRes Humanities and Cultural Studies[edit]

The Master of Research programme is available only as a one-year full-time course. It is a challenging post-graduate introduction to theories, methods and knowledges in the humanities and cultural studies. Students will combine coursework and research throughout, culminating in the production of a dissertation. The Master of Research may be taken as a stand-alone degree in its own right, or may act as a pathway into the Consortium PhD programme.

MA in Film Curating[edit]

The MA in Film Curating, which was offered for two years beginning in October 2010, was a collaboration between the London Consortium and the London Film School. Bringing together recent thinking about curating contemporary art with the constantly evolving world of film, film festivals, and the movie business, it offered a theoretical exploration into the role of film curating in an age in which digital distribution technologies have transformed both the traditional notion of curating and the commercial film distribution sector. Students also gained practical experience in curating, within the context of existing film festivals like Cannes and Rotterdam, both of which were visited, and through the practical curation of film or film/related events.

Doctoral[edit]

PhD Humanities and Cultural Studies[edit]

The Consortium PhD comprises a taught component. First year PhD students follow the same core courses as those studying towards the MRes, courses designed to give a grounding in multidisciplinary research. Previous core courses have included 'Catastrophe', 'St. Paul', 'Godard's Contempt: Text and Pretext', 'Shit and Civilization', 'Metamorphosis', and 'Whiteness'. Through courses like these, the Consortium could be thought of as developing an original conception of Cultural Studies. While the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University -- founded by Richard Hoggart and for a long time the institutional home of Stuart Hall -- conceived of Cultural Studies as the study of contemporary popular culture, the London Consortium has sought to develop a research and teaching climate where the study of older historical periods, on the one hand, and of 'high' culture on the other, can take its place alongside the more traditional foci of the discipline. This also entails a different approach to interdisciplinarity. Where interdisciplinary studies had often been content to merely ignore the traditional academic disciplines, and run roughshod over disciplinary boundaries, the London Consortium prefers to describe its activities as multidisciplinary, reflecting the belief that while the best research will benefit from being approached from two or more disciplinary perspectives, it must also stand up to the most exacting standards of the disciplines.