The Department of English, Theatre and Arts offers the following Master Programs:
Program Name
English, Theatre and Arts (MRES)
The MRes in English, Theatre and Arts offers students who have completed an MA the unique opportunity to research a project of their own by writing a fully developed, high-quality piece of research. You will work with a supervisor on your project, shaping it by taking modules in research skills and development of methods and skills specifically related to your field.
Creative and Critical Writing (MA)
The MA in Creative and Critical Writing offers blended learning in the interconnected fields of creative writing and critical theory. Modules exploring critical debates on contemporary literature, media and popular culture give you the opportunity to develop your critical skills, while modules and workshops in creative writing enable you to develop and hone your creative writing skills (whether in fiction or non-fiction).
Cultural and Critical Studies (MA)
Our MA Cultural and Critical Studies explores critical and cultural debates across disciplines in the arts and humanities, offering you the chance to examine work in a diversity of media, including print culture, painting, film, new media and popular culture. It combines a thorough exposure to contemporary critical methods and debates with a diverse range of advanced study options.
Modern and Contemporary Literature (MA)
Our MA Modern and Contemporary Literature begins with an investigation of literary and theoretical conceptions of modernity in early twentieth-century literature, focusing on topics such as urbanization, technology, mass culture, individualism and subjectivity.
You will also have the chance to analyses the historical transformations of literature and cultural thought from 1945, using the contexts of post-war reconstruction, decolonization, the fate of avant-garde art, and theories of postmodernity and globalization.
Dramaturgy (MA)
MA Dramaturgy offers a comprehensive exploration of the practice and theory of drama, theatre and performance composition. You will work practically with a host of leading artists, who will share their diverse approaches to creating performance, from collaborative theatre-making to live art. You will engage in scholarly examination of practices, histories and theories regarding the research and development of drama, theatre and performance works inside and outside the rehearsal room. Further enhancing your practice-based and scholarly skills and knowledge, you will originate a playwriting project, and engage in an industry-led examination of audience development, arts education and producing.
Contemporary Literature and Culture (MA)
Birkbeck’s MA Contemporary Literature and Culture offers you the opportunity to specialize in twenty-first-century literature and culture, as well as exposing you to the most important literary and theoretical developments of the last few decades. It considers the legacy of postmodernism, the effects of new technologies on narrative form, and the aesthetic, spatial and political coordinates of writing produced in an increasingly networked and globalized world.
Creative Writing (MFA)
Our MFA (Master of Fine Art) in Creative Writing offers you the opportunity to write a full-length work of fiction or non-fiction to a standard where it may be offered to literary agents.
The course is initially taught through small, dynamic workshops and seminars. But the core of the MFA is a one-to-one mentoring relationship with a regularly published and produced award-winning writer. Together, these will help you strengthen and professionalize your identity as an author. A session of feedback from a London-based literary agent will also be offered.
Text and Performance (MA)
This highly distinctive MA in Text and Performance, run as a partnership between Birkbeck and RADA, brings together cutting-edge practice and scholarship in theatre and performance. Join us and you will work with Birkbeck’s experts in theatre and performance studies and RADA’s faculty and visiting theatre practitioners to experience both making and studying theatre.
Creative Writing (MA)
The MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck is taught by one of the most diverse and vibrant departments in London. For 16 years we have been enabling dynamic groups of students to improve their creative work and develop as writers. We have a growing list of published and prizewinning authors whose work started life in our seminars.
Victorian Studies (MA)
Drawing on Birkbeck’s position as a world-leading center in the field of nineteenth-century studies, our MA Victorian Studies offers you the chance to take a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to studying the literature, culture and history of Victorian Britain. You will encounter a compelling range of Victorian texts, contexts, themes and ideas on a degree course that does justice to the energy and variety of the Victorian period.
Theatre Directing (MFA) 2 years
This MFA Theatre Directing offers professionally recognized training for theatre directors. The result of a collaboration between Birkbeck and the Arts Council England, Equity and UK Theatre, the program provides a unique opportunity to work with theatre actors, writers and designers, while being introduced to the structural and financial realities of working as a director in the industry.
Renaissance Studies (MA)
The MA in Renaissance Studies explores the question of what the Renaissance was and what approaches are best suited to understanding it.
From the start, you will undertake training in postgraduate research skills. For example, in the second term of your degree you are offered practical study of paleography. The summer core course is based around the materials of Renaissance evidence: objects, painting, manuscript and print. We explore a range of methodologies.
Applied Medical Humanities (Postgraduate Certificate)
Birkbeck’s Postgraduate Certificate in Applied Medical Humanities is designed to help medical practitioners explore and understand their complex, everyday clinical experiences with diverse patients and cultures. Medical humanities is a rich interdisciplinary field of study in which medicine and its practices are examined through the lenses of the humanities disciplines, including art, cultural and critical studies, film, history, law, literature and philosophy.
About Birkbeck University of London
Birkbeck offers a unique combination of evening study and a matchless central London location, right in the geographic and academic center of the city, giving you exceptional opportunities.
At Birkbeck, you can build your own university experience, with as little or as much support as you need. Birkbeck offers a famously friendly, welcoming environment and we will be with you every step of the way, offering academic support and pastoral guidance, whenever you need it.
Birkbeck is different: our classes are held in the evening, so your days are free – to study, work, volunteer or just do your own thing.
We know the conventional university model isn’t right for everyone. Our evening teaching gives people who care about their future something special: the opportunity to study at a world-class, research-intensive university and progress their life goals at the same time.
With a global reputation for high-quality research and teaching, Birkbeck is part of the prestigious University of London, alongside University College London (UCL), King’s College London (KCL), the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), among others.
At Birkbeck, you can choose as much or as little of the standard university experience as you like. You might work during the day, study in one of Bloomsbury’s world-famous libraries, undertake an internship via Birkbeck Talent, our in-house professional recruitment service – or do something completely different. Many people are drawn to Birkbeck because we support and enable diverse life choices.
The combination of evening study and a city-centre location offer you exceptional opportunities. Our main campus is next to other universities, surrounded by world-famous museums and galleries and in the heart of corporate and governmental London.
With the West End, Soho, Covent Garden and King’s Cross on our doorstep you can take full advantage of London’s world-famous shops, restaurants, bars, theatres and clubs before and after your evening classes. Everything that London has to offer is here for you to enjoy.
In addition, you will have access to the affordable sports facilities, societies, music venues, bars and cafes of Student Central, right next door to our main campus in Bloomsbury, central London.
