Prospective students
Birkbeck is a great place to study, because you’ll be joining a community of learners who offer each other a vast amount of mutual support.
Our courses
We offer committed, enthusiastic and dynamic research-based teaching, with a constantly evolving curriculum sensitive to developments in contemporary culture. Below are links to all of our courses on the online prospectus - to see detailed descriptions, including reading lists and module outlines, you can see our course handbooks, which are all available on the pages for current students.
Certificates of Higher Education and short courses
- Creative Writing (Certificate of Higher Education): suitable for people with varying degrees of creative writing experience, from absolute beginners to those who have taken a creative writing course before.
- Literatures in English (Certificate of Higher Education): prepares you for progression to BA degrees in English and Humanities and, if successful, gain exemptions.
- Screenwriting (Certificate of Higher Education): offers you the opportunity to develop your screenwriting skills, to understand the social and political context of your work and to evaluate your performance.
- Creative writing short courses: not ready for a degree? These courses are an excellent way to pursue specific interests or help you find out if degree study is for you.
- English literature short courses: not ready for a degree? These courses are an excellent way to pursue specific interests or help you find out if degree study is for you.
Undergraduate courses
- BA Arts and Humanities: ranges across all aspects of literature, culture, and the arts, offering you an exciting intellectual environment and innovative, interdisciplinary courses designed to foster critical thinking about literature, cultural identity, post-colonialism, gender and sexuality, and the cultural production of space.
- BA Creative Writing: study the craft of writing under the tutelage of practising published writers and develop a portfolio of creative work in a range of genres.
- BA English: enables you to develop your knowledge and understanding of a wide range of literary writing in English, from earliest times to the present day.
- BA Theatre and Drama Studies: This programme offers you the opportunity to study a diverse and exciting range of theatre practices, histories, theories, companies and contexts, with a focus on contemporary theatre in London. You will visit theatres, theatre museums and collections, and work with guest speakers from the theatre industry.
- BA Theatre Studies and English / Theatre Studies and Humanities: the only part-time BA in theatre studies offered in central London, this course is ideal if you are passionate about live performance and theatre practice, and have an interest in ideas, concepts, histories and cultures.
Postgraduate courses
- MA Contemporary Literature and Culture: The programme provides an introduction to the contemporary period via an overview of some of the historical transformations of literature and cultural thought from 1945, as well as providing a much more recent, post-2000 framework within which to understand contemporary literature and culture. This enables you to view the contemporary moment through a historical lens or to focus more exclusively on very recent cultural production.
- MA Creative Producing: prepare for a professional role as producer in a wide variety of theatre and live performance events, including outdoor performance and street arts.
- MA Creative Writing: seeks to develop your confidence, sensitivity and discernment in the analysis of your own and fellow students’ work, along with greater critical understanding of contemporary literary developments and the place of your own writing within them.
- MA Cultural and Critical Studies: aimed at people with wide-ranging, interdisciplinary interests in the humanities and those interested in contemporary theoretical debates.
- Gender, Sexuality and Culture (MA / Postgraduate Certificate / Postgraduate Diploma): designed for those with special interests in the humanities, including literature, history, media and film, visual art, philosophy and cultural theory.
- Medical Humanities (MA / Postgraduate Diploma / Postgraduate Certificate): this programme combines world-class research-led humanities teaching with an established understanding of the real-life experience of clinical practice and patient care.
- MA Medieval Literature and Culture: offers the opportunity to make a special study of the medieval period, considering the richness and diversity of its literature, art and history.
- MA Modern and Contemporary Literature: introduces key texts and paradigms that shape our conception of literature from the early twentieth century to the present.
- MA Renaissance Studies: explores a variety of aspects of Renaissance culture, particularly the social and intellectual histories of England, France, Italy and Spain.
- Romantic Studies (MA/ PgDip/ PgCert): This interdisciplinary programme takes a material approach to Romantic culture, recuperating the rich range of cultural phenomena that shaped Romantic literature, and going against the Romantic notion of a solitary and desembodied reading experience.
- Theatre Directing (MFA): offers a professionally recognised training for theatre directors.
- MA Shakespeare and Contemporary Performance: run in conjunction with Shakespeare's Globe, this course combines the detailed study of the Shakespearean text and its original theatrical contexts with the practicalities of the present-day stage and the intellectual challenge of contemporary performance studies.
- Text and Performance (with RADA) (MA): combines study with Birkbeck’s experts in theatre studies and cultural theory, with practice-based seminars and workshops with faculty and theatre artists from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
- Victorian Studies (MA): ideal if you want to pursue an interest in the literature, culture and history of nineteenth-century Britain, or study in preparation for a research degree.
- Information for international students
MPhil/PhD study
- English and Humanities (PhD / MPhil): we welcome applications for research in all areas of English, cultural studies and related areas, including: Old English, Old Norse, medieval literature and culture, the Renaissance and early modern periods, Romantic and Victorian studies, and the modern and postmodern periods, creative writing, theatre studies, poetics, and critical theory. Take a look at our guide to applicants before submitting your application.
- Arts and Humanities (PhD/MPhil): This innovative programme offers you the opportunity to understand the historical, theoretical and practical dimensions of issues of the arts and humanities. It will provide a graduate community in literatures, languages, media and art historical studies, and will encourage new kinds of scholarship to take their place in a larger academic conversation about cross-cultural transfer, cultural comparison, and interdisciplinary interpretation.
- Find out about the Dickens Project summer school.
- Information for international students
Choosing the course for you...
It's important to choose the course that suits you best. In 2010, more than 1000 students will be studying one of our courses. To help you decide whether you want to join them and us, please see the following pages.
Information to help you choose your course
Help and support while you're studying
- Help and support for taught students
- World-class research resources
- Research training and support for MPhil / PhD students
Related information
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