Home

English: Issues in Modern Culture MA

London, Bloomsbury

This is the programme information for 2026/27 entry

If you require details of the previous year's programme, English: Issues in Modern Culture MA (2025/26), click here

UK students International students

Study mode

UK tuition fees (2026/27)

£16,800

£8,400

Overseas tuition fees (2026/27)

£35,400

£17,700

Duration

1 calendar year

2 calendar years

Programme starts

September 2026

Applications accepted

Applicants who require a visa: 20 Oct 2025 – 26 Jun 2026

Applications close at 5pm UK time

Applications open

Applicants who do not require a visa: 20 Oct 2025 – 28 Aug 2026

Applications close at 5pm UK time

Applications open

Apply for this course

Entry requirements

A minimum of an upper second-class Bachelor's degree in a relevant discipline from a UK university or an overseas qualification of an equivalent standard will normally be required. This is a competitive MA, however, and the majority of our successful applicants either have, or are predicted to gain, a first class undergraduate degree (or overseas equivalent).

The English language level for this course is: Level 2

UCL Pre-Master's and Pre-sessional English courses are for international students who are aiming to study for a postgraduate degree at UCL. The courses will develop your academic English and academic skills required to succeed at postgraduate level.

Further information can be found on our English language requirements page.

Equivalent qualifications

Country-specific information, including details of when UCL representatives are visiting your part of the world, can be obtained from the International Students website.

International applicants can find out the equivalent qualification for their country by selecting from the list below. Please note that the equivalency will correspond to the broad UK degree classification stated on this page (e.g. upper second-class). Where a specific overall percentage is required in the UK qualification, the international equivalency will be higher than that stated below. Please contact Graduate Admissions should you require further advice.

About this degree

The course explores a range of media, forms and genres using a variety of scholarly approaches, and encourages the development of independent research skills. The Modern Literature and Culture module encourages close reading of works by writers of the period, while the Critical Contexts and the Special Topics modules offer the opportunity to analyse technologies, media, philosophical perspectives and art forms underpinning writing from c.1900 to the present.

Who this course is for

The course is particularly suitable for graduates with a first degree in English, although applicants holding a degree in a related subject will be considered. The course gives students a thorough grounding in the skills needed for independent research, and is an ideal foundation for further academic study in this field.

Read about what it takes to study for a Master's at UCL

What this course will give you

UCL English has an outstanding research record, with 94% of our research outputs being graded as 4* 'world leading' or 3* 'internationally excellent' in the REF 2021. Staff publish in mainstream as well as academic media, and some publish original creative work.

Excellent facilities are provided by the UCL library. It has several important holdings including the James Joyce Collection, the Little Magazines, Alternative Press and Poetry Store Collections, and the George Orwell Archive.

Students have access to an incomparable range of resources, including those at Senate House Library and the British Library nearby. The department holds regular research seminars and facilitates engagement with a range of events and institutions of literary culture in London.

Read about what you'll get out of a graduate programme

The foundation of your career

Graduates from this MA will be strongly equipped to find employment in fields such as professional writing, publishing, journalism, film and television, teaching, PR, advertising and marketing, performance and the creative arts. The course is also an ideal preliminary stage for doctoral research in literature; candidates who obtain the MA and have found a promising subject requiring further study are encouraged to apply to the UCL MPhil/PhD course. In the Graduate Outcomes Survey carried out by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), looking at the destinations of UK and EU graduates in the 2017 - 2022 cohorts, 72.5% of graduates from this MA were in either highly-skilled work or postgraduate-level study 15 months after graduation.

Employability

Studying on this MA course will help students to develop their written and oral communication skills; their ability to analyse and synthesise ideas and to organise complex materials in a lucid manner; their capacity for logical argumentation and critical thinking; and their time management and independent working skills.

Networking

Students enrolled on the English: Issues in Modern Culture MA benefit from a number of networking opportunities over the course of their degree. An Alumni/Careers event held towards the end of every Autumn Term provides students with a chance to hear, meet, and ask questions of a number of returning alumni (these typically include journalists, editors, publishers, writers, teachers, and early-career academics).

The Departmental Graduate Research Seminar series, which runs throughout the First, Second and Third Terms, usually fortnightly, also affords students regular occasions to hear visiting speakers, staff members, and postgraduate students give presentations about their work. These regular talks provide students with an informal opportunity afterwards to network with their peers and with academics operating in different specialisms.

Likewise, the annual graduate conference, held in the Summer Term of every year, allows students to hear and give academic papers, and to network with both illustrious and fledgling academics. Academic- and student-led reading groups and film screenings usually run during the three terms.

Teaching and learning

You will learn through a mix of seminars, one-to-one tutorials, as well as private study and research. The Modern Literature and Culture and Critical Contexts modules run over two terms; the Special Topics modules run over one term. A module will involve two hours of contact time per week. You are actively encouraged to take part in the learning process by asking questions about, and critically evaluating, the content of your teaching. During the course, you will write a number of essays. You will also be required to submit abstracts in preparation for your work on the Critical Contexts essay and the Dissertation; these will be discussed in dedicated tutorials.

Each module is taught through a weekly two-hour seminar. The Modern Literature and Culture, Critical Contexts and Special Topics modules are assessed through the submission of essays. The final piece of assessment is a Dissertation research project. Abstracts for the Critical Contexts essay and Dissertation will be discussed in one-to-one tutorials.

In the first half of the Autumn Term, students write a formative essay in response to a ‘keyword’ chosen from a list provided by the Department, with feedback provided in a one-to-one tutorial.

In the First and Second Terms, full-time students can typically expect around 4 contact hours per teaching week through seminars. In the Third Term and the summer period students will be completing their own dissertation research, keeping regular contact with their dissertation supervisors. Across the duration of the course, full-time students should spend 30-32 hours per week in independent study, which will include self-study, coursework and dissertation writing. The equivalent of a full-time job.

Modules

In the First and Second Terms you will study the compulsory module, ‘Modern Literature and Culture’, which is taught weekly and orchestrates close reading and discussions of some of the genres and concepts which have influenced writers and culture in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. The themes typically covered include The Contemporary, Modernisms, Experiments in Form, and Popular & Visual Cultures.

In addition, in the First Term you will study the Critical Contexts module which reads literature and other art forms (ranging from the high-brow to the popular) in the context of a broad range of theoretical, societal, philosophical, and technological developments.

In the Second Term, in addition to the Modern Literature and Culture module, you will take the modules Special Topics in Modern Culture 1 and Special Topics in Modern Culture 2, each of which runs for five weeks. These Special Topics modules explore specific authors, periods, movements or thematic concerns of related works of literature or films. In recent years, this has included an exploration of themes such as: Cultures of Offence; Cultures of Chance: Accident, Error and Catastrophe in Literature and Culture from 1960; The American Counterculture; Contemporary Poetry; The Essay Film: Between Word and Image; Inventions of Cinema; History and Fantasy in Modernist Literature; Global Anglophone Fiction; Afrofutures; Ecopoetics: Literary Ecologies.

Modules are designed to give you a thorough grounding in the skills needed for independent research. Emphasis is placed on the production of a dissertation in which you have extensive scope to develop your own individual research interests. The title of the Dissertation, together with an abstract of the proposed topic, will be submitted to the Course Convenor at the beginning of the Third Term. You will then discuss the proposed topic in a half-hour viva with your primary and secondary supervisor. You will have two further half-hour tutorials with your primary supervisor while you are writing the dissertation during the Third Term and the summer months.

If you are studying on a part-time basis, you will take Modern Literature and Culture in the First Year, and the Critical Contexts and Special Topics modules in the Second Year. The Dissertation will be submitted at the end of your Second Year.

Compulsory modules

Modern Literature and Culture

Critical Contexts

Special Topics in Modern Culture 1

Special Topics in Modern Culture 2

Issues in Modern Culture: Dissertation

Please note that the list of modules given here is indicative. This information is published a long time in advance of enrolment and module content and availability are subject to change. Modules that are in use for the current academic year are linked for further information. Where no link is present, further information is not yet available.

Students undertake modules to the value of 180 credits. Upon successful completion of 180 credits, you will be awarded an MA in English: Issues in Modern Culture.

Accessibility

The department will endeavour to make reasonable adjustments for students with disabilities, including those with long-term health conditions, neurodivergence, learning differences and mental health conditions. This list is not exhaustive. If you're unsure of your eligibility for reasonable adjustments at UCL, please contact Student Support and Wellbeing Services.

Reasonable adjustments are implemented on a case-by-case basis. With the student's consent, reasonable adjustments are considered by UCL Student Support and Wellbeing Services, and where required, in collaboration with the respective department.

Details of the accessibility of UCL buildings can be obtained from AccessAble. Further information about support available can be obtained from UCL Student Support and Wellbeing Services.

For more information about the department and accessibility arrangements for your course, please contact the department.

Fees and funding

Fees for this course

UK students International students

Fee description	Full-time	Part-time
Tuition fees (2026/27)	£16,800	£8,400
Tuition fees (2026/27)	£35,400	£17,700

Postgraduate Taught students benefit from a cohort guarantee, meaning that their tuition fees will not increase during the course of the programme, but UCL reserves the right to increase tuition fees to reflect any sums (including levies, taxes, or similar financial charges) that UCL is required to pay any governmental authority in connection with tuition fees.

The tuition fees shown are for the year indicated above. Where the course is offered on a flexible/modular basis, fees are charged pro-rata to the appropriate full-time Master's fee taken in an academic session. Further information on fee status, fee increases and the fee schedule can be viewed on the UCL Students website: ucl.ac.uk/students/fees.

Additional costs

For full-time and part-time offer holders with a fee status classification of UK, a fee deposit will be charged at 2.5% of the first year fee.

For full-time and part-time offer holders with a fee status classification of Overseas, a fee deposit will be charged at 10% of the first year fee.

Further information can be found in the Tuition fee deposits section on this page: Tuition fees.

While the department strives to keep additional costs low, students may incur additional expenses such as books, stationery, printing or photocopying and conference registration, depending on their preferred way of working. The amount will vary per student. Books and journal articles are available via the UCL library either as hard copies or via e-journal subscriptions, prices for book purchases will vary by retailer. Printing costs are available on the UCL website and will vary depending on the level of printing a student chooses to undertake.

For in-person teaching, UCL’s main teaching locations are in zones 1 (Bloomsbury) and zones 2/3 (UCL East). The cost of a monthly 18+ Oyster travel card for zones 1-2 is £119.90. This price was published by TfL in 2025. For more information on additional costs for prospective students and the cost of living in London, please view our estimated cost of essential expenditure at UCL's cost of living guide.

Funding your studies

For a comprehensive list of the funding opportunities available at UCL, including funding relevant to your nationality, please visit the Scholarships and Funding website.

See all the ways you can fund your studies

Next steps

Students are advised to apply as early as possible due to competition for places. Those applying for scholarship funding (particularly overseas applicants) should take note of application deadlines.

There is an application processing fee for this course of £90 for online applications. Further information can be found at Application fees.

When we assess your application we would like to learn:

why you want to study English: Issues in Modern Culture at graduate level
why you want to study English: Issues in Modern Culture at UCL
what particularly attracts you to this course.

Together with essential academic requirements, the personal statement is your opportunity to illustrate whether your reasons for applying to this course match what the course will deliver.

Please note that you may submit applications for a maximum of two graduate courses (or one application for the Law LLM) in any application cycle.

This course only requires one reference in support of your application. Your reference should be academic unless you have been out of university education for more than four years. Further information regarding references can be found on this Selecting your references page.

Choose your programme

Please read the Application Guidance before proceeding with your application.