Postgraduate Courses

The Gender and Cultural Studies Department at the University of Sydney is the leading centre for research into gender and culture in Australia, renowned internationally for interdisciplinary research and teaching in a wide range of cultural studies and gender studies.

With some of Australia's foremost researchers in these areas on staff, the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies provides you with critically engaging ideas and the tools to analyse a wide range of issues. The Department's academics draw on a number of theoretical and empirical research paradigms, spanning social science and humanities research methods.

The postgraduate program involves an active community of research students, with PhD and MA candidates pursuing research through a broadly based interdisciplinary program. Postgraduate students in the Department are often given opportunities to teach at undergraduate level, to work as paid researchers in projects lead by staff members, and are also encouraged to present or publish their work within and outside the university.

Postgraduate research students are normally required to attend the department’s research seminar series and postgraduate work-in-progress seminars.

Research

Research supervision in a range of fields is available through the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies. The areas of specialisation of staff members include media and cultural studies, new media, popular music, film and visual culture, popular culture and consumption, philosophy and cultural theory, ethics, biopolitics, studies in labour and work, social policy, sociology (including of health and biomedicine), rural studies, youth studies, philosophy and cultural theory, modernism, critical and comparative race studies, post colonial theory, Asian and Asian American Studies, cross-cultural studies, literature, cultural history, affect, embodiment and body technologies, masculinity, feminist theory, queer theory and alternative culture. Please select the research link for more information.

Coursework

More information about postgraduate coursework is available here. The department offers the only specific Master of Cultural Studies program in Australia. First introduced in 2008, in 2010 it is running with its full set of units. Students take eight units of study from 14 offered by the department and a number of electives available from other departments in the Faculty of Arts.

Postgraduate coursework students are guided in their program by the convenor of postgraduate coursework, Dr Guy Redden, with the assistance of the internship officer.

In joining the department, postgraduate coursework students belong to a dynamic postgraduate community. They are invited to attend both the department's research seminar series and the postgraduate work-in-progress series.

Many of our postgraduate coursework units may also be taken by students on other coursework programs in the Faculty, and in some circumstances, Masters by research and doctoral students in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies. A full list of units offered in 2010 can be found here. Details of Cultural Studies internships can be found here.