Work with our team of award-winning authors to develop your creative practice and its critique. Creative Writing at Birmingham is part of the Department of Film and Creative writing, and is closely aligned to the Departments of English Literature and English Language and Applied Linguistics, allowing you to benefit from our breadth of expertise.
The practice-based Creative Writing PhD at Birmingham aims to support you in the development of a long-form piece of creative writing (for example, a novel or a script), or a sequence of related works (poems and short stories).
You will be working in an environment that supports and encourages the development of craft and participation within a community of writers and scholars.
Here at Birmingham, we are in a unique position: Creative Writing is aligned to not only our Department of Film and Creative Writing, but also the Department of English Literature and Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics. The PhD is part of a portfolio of creative writing courses that have a strong reputation.
The final submission on the Creative Writing PhD is a document that is divided between the creative piece and a related critical document. For further details please see the course details tab of the programme's course page.
Our Creative Writing PhD programme can be studied on campus or by distance learning. Please note that if you are studying with us by distance learning, there is a required visit to campus in your first year of study.
Research interests of staff:
The Department is home to a number of award-winning writers and our research into the aesthetic, historical and theoretical contexts of literature is complemented by our strong traditions in creative practice as research.
For full research interests of staff, please read our staff profiles or visit the research interest tab on the programme's webpage.
Our Standard Requirements
The creative and critical elements will entail considered independent research and development. For this reason, we can only consider applications from applicants who have successfully completed an MA in Creative Writing, or candidates who can demonstrate composite professional experience (which includes publishing). This should be clearly demonstrated in your application. For the PhD, you must demonstrate how the research project relates to your current creative practice.
Please note: check the staff profiles prior to application to make sure that your proposal is within an area that we can support. We will be unable to support a research project which falls too far outside of our own field of research and teaching.
For the application we require:
- a detailed outline describing the planned creative project
- an outline of the potential critical enquiry and how it relates to the creative project (this can be less detailed than the description of the creative project)
- a statement about your reasons for considering a research degree
- examples of creative work
- a short resume or CV
- two references from people who are familiar with both your creative and critical abilities
The application will be reviewed by the department in several stages. If there is an interested and available supervisor we will ask you form an interview, which can happen online.
Funding Notes
Please visit the College of Arts and Law funding page for information on possible funding opportunities: View Website. You can find out about all the scholarships that are available on our Postgraduate Funding Database. If you find a scholarship that you are interested in, we would recommend you check the application guidelines as these can differ between funding schemes. For some of them, you can apply for funding as soon as you have submitted an application for the course. If you would like to start in 2024, applications for the AHRC Midlands4Cities Scholarship opened on 16 October 2023 and closes on 10 January 2024.
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