PhD in Creative Writing

University of Sheffield

The proposal for the Creative Writing PhD is distinct from the proposal for other programs. This 3-year program consists of a full-scale creative project, novel, collection of short stories, poetry collection (60,000 words for prose, 50 poems for poetry, or equivalent) accompanied by a 40,000 word critical project. The creative and critical projects should be intimately related and the critical project is not restricted to introduction to the creative work, but must be a free-standing research project, with specific research question(s), methodology, and set of primary and secondary texts for analysis. The creative element must be take full and potentially publishable form and will be judged at viva under those terms. We welcome interdisciplinary projects, and also mixed media, multimedia projects and can host complex projects with co-supervision with specialists from music, architecture, theatre, film. The proposal for this PhD program will be approximately 1,500 words, outlining both the creative and critical sides of the project. The outline of the critical side of the project should be structured similarly to any research-based PhD, although the discussion of the creative side may be much more flexibly formatted.