PhD Creative Writing

The Department of English conducts research in three main areas: literature, language, and creative writing. We aim to foster and develop strategic partnerships, particularly with local and national cultural organisations, to reach those who can benefit from our research.

Overview

The School of English has an outstanding international reputation. Students will benefit from this strong research-led teaching covering a wide and continuous range of writing which equips students with the critical and communication skills and the capacity for adaptable intelligence which are in demand in all areas of modern life.

Engagement with media has allowed our researchers to be at the forefront of developing a rich cultural agenda at national and international levels, opening access to literature to a diverse audience. This has resulted in four staff members succeeding in the New Generation Thinkers scheme. We also actively support impact in terms of reaching the general reader, through the publication of research in various, high-profile formats. The impact of such intervention into the nation’s cultural life creates new and evolving long-term contexts for thinking, understanding, writing and imagining.

Many of the Centre’s members specialize in Contemporary Literature that overlaps with science fiction, climate change, visual arts, comics and graphic novels, travel and nature writing as well as psychogeography and the urban environment. Putting gender and race at the forefront, Anglophone and postcolonial writing as well as the fostering of genuinely innovative interdisciplinary creative writing projects which have application and potential impact (e.g. Mental health, environment), is central to the way the Centre aims to diversify and expand the reading, writing and teaching of literature in the UK.

Research themes

Our research themes are:

• Citizenship and Identity
• Poetry and Diversity
• Literature and the Visual Arts.