Creative Writing PhD

Bath Spa University

The PhD in Creative Writing combines a proposed manuscript (e.g. novel, short story collection, poems, playscript, narrative non-fiction, digital writing) with an element of supporting or contextualising research. The proposed creative manuscript will be volume length (the natural length of a book, depending on genre). The supporting research will be 20,000 words.The emphasis is not on creating two separate pieces of work, but on integration, on purposeful exploration through practice: an interdependent programme of contextual and practice-based creative work. Both sections of the PhD must contain work of publishable quality. In the case of the contextualising research, this might mean some of the material could be turned into an article for an academic journal, but this element of the PhD must contain original, rigorous research. Together - taken as a whole - the contextual and creative elements must make a new contribution to knowledge.

School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities