English Literature, MA by Research

COURSE OVERVIEW

An MA by Research in English Literature enables you to undertake a substantial independent research project of a publishable standard.

Your project will take one year full-time or two years part-time. It is suitable if you want to undertake a first research degree as an isolated culmination of taught studies, or if you are considering further research in form of a PhD.

You will submit a thesis of up to 40,000 words, demonstrating original research with a significant contribution to the subject area. This is followed by an oral examination of the thesis (a viva voce examination, or viva).

A number of research groups also offer focus and community for staff and postgraduates:

• the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Research (MEMO)
• the Centre for research into Gender in Culture and Society (GENCAS)
• Centre for Research into the English literature and language of Wales (CREW)

We offer supervision in most areas of literature from the middle ages to the present. Our particular research strengths include:

• Welsh writing in English
• American literature
• Gender
• Medieval, renaissance, eighteenth and nineteenth-century writing and culture
• Modernism and postmodernism
• Irish poetry
• Contemporary literature
• Critical and cultural theory
• Science Fiction and Ecology/Environmentalism
• Human-Animal Studies

Your project will be agreed in consultation with supervisors and we recommend these discussions are started before applying, to help draw up an initial proposal.

You will be closely supervised by two experienced academics with relevant expertise throughout the course of the project. This involves fortnightly meetings in your first term and meetings at regular agreed intervals thereafter.

As a research student, you are required to attend skills and training courses. You deliver presentations to research students and staff at departmental seminars, at the annual departmental postgraduate symposium in June, and at the College of Arts and Humanities Postgraduate conference.

The Research Excellence Framework 2014 reported on postgraduate research in the department.

• The environment in the Department is ‘conducive to producing research of mostly at least internationally excellent and at its best world-leading quality’
• ‘Arrangements for postgraduates were deemed of world-leading quality’
• ‘There is clear evidence of the development of a research culture into which research students are fully integrated’
• ‘There are excellent arrangements for support, training and employability’.

You should hold or expect to achieve a minimum of an upper second class honours degree (2:1), or equivalent, in a related subject or hold relevant work experience. If you hold a qualification from a non-UK institution please see our academic entry requirements.