PhD Creative Writing

COURSE OVERVIEW

Swansea’s Creative Writing research programme offers a choice from a spectrum of skills and a research dialogue across genres, including poetry, fiction, drama and screenwriting. We are a closely bonded community of writers, each research student being supervised by a specialist writer-teacher. One-to-one meetings take place every 4 weeks, or at the student’s request. The corpus of research students also meets in monthly staff-student Creative Writing Methodology Workshops.

The Swansea Writing Programme offers its graduate writers an apprenticeship, with the precious time to dedicate oneself to learning a craft which, for all its mysteriousness, works according to techniques and rules which may only be creatively broken once they have been thoroughly understood. Swansea is especially proud of the intellectual rigour of its programme and research culture. Our team includes teacher-writers of award-winning stature and long experience, and we go to considerable lengths to match student with supervisor, to create an enriching and enduring writerly bond.

Programme Summary

This PhD in Creative Writing at Swansea will enable you to undertake a substantial project led by your own interests. It is a highly respected qualification which can present a career in academia or a wider scope for employment in fields such as education, government or the private sector. A thesis of 100,000 words will be submitted for assessment demonstrating original research with a substantive contribution to the subject area. The PhD is examined following an oral examination of the thesis (a viva voce examination or viva voce). You will acquire research skills for high-level work and skills and training programmes are available on campus for further support. There will be an opportunity to deliver presentations to research students and staff at departmental seminars and conferences. There may also be opportunities to develop your teaching skills through undergraduate tutorials, demonstrations and seminars.

Programme Aims

This PhD programme will provide doctoral researchers with:

1. The opportunity to conduct high quality postgraduate research in a world leading research environment.
2. Key skills needed to undertake advanced academic and non-academic research including qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
3. Advanced critical thinking, intellectual curiosity and independent judgement.

Assessment

Doctoral researchers for the PhD in Creative Writing are examined in two parts.

The first part is a thesis which is an original body of work representing the methods and results of the research project. The maximum word limit is 100,000 for the main text. The word limit does not include appendices (if any), essential footnotes, introductory parts and statements or the bibliography and index. The second part is an oral examination (viva voce).