Course Overview

The MA Children’s Literature and Literacies is a vibrant, wide-ranging degree course that offers professional development and academic progression by enhancing subject and research expertise in these interdisciplinary fields of study. Informed by current scholarship, research, and practice, it provides you an opportunity to develop in-depth and advanced knowledge and understanding of children’s literature and literacy through both wide-ranging and diverse specialist modules, culminating in an independent research project (MA dissertation) that reflects your ambition and aspirations, your engagement with conceptual and empirical research; and critical reflective approaches to research methods and professional situations, both practical and theoretical.

This MA aims to develop a broad, inclusive, critical, and contemporary understanding of literacies, including the range of digital, visual, and interactive texts available to children and young people and their influence on their learning experiences. It allows you to deepen your passion for literature written for children through research-led modules that engage with emerging frameworks and debates. It equips you with a broader understanding of current research methodologies and critical and theoretical frameworks to sustain and further your independent research and topic interests and questions.

We have an established research culture, and you will be invited to join our staff at regular literary events, workshops, and presentations. You will be encouraged to participate in the research seminar series, conferences, and other public events. The institutional strength in children’s literature and literacy is interdisciplinary and demonstrated by the Literature and Literacies Research Knowledge Exchange Unit (RKEU), a cross-disciplinary Research and Knowledge Exchange Unit whose activities and events will be of interest and open to you.

The team is committed to producing high-quality academic outputs, acknowledged in the recent outcome of REF 2021. The English department's publications express the thematic range of the team’s work, the richness of its research, and the character of its public impact projects. The published outputs assessed through REF 2021 include those reflecting: research on women writers, life stories, and the Victorian and Edwardian period; explorations of William Blake and nineteenth-century literature and culture; research on the popular media relating to the Falklands War; and investigations of the life of Florence Nightingale. REF 2021 recognized the quality of the engagement of English staff in public impact, as represented in projects extending locally, nationally, and internationally.

General Eligibility

Students looking to study this course must have obtained or be predicted to get an undergraduate honors degree with a minimum of lower second-class honors (or equivalent).

Prospective students may be required to attend a consultation with the program leader or academic team member before commencing the course (this may be a telephone conversation if appropriate), and all are welcome to arrange a campus visit before enrolment.

Part Time Work Details

20 hours of work permit weekly for international students.

Language Requirement

• N/A