Course Overview

The Postgraduate Diploma in Museum Cultures offers you the opportunity to study this expanding and dynamic field in close proximity to world-distinguished museums and galleries. If you are contemplating a career in the museum and gallery sector and if you want to understand contemporary debates about museums and their cultural significance, then this is the course for you. Museums have been of enormous importance in shaping empires, nations, and cities, and their collections are connected to wider histories of conflict and social change. To study museums is to study the development and fierce contestation of our collective cultural imagination and memory. Our program gives you the chance to develop a range of key skills, from critical thinking and writing to practical experience through a supervised work placement that you can apply for in a museum, gallery, or archive. Previous opportunities have been offered at the Tate, the British Museum, the Whitechapel Gallery, and the Horniman Museum. Past students have helped design and run school programs, documented collections that were previously uncatalogued, conducted visitor research and assisted curators in producing exhibitions. As well as regular gallery and museum visits, we also offer an exciting study trip abroad every spring. The Postgraduate Diploma is ideal if you are interested in studying museum cultures at the postgraduate level for personal or professional reasons, but you don't yet want to commit to a full MA. Our students develop the ability to think critically and creatively, and to articulate their ideas persuasively. Intellectual rigor, visual sensitivity, and informed debate are fundamental to museum studies, as well as being transferable skills relevant to a range of careers. Graduates can pursue jobs in arts management, conservation, and policy; in education, marketing and publishing; in the museums and heritage sectors; and in research and academia.

General Eligibility

A second-class honors degree (2:2) or above in a relevant subject or equivalent (for example, professional experience).

Part Time Work Details

Language Requirement

• If English is not your first language or you have not previously studied in English, our usual requirement is the equivalent of an International English Language Testing System (IELTS Academic Test) score of 6.5, with not less than 6.0 in each of the sub-tests.