MA Intercultural Communication

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2026, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MA (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £13,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £29,900
• MA (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £6,850
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £14,950

Further information for EU students can be found on our dedicated EU page.

The fees quoted above will be fully inclusive for the course tuition, administration and computational costs during your studies.

All fees for entry will be subject to yearly review and incremental rises per annum are also likely over the duration of courses lasting more than a year for UK/EU students (fees are typically fixed for International students, for the course duration at the year of entry). For general fees information please visit: postgraduate fees . Always contact the department if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

Self-funded international applicants for this course will be required to pay a deposit of £1000 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. This deposit will only be refunded if immigration permission is refused. We will notify you about how and when to make this payment.

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

• Information on university funding, loans, and scholarships available on the Masters student funding page
• The Faculty of Humanities offered a range of scholarship opportunities for eligible applicants starting in September 2025. Please check back to confirm availability for September 2026 start.
• Please visit the school funding page for more information on subject funding available.
• Other funding for EU and international students is on our country-specific pages.

This module critically explores the concepts of ‘race’, ‘racism’ and ‘othering’. The course unit begins with an introduction to these concepts, as well as an exploration into the construction of exclusionary discourse, and the mechanisms underpinning the processes of othering. The view of ‘culture’ and ‘interculturality’ will be broadened and scrutinised with a consideration of race, class, and gender as intersecting sites of minoritisation and marginality. With that, the process of othering is viewed from the macro-, meso-, and micro-levels, along with a critique of the language used at each level that demarcates the ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ in society. This includes an exploration of border politics (for example, a view on the government’s approach to vulnerable migrants), institutional discrimination, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, antisemitism, post-racialism, and the following key theories: Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. At its core, the objective of this course is to critically broaden and expand on the concept of culture, with the aim of filling in the gap of ‘race’ that is often excluded from intercultural studies more broadly. This subsequently involves a deeper look into issues of divisiveness, exclusion, and how othering can manifest in discourse from the state level to everyday discourse.  

The unit aims to:

• Introduce students to the theorisations of race, racism, and ethnicity.
• Provide students with a critical insight into how race interacts with other social categories that lead to othering, including gender, class, religion, and states.  
• Provide students with a deeper understanding of key theories in understanding race and othering, including Intersectionality and Critical Race Theory.
• Equip students with the skills to analyse the role of racism and othering in contemporary society.
• Enable students to link contemporary incidences of othering to histories of colonialism and empire.
• Explore current debates on issues around racism, Islamophobia, post-racialism, politics, and nationalism.  

Indicative weekly breakdown:

- The social construction of race, racism and othering.  

- Race, imagined communities and border politics.

- The intersections of race, class and gender.

- Insiders and outsiders in state policies.

- Institutional racism

- Islamophobia and securitization

- Critical Race Theory.

- Post-racialism.

- Racism and othering in news media and political discourse.

- Racism and othering in TV and film.

- Racism and othering in the interpersonal space.  

Students should:  

Have gained a critical understanding of the concepts of ‘race’, ‘racism’ and ‘othering’.  

Have gained a critical understanding of key theories—Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality—to analyse the role of ‘race’ and ‘racism’ in state policies, institutions and everyday discourse.  

Have acquired an expanded and more critical understanding of ‘othering’ in intercultural studies. 
 

Students should:  

• Be able to critically reflect on the concept of ‘race’ as a social construction.
• Have acquired the skills to recognise and critique how racism and othering manifest in a variety of contexts—from state policy documents to TV and film.  
• Be able to critically analyse how race interacts with gender, class, religion, and the state.  
   

Students should:

• Be able to clearly communicate complex information both orally and in writing.
• Be able to critically engage with key texts and theoretical ideas.
• Know how to apply theoretical ideas to empirical issues.

Students should:

• Demonstrate a critical awareness and sensitivity towards minoritisation as a process, and their own positionalities in relation to margins of othering.  
• Be able to identify and engage in critical discussions around race, ethnicity and othering in intercultural environments.  
• Be able to work collaboratively in a team.

Anderson, B., 2006. Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. Verso books.

Benwell, B. and Stokoe,E., 2006. Discourse and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Billig, M., 2017. Banal nationalism and the imagining of politics. In Everyday Nationhood (pp. 307-321). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Collins, P.H., 2019. Intersectionality as critical social theory. Duke University Press.

Crenshaw, K., 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6): pp. 1241—1299.

Delgado, R. and Stefancic, J., 2017. Critical race theory: An introduction. New York Uuniversity press.

Doharty, N., Madriaga, M. and Joseph-Salisbury, R., 2021. The university went to ‘decolonise’and all they brought back was lousy diversity double-speak! Critical race counter-stories from faculty of colour in ‘decolonial’times. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 53(3), pp.233-244.

Du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Madsen, A.K., Mackay, H. and Negus, K., 2013. Doing cultural studies: The story of the Sony Walkman. Sage.

Fanon, F., 2008. Black skin, white masks. Grove press.

Flowerdew, J. and Richardson, J.E. eds., 2018. The Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies. London: Routledge.

Gillborn, D., 2015. Intersectionality, critical race theory, and the primacy of racism: Race, class, gender, and disability in education. Qualitative inquiry, 21(3), pp.277-287.

Hall, S. and Du Gay, P. eds., 1996. Questions of cultural identity. Sage.

Hall, S., 2017. The fateful triangle: Race, ethnicity, nation. Harvard University Press.

Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J. and Roberts, B., 2017. Policing the crisis: Mugging, the state and law and order. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Hall, S., 2021. Selected Writings on Race and Difference. Duke University Press.

Hua, Z., 2014. Exploring Intercultural Communication: Language in Action. London: Routledge.  

Kundnani, A., 2014. The Muslims are coming!: Islamophobia, extremism, and the domestic war on terror. Verso Trade.

Mac Donald, H., 2018. The diversity delusion: How race and gender pandering corrupt the university and undermine our culture. St. Martin's Press.

Malik, K., 2013. Multiculturalism and its discontents: rethinking diversity after 9/11. Seagull Books.

Mohanty, C.T., 2003. Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Duke University Press.

Nash, J.C., 2008. Re-thinking intersectionality. Feminist review, 89(1), pp.1-15.

Phillips, C., 2011. Institutional racism and ethnic inequalities: An expanded multilevel framework. Journal of social policy, 40(1), pp.173-192.

Puwar, N., 2001. The racialised somatic norm and the senior civil service. Sociology, 35(3), pp.651-670.

Puwar, N., 2004. Space invaders: Race, gender and bodies out of place. Oxford: Berg.

Qurashi, F., 2018. The Prevent strategy and the UK ‘war on terror’: embedding infrastructures of surveillance in Muslim communities. Palgrave Communications, 4(1), pp.1-13.

Qureshi, A., 2017. The UK Counter-terrorism Matrix: Structural Racism and the Case of Mahdi Hashi. In: Massoumi, N. Mills, T. and Miller, D. eds., What is Islamophobia? Racism, Social Movements and the State. Pluto Press, pp. 74-96.

Riggins, S.H.E., 1997. The language and politics of exclusion: Others in discourse. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  

Said, E., 1978. Orientalism: Western concepts of the Orient. New York: Pantheon.

Said, E.W., 2012. Culture and imperialism. Vintage.

Salem, S., 2018. Intersectionality and its discontents: Intersectionality as traveling theory. European Journal of Women's Studies, 25(4), pp.403-418.

Van Dijk, T.A., 1987. Communicating racism: Ethnic prejudice in thought and talk. Sage Publications, Inc.

Van Dijk, T.A., 2006. Ideology and discour