Creative Writing
Research in Creative Writing is located within the Middlesex University Writing Centre. Staff working within the Centre are practicing writers who are published poets, novelists, playwrights, screenwriters, reviewers, critics, short story writers, and authors of creative non-fiction.
The Centre encompasses a thriving MA programme which has produced many published and prize-winning writers; an annual two day Literary Festival which attracts high profile speakers and readers; a Royal Literary Fund Fellow on campus and a weekly programme of writing lectures which is open to all.
The PhD programme is headed by Dr Maggie Butt, who is also Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education, which runs a regular programme of creative writing research seminars in London.
Research in Creative Writing is practice-based, and PhD students complete their own original creative works (novels, poetry collections etc) alongside a critical commentary and exegesis.
What is a PhD in Creative Writing?
Investigation:
The Creative Writing PhD is an opportunity for you to explore the craft and context of your writing in depth over a period of years. You will already be a practising writer, probably published and/or having successfully completed an MA in Writing, so confident in the skills and practices of creative writing. You will be ready to produce a body of work which will make an original contribution to learning and knowledge in the academic subject of Creative Writing. Your thesis will consist of an investigation of a topic or question you wish to explore via your own creative writing practice and a commentary which displays advanced analytical understanding of your creative output. The PhD is an opportunity to develop and examine your writing to the highest academic level.
The creative element:
You will produce a substantial piece of creative writing in your chosen form, in which you will develop your own unique voice. In the old apprentice system, apprentices produced a ‘master-piece’ in order to be admitted as masters of their craft guild. This creative work will show you are a master of your chosen craft. It also forms one branch of your investigation of your chosen question. The extent of the creative work is a matter for discussion with your supervisor. It might be a full collection of poems or a completed play or film or series of shorts, or a collection of short stories or a novel, for example. Your aims may be for publication / performance, or to explore your craft without commercial considerations.
The critical element:
The creative work will be accompanied by 40,000 words of lucid and scholarly commentary. This exploration of your work is likely to focus particularly on one of the following: style, form, genre, themes or creative process. It will add to scholarly understanding of this subject, while examining your own work within a wider literary context. This commentary is not a review, nor a piece of literary criticism, but your personal critique or poetics which addresses the central theme or topic of the PhD while reflecting on the original research and thinking and creativity which has gone into the production of the creative work. The commentary is constructed according to the creative intentions and critical understanding of the candidate and shows a responsive understanding to your own creative output and that of others. It will meld the critical with the personal. This display of knowledge formalises learning, examines aesthetic judgements, evidences higher learning.
The thesis:
The commentary and the creative piece work together to answer the central question or investigation of the PhD. The thesis begins with a desire to create, and depends upon a desire to know what underpins the creation. The creative work illustrates the points made in the commentary /dissertation. Although some elements of the commentary may well be able to be reworked for independent publication as journal articles, and the creative work may be offered for publication /performance, within the thesis the critical commentary will exist in synthesis with the creative work, like a Diptych or a pair of mirrors.
Supervision:
Throughout the period of your PhD you will be supported by two supervisors, with whom you will discuss the development of your research and your writing. The supervisors role is to assist and heighten your responsive capabilities, to help you develop and display higher understanding of the subject.
What to do next:
Contact our research degree administrator Charmain Alleyne for details of fees, application forms and registration dates.
Contact Dr Maggie Butt to discuss the suitability of your proposed subject.
The PhD in Creative Writing can be taken part time, full time or by Distance Learning.
We also have an ArtsD (Doctor of Arts) research degree for the more widely published writer, and a PhD by Published Works for the highly acclaimed writer.
