Creative Writing

This Creative WritingPhD programme from theUniversity of Bristol consists of an original body of work – normally a novel, or a collection of poetry/short stories – with an accompanying critical element. The critical element will place the creative work in an informed and theorised analytical context.

The Creative Writing PhD programme from the University of Bristol research students are supervised by two academics, one of whom will normally be a creative writing academic and the other from English Literature or a discipline related to the creative and critical work. As with the traditional research degrees, the final submission will be expected to make ‘a substantial and original contribution to knowledge’. For Creative Writing, this means a body of work that contributes in individual, significant and demonstrable ways to current discourses in literature.

The relation to such discourses will be articulated in the creative work and conceptualised and explored in the critical element; both are intended to address the same research questions, generating dynamic interplay between creative and critical practice.

Career opportunities:

People who are awarded a Creative Writing PhD have gone on to a variety of careers. Many are published writers who also teach, either in the academy or in community settings. The intensive training in examining texts is transferable to roles in publishing, broadcasting and media. Others organise literary and other cultural events or work in research. Like many creative people, graduates of this type of degree often have portfolio careers, where they work between several roles and their writing is one of several simultaneous ways in which they are employed.

Courses include

• PhD: a research project undertaken across four years (full-time, minimum period of study three years), culminating in an 80,000-word thesis/project (normally 50,000 words of creative work often an extract from a longer project and 30,000 words of a critical investigation).
• As well as having the option to audit taught units where appropriate, there may be the potential for PhD students to teach units themselves from their second year of study onwards.