English with Education BA (Hons)

If you're the sort of person who always has a book by your bedside, English is the subject for you! Taking your love of reading as the one essential ingredient, we aim to cultivate your abilities as a thinker, writer and communicator. We will introduce you to the basics of critical writing and literary theory in year one, allowing you to develop the skills and knowledge necessary for success in your later work. Following this introductory year, you will be able to choose from a range of options reflecting the interests and expertise of the Ulster University English teaching team. We very much enjoy sharing our enthusiasms, and try to make our lectures fun! Even more importantly, we want you to develop your own interests and follow your own passions. English at Ulster allows you to construct your own path to success, writing on whatever engages you most, whether that be Shakespeare or 'Game of Thrones'. Having had many opportunities to share ideas with like-minded friends and sympathetic teachers, our English students graduate as creative, free-thinking communicators; they often go on to do great things! Join us and free your imagination.

The teaching of English is driven by the research expertise of the staff that places it within the top third of national rankings. Students thereby benefit from teachers that are pushing the boundaries of knowledge within their respective fields. The English subject group is fortunate to have several internationally renowned published poets, including Dr. Kathleen McCracken and Dr. Frank Sewell, whose works have been read at literary festivals in the UK and globally. Such expertise drives the subject’s creative writing modules. There is also expertise across the literary canon and popular genres from the sixteenth-century to the present day, including, for example, specialists on Shakespeare (Dr. Kevin De Ornellas), Restoration literature and its adaptations (Dr. James Ward), women in Victorian and modern American literature (Drs. Kate Byrne and Willa Murphy), and in twentieth-century Irish prose and stage (Dr. Kathryn White).