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What makes the MA English programme at Worcester special?

As an English MA student, you will explore an exciting range of themes that build on your existing literary knowledge. These themes span a broad range, from eco-criticism to the literary representation of the body. We also offer the chance to gain hands-on experience with the recovery and digital editing of historical texts.  

You will undertake a special study of evolving literary forms and genres, analysing the way in which forms emerge and genres change in response to social and cultural pressures. Students will be encouraged to develop new specialist interests and research skills in the context of the interdisciplinary Modern Humanities which will culminate in an independent dissertation. Your dissertation will allow you to specialise in a subject of your own choosing, and work with individual guidance from an academic expert to produce a piece of ambitious literary research. 

Overview

Overview

Key features

  • Specialise in your chosen subject within the interdisciplinary environment of the modern Humanities 
  • Study the complexity and evolution of literary genres 
  • Study exciting contemporary themes such as the relationship between literature and medical science 
  • Develop your research skills to postgraduate standard, equipping you for professional research or application for doctoral study 
  • Gain relevant work experience while you study 
  • Join the thriving research culture of the Institute of Arts and Humanities and gain experience presenting your work at a postgraduate conference 
Entry requirements

Entry requirements

Entry requirements

Applicants are normally expected to hold a first degree in a relevant discipline, of at least Second Class Honours. Relevant subjects include, for example, English Literature, Cultural Studies, Comparative Literature, Creative Writing, etc.

Applicants will be invited to an informal interview.

Course content

Course content

Our courses are informed by research and current developments in the discipline and feedback from students, external examiners and employers. All students, whether full-time or part-time, follow a standard diet of six mandatory modules. The modules are kept up to date in terms of current debates in the subject, and continue to evolve in relation to the research expertise of the teaching team. Modules have been designed with flexibility and variety in mind; students exercise considerable choice in what they study and write about, within the overall theme of each module

Modules
  • Research Approaches in the Humanities and Arts
  • Professional Development
  • Digital Editing Project
  • The New Humanities
  • Evolving Genres
  • English Dissertation
Teaching and assessment

Teaching and assessment

The University places emphasis on enabling students to develop the independent learning capabilities that will equip you for lifelong learning and future employment, as well as academic achievement. A mixture of independent study, teaching and academic support through the personal academic tutoring system enables you to reflect on progress and build up a profile of skills, achievements and experiences that will enable you to flourish and be successful.

Teaching

You will be taught through a combination of seminars, workshops, individual tuition, and online interaction.

All students take an introductory module on advanced concepts and relevant theories in the Humanities, which also provides a grounding in postgraduate research methods and skills. All students also undertake a grounding in Digital Humanities methodologies, researching from databases and recovering and editing historical documents or literary texts. You will study a module on the interdisciplinary ‘New Humanities’, including environmental, medical, and scientific themes, which are relevant to both historical and literary / cultural scholarship. You will also take the 'Evolving Genres' module dedicated to your main disciplinary focus of English Literature.

All students take a module on Professional Development, in which they apply their academic skills in a practical work project, either on a university-based project, or with a relevant external organisation, such as a media company, local cultural amenity, charity, or voluntary sector body. Opportunities for work-based learning will be tailored to students’ longer-term plans and ambitions, for example, some students may choose to work on a creative industries networking event, while others may prefer to devise and run an academic conference.

The culmination of your Masters study is your specialist Dissertation. The taught modules will all help you to prepare for this by building your higher-level research skills and giving you opportunities to put them into practice. You will develop and expand your initial research plan in a workshop setting, in the light of peer and tutor feedback, and work towards the completion of your full Dissertation with the support of an individual advisor, who will be a research-active specialist in your subject. Staff in the Institute of Arts and Humanities are recognised experts in a wide range of fields. You make all the key decisions relating to your Dissertation, including the subject matter, the intellectual approach, the argument and structure; you own the project from start to finish. You have a totally free choice of theme: the only limitation is that we must be able to provide an expert advisor to support you.

Contact time

In a typical week, a full-time student will have around 6 to 9 contact hours of teaching, and part-time student around 3 to 6 hours. The precise contact hours will depend on the timetabling of modules and is variable; for example, the "Research Approaches in the Humanities and Arts" module is taught in two intensive six-week blocks in semesters 1 and 2 and is therefore not always in session.

In semesters 1 and 2, full-time students will typically study three modules at a given time, and part-time students two modules. Students on both full-time and part-time routes will undertake the final dissertation over the ‘third semester’, between May and September; regular campus-based and remote supervision will be available during this time.

Independent self study

In addition to direct contact time, full-time students will be expected to undertake around 30 hours of personal self-study per week; for part-time students, the expectation is reduced in proportion to the amount of credit they are taking at a given time. Typically, this will involve guided reading and research, and/or writing; the Digital Editing Project and Professional Development modules will entail other forms of independent work, such as use of online databases and editing tools, and external liaison and networking respectively.

Independent learning is supported by a range of excellent facilities, including The Hive university and public library, module Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), and digital learning resources.

Duration

  • Full-time: around 13 months. From early September, to late September of the following year
  • Part-time: around 23 months

Timetables

Timetables are normally available one month before registration. Please note that whilst we try to be as student-friendly as possible, scheduled teaching can take place on any day of the week; and some classes can be scheduled in the evenings.

Assessment

In line with the ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥’s Assessment and Feedback Policy, the assessment strategy on the MA has been designed to help ensure that our students meet the modular and course-level Learning Outcomes, thereby fulfilling the requirements of the appropriate award.

A full outline of assessment methods and weightings, mapped against Learning Outcomes, grade descriptors, and assessment dates is published in the MA course handbook with further, specific details included in module guides.

Teaching staff

The MA English course is planned and delivered by an extended teaching team in combination with MA Cultural Studies, and therefore draws on a wide range of expertise.

Teaching staff have both doctoral research qualifications and accreditation of the Higher Education Academy to at least Fellowship level. The core team will be supplemented on occasion by Visiting Lecturers withspecific expertise to enhance provision.

Details of the core teaching team, their qualifications and experience, can be found in the course handbook and on the Institute of Art and Humanities web pages.

Programme specification

For comprehensive details on the aims and intended learning outcomes of the course, and the means by which these are achieved through learning, teaching and assessment, please 

Meet the team

You will be taught by a teaching team whose expertise and knowledge are closely matched to the content of the modules on the course.

Dr Sharon Young

Dr Sharon Young is a  Fellow of the HEA and her teaching interests include, Renaissance, Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, women's poetry, and literary theory.

Sharon's research focuses mainly on women's poetry of the early modern period, Renaissance revenge tragedy and women's manuscript culture. Sharon has published on female poets and the critical debates of the early eighteenth century and Mary Leapor. 

Professor Nicoleta Cinpoes, Head of English, Media & Culture

Professor Nicoleta Cinpoes

Nicoleta Cinpoes joined the ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥ in 2007. She teaches Renaissance Literature, is International Exchanges Liaison for the Institute of Arts and Humanities and co-director of Worcester's Early Modern Research Group.

She has edited Doing Kyd: A Collection of Critical Essays on the Spanish Tragedy for Manchester University Press (2016) and is currently collaborating on a new Romanian translation of Shakespeare's complete works, writing introductions to Hamlet (2010), Titus Andronicus, Measure for Measure, The Merchant of Venice and The Comedy of Errors.

Dr Lucy Arnold

Dr Lucy Arnold is a specialist in Contemporary literature, with particular research interests in contemporary gothic, narratives of haunting, contemporary women’s writing and psychoanalytic criticism. Her teaching experience spans a wide range of periods and genres but focusses on twentieth and twenty-first century literature. Her published work to date has concerned the writing of Booker Prize winning novelist Hilary Mantel, with her monograph, Reading Hilary Mantel: Haunted Decades, published with Bloomsbury in 2019.

Dr Whitney Standlee, Senior Lecturer in English Literature

Dr Whitney Standlee

Dr Whitney Standlee is a specialist in literature of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with particular research interests in Irish women’s writing and migrant literature. Her publications include two recent books on the subject of Irish women’s writing.

Whitney teaches on a range of core and elective modules at all levels, all of which deal at least in part with nineteenth- and early twentieth century literature.

Dr Jack McGowan

Dr Jack McGowan

Jack’s research focuses on contemporary poetry and poetics, and he specializes in the development of performance poetry in the UK since the mid-20th century, and the oral roots of poetry.

Jack is a performance poet with 10 years of experience on the UK spoken word scene and he writes for both performance and page publication.

Katy Wareham Morris smiling at camera

Katy Wareham Morris

Katy leads the BA Hons in Media & Film Studies, a dynamic course which responds to innovations in media forms and applications as well as contemporary cultural issues. Katy is particularly interested in how digital technologies have changed media industries and the way audiences respond to them; and, media futures including immersive media. Katy interrogates media representations created by and representing identities and cultures which have been historically marginalised and challenge the white, middle class, patriarchal tradition. Katy is a proud working class, disabled, female academic and, a published poet.

Neil Laurenson

Neil Laurenson

Doing the English MA at the ÃÛÌÒÖ±²¥ is one of the best things I have ever done. I started it twenty years after my BA, so I was a little anxious to begin with, but the lecturers and my fellow students have been so supportive.

I loved exploring the origins and overlaps of different genres, and I also particularly appreciated the interdisciplinary nature of the course. Learning about, for example, the environmental humanities has really opened my eyes to how literature and culture link with politics and history.

The MA has given me the freedom to deep dive into my own interests such as land inequality in England and how this is represented in literature. Creating a website to share my research into an eighteenth-century text was a challenge, but the module leader supported me throughout.

Careers

Careers

As a graduate of Masters programmes in English you can work in a wide variety of careers, including:

  • Media, including editing, production, copywriting, etc.
  • Journalism, including print, broadcast, and digital media
  • Teaching, at compulsory and post-compulsory levels
  • Arts administration
  • Charitable and voluntary sectors
  • Civil Service
  • Human Resources
  • Retail management
  • Doctoral research and academic careers
Costs

Fees and funding

Full-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The standard tuition fee for full-time home and EU students enrolling on MA/MSc/MBA/MRes courses in the academic year 2025/26 is £9,450 per year.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

International students

The standard tuition fee for full-time international students enrolling on MA/MSc/MBA/MRes courses in the academic year 2025/26 is £17,900 per year.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

Part-time tuition fees

UK and EU students

The standard tuition fees for part-time home and EU students enrolling on MA/MSc/MBA/MRes/PGCert/PGDip courses in the academic year 2025/26 are £788 per 15-credit module, £1,575 per 30-credit module, £2,363 per 45-credit module, and £3,150 per 60 credit module.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

International students

The standard tuition fees for part-time international students enrolling on MA/MSc/MBA/MRes courses in the academic year 2025/26 are £1,492 per 15-credit module, £2,983 per 30-credit module, £4,475 per 45-credit module, and £5,967 per 60 credit module.

For more details, please visit our course fees page.

Additional costs

Every course has day-to-day costs for basic books, stationery, printing and photocopying. The amounts vary between courses.

Students are encouraged to purchase their own copies of key texts for major assessed projects. But the great majority of texts are provided free of charge from the holdings in the university Library and other Learning Resources.

Students receive a standard allocation of credit, in order to download and print digital resources from the Library or from module VLEs.

When trips and educational visits are arranged to enhance your learning experience, these will be provided free of charge.

Postgraduate loans

The Government will provide a loan of up to £12,471 if your course starts on or after 1 August 2024 per eligible student for postgraduate Masters study. It will be at your own discretion whether the loan is used towards fees, maintenance or other costs.

For more details visit our postgraduate loans page.

Accommodation

Finding the right accommodation is paramount to your university experience. Our halls of residence are home to friendly student communities, making them great places to live and study.

We have over 1,000 rooms across our range of student halls. With rooms to suit every budget and need, from our 'Traditional Halls' at £131 per week to 'Ensuite Premium Halls' at £228 per week (2025/26 prices).

For full details visit our accommodation page.
How to apply

How to apply

Apply for enrolment

Please make your application via our online application form. If you have any questions, please contact the Admissions office on 01905 855111 or admissions@worc.ac.uk

International applicants

If you are an international student, please visit our international applicant pages.

If you have any questions about the application process please contact our international team via international@worc.ac.uk  or +44 (0)1905 542640. 

If you are interested in applying for this course please begin by making an informal enquiry with the Course Leader.

Get in touch

Dr Sharon Young

Course leader
s.young@worc.ac.uk
01905 542428

Postgraduate Admissions Office

admissions@worc.ac.uk
01905 855111

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