PGT Post Offer Open Days

Once you receive an offer from UCL to study at the School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS), we will invite you to attend one of our Post Offer Open Day events. All events usually take place on a Wednesday afternoon during February and March, but this can change in 2021 due to the current COVID crisis.

The Post Offer Open Day is a chance for you to gain more insight into the programme you have applied for; to see a bit more of UCL, to meet some of our teaching staff and current students, and to ask any questions you may have. 

Deciding where to study is a big decision and it is important that you are confident in making your choices when it comes to ‘firming up’ on UCAS Track. We know you may be considering a number of options, so we recommend that you attend, even if you have visited UCL before.

More details, including dates and information on how to accept your invitation, will be e-mailed directly to our offer holders nearer the time.

Post-offer call with an academic member of staff

If you’d like to talk to us about what it’s like to be a student at UCL SELCS / CMII, you can organise an audio or video conversation with one of our academic members of staff listed below.

UPDATE: The ‘Post-offer call’ scheme ended on 31st July.

Please email selcs-cmii.enquiries@ucl.ac.uk with any questions about our programmes or feel free to message the relevant Programme Director.

Due to coronavirus, we have had to cancel some of our post-offer open days, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t get in touch and ask us questions about what it’s like to study here. Our academic members of staff are available until the end of July for you to book calls with them, for example via phone, Skype, Microsoft Teams or Zoom, etc.

Click here to read a message to offer holders regarding Coronavirus (Covid-19)

Comparative Literature MA

Stephen Hart

Stephen M. Hart is the Programme Director of the MA in Comparative Literature, and Professor of Latin American Film, Literature and Culture in SELCS/CMII. He teaches an MA course on ‘Lifescripting’, as well as the ‘Magical Realism’ option on the MA in Comparative Literature core course and the Research Skills course for MA in Comparative Literature students. He has published books on Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Magical Realism, Latin American Film and the Apostolic Process of the first saint of the Americas, Santa Rosa de Lima.

To book a video call on Microsoft Teams with Professor Hart until 31 July, please send him an email to stephen.malcolm.hart@ucl.ac.uk

Hans Demeyer

Hans Demeyer is Lecturer in Dutch & Comparative Literature and is currently the program director of the MA Comparative Literature. Together with Sven Vitse, he recently published Affectieve crisis, literair herstel (Affective Crisis, Literary Repair), a study of 21st century fiction from the perspective of an affective crisis. 

To request a call, please e-mail h.demeyer@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for. Hans will be available for calls between 19th - 31st July.

Early Modern Studies MA

Matthew Symonds

Matthew Symonds is a Senior Research Associate at UCL’s Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL), responsible for the information architecture of CELL’s research projects. He is Co-PI on CELL’s major research project, The Archaeology of Reading in Early Modern Europe (www.bookwheel.org), funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His research interests include the history of information, the miscommunication of ideas, and late seventeenth-century cultural history. He is currently writing about cosmopolitan reading. Matthew is also the Director of the MA in Early Modern Studies: he convenes the core modules Reframing the Renaissance and Forging the Early Modern and teaches two optional modules: From the Archive to the Hard Drive: IT for Graduate Research and Web 0.1: Early Modern Information Culture c.1470-1750. 

To request a call, please e-mail m.symonds@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Alexander Samson

Alexander Samson is a Reader in Early Modern Studies at University College London. His research interests include the early colonial history of the Americas, Anglo-Spanish intercultural interactions and early modern English and Spanish drama. He has edited volumes on The Spanish Match: Prince Charles’s Journey to Madrid, 1623 (Ashgate, 2006), with Jonathan Thacker A Companion to Lope de Vega (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008) and Locus Amoenus: Gardens and Horitculture in the Renaissance, a monographic Special Issue of Renaisance Studies (2012), as well as having published articles on the marriage of Philip II and Mary Tudor, historiography and royal chroniclers in 16th century Spain, English travel writers, firearms, maps, John Fletcher and Cervantes, and female Golden Age dramatists. His book Mary and Philip: the Marriage of Tudor England and Habsburg Spain was published by Manchester University Press in 2020, while editions of Lope de Vega’s Lo fingido verdadero also with Manchester and James Mabbe’s Exemplary Novels with Modern Humanities Research Assocation are in progress. He runs the Golden Age and Renaissance Research Seminar and is director of UCL’s Centre for Early Modern Exchanges and the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters. 

To request a call, please e-mail a.samson@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

European Studies MA / European Culture & Thought MA

Film Studies MA

Claire Thomson

Dr Claire Thomson, Associate Professor of Scandinavian Film, teaches the first-year BA module ‘How to Read Film’ and in 2020-21 convenes the MA in Film Studies. While her teaching ranges widely across film and media history and theory, her research specialisms include documentary and public health film, cinema and national identity, and the cinemas of the Nordic region. Her books include A History of Danish Cinema (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Short Films from a Small Nation (Edinburgh UP, 2018), and Thomas Vinterberg’s Festen (University of Washington Press, 2013).

To book a video call with Dr Thomson, please make a booking on her calendar, remembering to specify your contact details for skype, facetime or zoom: https://clairethomson-ucl.youcanbook.me/

Gender, Society and Representation MA

Ann Varley

Ann Varley is Professor in Human Geography and Director of UCL’s Gender & Sexuality Studies programme. She has interests in gender, household and home in Latin America ranging from the history of family law in Mexico to gendered property relations in contemporary urban housing.

Ann can be contacted about a possible face-to-face call one morning in the weeks starting 13 and 27 July. To request a call about the MA, please e-mail a.varley@ucl.ac.uk.

Health Humanities MA / Philosophy, Politics & Economics of Health MA

Sonu Shamdasani

Please click here to view Sonu’s profile at UCL.

To request a call, please e-mail s.shamdasani@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Leah Sidi

I co-direct the MA Health Humanities - Politics Philosophy and Economics of Health at UCL. This is an exciting programme which takes an interdisciplinary approach to health. I teach modules on ‘Philosophy, Politics and Economics of Health’, ‘Illness’, and ‘Feminism and the Medical Self’. I am available to supervise MA dissertations on: cultural representations of mental health, mental health and literature/ theatre/ life writing, theatre and disability, and contemporary feminist literature and theatre. 

To request a call, please e-mail l.sidi@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Language, Culture & History MA

Pathways: Dutch Studies, French and Francophone Studies, German Studies, German History, Hispanic Studies, Italian Studies, Scandinavian Studies.

James Connolly

James Connolly is Lecturer in Modern French History and currently programme convenor for the MA in Language, Culture and History.  His research interests include the social and cultural history of war, military occupations (especially occupier-occupied relations), local and national identity, the First World War, and modern French and European history more generally.  He has published extensively on the occupation of northern France in the First World War, both via articles and his 2018 book, The Experience of Occupation in the Nord: Living with the Enemy in First World War France.  He has also co-edited a book on European military occupations in the First and Second World Wars, and recently published a book chapter on British towns ‘adopting’ French towns after the First World War.  He is currently working on the French experience of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland in the inter-war period, aiming to consider the relations between occupied and occupied, German behaviours under occupation, and the role of violence.

To request a call, please e-mail james.connolly@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Race, Ethnicity and Postcolonial Studies MA

Paul Gilroy

Please click here to view Paul’s profile at UCL.

To request a call, please e-mail p.gilroy@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Luke de Noronha

Luke de Noronha is a lecturer at the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the Study of Racism and Racialisation, at UCL. He researches and writes on deportation, racism and immigration control. His first book, Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica, was published with Manchester University Press in September 2020. He was also one of the co-authors on recent book Empire’s Endgame: Racism and the British State (which came out with Pluto Press in February).

To request a call, please e-mail luke.denoronha@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Paige Patchin

Please click here to view Paige’s profile at UCL.

To request a call, please e-mail p.patchin@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Translation MA

Olivia Cockburn

Olivia is Director of the MA in Translation and a Lecturer (Teaching) in Spanish to English translation at both the Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) and the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS). She first joined UCL in 2019 to teach on the Scientific and Technical Translation and Medical Translation modules. In addition to her work at UCL, she is a professional translator of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin into English. Educated in the UK and Spain, Olivia’s translation specialisms lie in humanities, agriculture, medicine, and science. Her research focuses on historical linguistics and translation in the ancient Mediterranean.

To request a call, please e-mail o.cockburn@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.

Translation and Technology MSc

Alejandro Bolaños García-Escribano

Dr Alejandro Bolaños García-Escribano is Lecturer (Teaching) in Audiovisual Translation and Programme Director at University College London, UK, where he teaches (audiovisual) translation and Spanish language and culture at both the Centre for Translation Studies and the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies. He holds a joint BA degree in Translation & Interpreting and Humanities Studies from Pablo de Olavide University (Seville, Spain) and an MA in Translation Applied to the Publishing Industry from the University of Malaga, Spain, as well as an MSc in Audiovisual Translation and a PhD in Translation Studies from University College London, UK. His latest research revolves around the pedagogical potential of cloud subtitling and explores the latest innovations in audiovisual translation education. He also works as a freelance translator and subtitler.

To request a call, please e-mail a.bolanos@ucl.ac.uk and give your full name and the programme title you applied for.