Lee Barron - Department Overview

We offer two distinctive courses, Media Cultures and Mass Communication Management. They are very deliberately distinct. Media Cultures is our oldest course, and that's for people who are really in love with the ideas, concepts, what makes media tick, and what makes ideas tick. Students who do that route are students who really have a desire to go into PhD's, to really kind of get immersed in ideas, generally become thinkers of the future.

Mass Communication Management is a very new program we have, and it had its first run this year. It's been a very successful first run, which we're very proud of. That's very different. It has input from the business school. What it does is to give students a kind of business perspective, so they will do management, personal management courses, which kind of help people who want to work in a mass communications, or media industries, and culture industries, have an idea of of how you practically manage processes within them. So that degree is very much part of graduates who are coming out really knowing where they want to go professionally, wanting, again, to increase their ideas of how media works.

We cover things like advertising, issues that are facing media industries at the moment, and the kind of challenges that the next generation are going to work within, but also solve with this kind of marvelous business input which is very hands on. So, the students who do that program really come out as fully rounded professionals, who are heading towards the industries with a managerial perspective.

We are Looking for someone who really knows what they want to do, someone who is really committed around further study. The key to success at postgraduate study is to know what you want. It's not to drift into it because you're deciding what you want to do. It's to think, okay, I want to do an M.A. because I've got an undergraduate qualification. I want to specialize now. I want to focus my knowledge. I want to look at something, which I think is going to help me get to where I want to be.

So, when I look at these personal statements, it's a kind of single mindedness, determination, and passion. We really pride ourselves on passion. The people who teach here love what they do. I certainly love what I do. I want students to really get the most out of their time here. On average, it only lasts for one year. It isn't long. We want our students to really enjoy every moment. We believe that they do.