Postgraduate courses and research

Every year a number of graduates either stay on at the School of Welsh or choose to study with us for the first time as a postgraduate student. We have at least three schemes available, and it is entirely possible to study with us through the medium of English. For more information please contact the Research Tutor, Professor Peredur Lynch.

MA | MPhil |PhD

MA

Welsh

The MA programmes that we offer are tailor made to suit the individual’s needs and interests and include a full academic year of full time study. During that academic year the student, under the School's supervision, will produce essay work on a regular basis. Before the end of the calendar year, the student is asked to produce a dissertation of up to 20,000 words. Recent successful MA dissertations have included work on writers such as Aled Islwyn, R. Gerallt Jones, Meic Povey and Martin Davies; others have been thematic studies, e.g. women in the works of Kate Roberts; still others have been more strictly philological, such as a recent edition of an Interlude by Twm o'r Nant.

For more information please contact Professor Peredur Lynch.

Creative Writing

Ysgol y Gymraeg, Bangor, is an exceptionally strong centre for creative writing; four members of staff have won the highest honours at the National Eisteddfod in writing poetry or prose. Each year a number of students complete taught MA degrees in this field through the College of Arts and Humanities, which offers a range of postgraduate courses. For more information, visit the relevant pages on their website.

Y Celtiaid - The Celts

In addition, from 2012 we shall be offering a new MA, "Y Celtiaid - The Celts". Over a single academic year, courses will be taught by experts in the Schools of Welsh, History, Art and Music, focusing on literature, archaeology, religion, mythology, antiquarianism, art history and music, to explore the culture and identity of the Celtic peoples from the hillforts of prehistory to the devolved and independent parliaments of today. Students will also be guided as they perform their own research towards a Master’s thesis on a topic of their choice All instruction is available through English or Welsh, and comprehensive ESOL support is available where necessary.

For further information on "Y Celtiaid - The Celts", see the course outline here, and/or contact Dr Aled Llion Jones.

MPhil

An MPhil allows for one full academic year of research, leading to a dissertation of up to 30,000 words. You are free to pursue your own course of research, decided upon in consultation with your academic advisor, who will supervise your work. We also offer an MPhil in Creative Writing that gives the student the opportunity to submit their own creative work towards their postgraduate degree.

For more information please contact Professor Peredur Lynch.

PhD

Our PhD programmes are usually 3 years of full time study with a 60,000 to 100,000 word thesis being submitted at the end of the third year.Recent PhD's have been completed in fields covering the whole range of Welsh-language literature, from the early Middle Ages to the work of living authors, on fields as diverse as popular culture, feminist studies and the editing of eighteenth-century Interludes. Welsh-language research is of coruse not limited to the geography of Great Britain, and Bangor has produced much important research into the literature of the Welsh-speaking Americas.

Graduate Student Exchange: Harvard University

Bangor University's School of Welsh runs an exchange programme with Harvard University's Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, enabling students from each institution to spend a semester studying at the other. Harvard is recognised as one of the leading educational establishments in the world, and in addition to world-leading research facilities in most areas of the Humanities, its libraries contain outstanding collections of Welsh and Welsh-language materials.

For more information please contact Professor Peredur Lynch.

Note:

All these postgraduate courses can be studied part-time, and mature students are advised that timetabling may very often be arranged to suit such responsibilities as childcare.