PhD, MPhil, MRes Creative writing

Research opportunities

As well as the popular MLitt in Creative Writing, we also offer a research-led Creative Writing route, which may suit those who wish to pursue a particular sustained project. You can study the MRes Creative Writing full-time, over a year, or part-time over two 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) or Dr. Rodge Glass, novelist, short story writer, editor and biographer of the great Glaswegian writer Alasdair Gray.

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 30,000 words. This includes 5,000 words of personal reflection on your writing. Your project should show:

• understanding and consistency in your project and its accompanying critical analysis
• good understanding of the genre developed and appraised
• use of relevant and appropriate language to the genre developed and appraised
• clear understanding of narrative or other formal strategies adopted
• awareness of literary/historical/theoretical context appropriate to the project
• clarity, economy of expression, avoidance of vague generalisations
• evidence of independent thought and imagination

You'll also take research skills methods with other postgraduates in the department of English. This gives you the opportunity to socialise with students on other courses and to learn how to present your work in public. Previous MRes students at Strathclyde have gone on to notable success, such as Allan Wilson (author of Wasted in Love, Cargo Publishing, 2011), and Dr Craig Lamont, now a Research Associate in Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow.