PhD, MPhil, MRes Creative writing

Research opportunities

As well as the popular MLitt in Creative Writing, and a research-led MRes in Creative Writing route at Masters level, we also offer PhDs in Creative Writing which may suit those who wish to pursue a particular sustained project. You can study the PhD in Creative Writing full-time, over three years, or part-time over six years.

You'll create a piece of imaginative writing in collaboration with a successful, published author – either the novelist and screenwriter Andrew Meehan (One Star Awake, The Mystery of Love), Dr. Rodge Glass, novelist, short story writer, editor and biographer of the great Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray, or the novelist and poet Sarah Bernstein (The Coming Bad Days, Now Comes the Lightning).

You can specialise in one of these genres:

• poetry
• fiction
• imaginative non-fiction
• hybrid writing

The length of your project can be negotiated with your supervisor, but will usually be around 80,000 words. All projects are different, and exact word counts will be tailored to particular projects, usually dependent on the form of the work, also the nature of the accompanying critical element that is also submitted as part of a PhD alongside the creative work. A good Creative Writing PhD contains these two parts - creative and critical writing - working in conversation with each other.

Previous PhD students at Strathclyde have gone on to notable success, such as the poet and performer Dr. Katie Ailes (I Am Loud Productions) and short story specialist Dr. Scott McNee (New Writing Scotland, 2022). As of September 2022, current PhD students in Creative Writing include:

• the novelist and short story writer Sindhu Rajasekaran (author of Smash the Patriarchy and So I Let it Be)
• poet, fiction and nonfiction writer Meredith Glasson-Darling (‘Notable Essay’ in Best American Essays, 2021)
• Sunday Times No.1 Bestselling author of The Young Team, Graeme Armstrong