MA Handbook 2011-12 (1) - Queen's University Belfast

School of English 

MA Handbook, 2011-‐12 

Cover illustration by Sarah Longley

Welcome 

We extend a very warm welcome to you as new MA students, both those returning to us after 

undergraduate study in the School of English, and those who are joining us from other institutions or 

places. We hope that you will enjoy your year of postgraduate taught study with us, enriching and 

developing your enthusiasms in literature, writing or language study. 

The key contact points for you as a MA student are the convenor of your particular MA pathway, 

Linda Drain, as postgraduate secretary, and Moyra Haslett and Ramona Wray as Co-‐Directors of 

Education. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any concerns or questions, but also let us know of 

any achievements or news which we might include in our regular staff e-‐bulletins on postgraduate 

issues. 

PG Secretary: 

Linda Drain 

l.drain@qub.ac.uk 

Tel: 028 90975103 

Co-‐Director of PG Education (ELL, BL, MS, RR): 

Ramona Wray 

r.wray@qub.ac.uk 

Tel: 028 90973331 

Co-‐Director of PG Education (CW, IW, MLS, MP): 

Moyra Haslett 

m.haslett@qub.ac.uk 

Tel: 028 90973962 

MA convenors, 2011-‐12 

MA English (English Language and Linguistics): Joan Rahilly 

MA English (Broadcast Literacy): Paul Simpson 

MA English (Creative Writing): Sinead Morrissey (1 st semester); Ian Sansom (2 nd semester) 

MA English (Medieval Studies): Stephen Kelly 

MA English (Reconceiving the Renaissance): Ramona Wray 

MA English (Irish Writing): Eamonn Hughes 

MA English (Modern Literary Studies): Moyra Haslett 

MA English (Modern Poetry): Philip McGowan 

This handbook is intended to help you in giving as much information as possible. If there is any 

question not answered here, please do let us know, as we seek to improve the Handbook for future 

students. 

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Contents 

Introduction to Postgraduate studies 

Induction Week: Enrolment and Registration 

QUB Email 

Queen’s Online (QOL) 

Starting in Induction Week: Research Methods symposia 

Studying for a MA course 

First semester modules 

Second semester modules 

The dissertation 

Submission of written assessments 

Extensions 

Plagiarism 

Release of marks 

How to Receive Feedback 

Marking Criteria 

How the School is run 

How can your views be heard in the School? 

Research Culture in the School of English 

Weekly Research Seminars 

Postgraduate Conferences, 2011-‐12 

Reading Groups 

Staff Profiles 

Fulbright Distinguished Scholars (2012) 

The English Society 

Creative Writing in the School 

The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry 

Queen’s Writers’ Group 

School-‐based Social Events for PG students, 2011-‐12 

Information on Facilities for Postgraduate Taught Students: 

The McClay Library 

Past theses and dissertations 

Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry: Reading Room 

The International and Postgraduate Student Centre (IPSC) 

General Information: 

School of English contact details 

Semester Dates for 2011-‐12 

Support for Postgraduate Students 

Further Support for students at Queen’s: 

University support: Accommodation, Careers and Employability, 

Chaplaincy, Counselling, Disability, Finance, Health Centre, Queen’s 

Sport, Student Guidance Centre, Students’ Union, International 

Students, Paid Employment and Part-‐time Work, Paid Employment and 

Part-‐time Work for International Students 

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Introduction to Postgraduate Studies 

Welcome to the postgraduate studies programme in the School of English at QUB. Every year 

between fifty and sixty students begin MA study in the School, and it has acquired a reputation for 

excellence in research and scholarship over many decades. Many of the graduates from our 

postgraduate programmes are now leading experts in the field, and are teaching new generations of 

scholars in the UK, Ireland and around the world. We are very pleased that you have decided to 

undertake postgraduate study in the School of English, and we are committed to maintaining and 

improving a flourishing postgraduate community as an essential part of the School’s academic life. 

Our aim is to continue to encourage and stimulate the best work in all of our postgraduate students. 

Becoming a postgraduate student is an exciting time, a time in which you have an excellent 

opportunity to develop your own ideas, arguments and writing skills with the advice and tuition of 

established scholars, critics and writers. It is a time not only for researching a subject which you find 

stimulating and rewarding, but also for discovering your distinctive voice, whether as a scholar, 

critic, or writer and making your original contribution to knowledge and understanding. Whatever 

your aims in undertaking postgraduate study, the opportunities offered by a postgraduate degree to 

explore, research and write about subjects which interest you will enable you to develop personally 

and professionally. 

We hope that you will find your life and work as a postgraduate student in the School of English 

rewarding and stimulating, and that your achievements here will serve you well in the future. 

With best wishes, 

Moyra Haslett and Ramona Wray, 

Co-‐Directors of PG Education 

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Induction Week: Enrolment and Registration 

You will be required to enroll for modules and register as a MA student in the week preceding first 

semester (w/c Monday 19 th September, 2011). 

This year, enrolment will take place on Thursday 22 nd September, 2011 in the Social Space, in the 

School of English (Ground Floor, 1 University Square). This process will use the QSIS system, but 

administrative staff (including Linda) will be present to help with this process, and academic staff 

(including Moyra and Ramona) will be present to help with queries concerning module choices. The 

Library holds information sessions on using QSIS which you may find helpful. 

You will be required to sign up for modules in both semesters. Modules in first semester are, with a 

few exceptions, core modules for each pathway. Modules in second semester are elective modules, 

so that you can choose from a wide range of modules within your designated pathway and across 

different pathways. Don’t worry if you are not entirely certain at this point which modules you 

would like to study in second semester: there will be an opportunity for you to change the 

registration details of second semester modules during first semester. Changes to module choice can 

be discussed with the convenor of your MA, with Moyra or Ramona, and Linda can process any 

required changes. 

MA students study the equivalent of 2 ‘full’ modules (ie taught over 12 weeks) in semesters 1 and 2 

(eg you might be studying 2 ‘full’ modules’, or 4 ‘half’ modules). The dissertation is then equivalent 

to 2 modules in terms of its credit within the MA. 

At enrolment, you will need to tell us whether you wish to register as a part-‐time (rather than a full-time) 

student. 

You need to complete enrolment before registration (ie enrol for your modules before paying tuition 

fees, as the modules will determine the fee). Registration is available until 5pm on Thursday, 22 nd 

September, in the International and Postgraduate Students Centre, and should take only 10-‐15 

minutes. 

Email 

Once you have registered you will be issued with a Queen’s email address. It is IMPERATIVE that 

you use this account as your tutors and the School will be communicating with you using the QUB 

email address you have been given. 

Queen’s Online (QOL) 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/qol 

Queen’s Online (QOL) is an on-‐line information and learning environment for Queen’s students and 

staff. You will need your student number and email password to login. Most of your administrative 

contact with the School of English will be conducted through QOL. Course and exam information will 

be stored on module-‐specific directories. 

For more information, see: 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/InformationServices/StudentComputing/ 

Students should familiarise themselves with QOL as quickly as possible as lecturers and tutors will be 

making immediate use of the platform. 

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Starting in Induction Week: Research Methods symposia 

An important aspect of postgraduate study is the preparation for it provides for independent 

research, particularly in the form of the MA dissertation and also, potentially, in preparation for Ph.D 

study. The School of English at Queen’s University Belfast has been highly praised for the quality of 

its Research Methods teaching by independent and external assessors. These skills are taught in an 

explicit way in a series of three Research Methods symposia, and tested and developed throughout 

the course of MA study. Attendance at these Research Methods symposia is compulsory for all MA 

students. All of the symposia are held in the training rooms on the ground floor of the McClay 

library. Details are as follows: 

1.) Friday, 23 rd September, 2011. 

10am – 4pm: Training Rooms 1 and 2 (am) and Auditorium (pm), McClay library 

Presenting Work at MA Level and Researching a MA level Bibliography 

5pm-‐7pm: Welcome Drinks for all new PG students (the Social Space, School of English) 

2.) Friday 27 th January, 2012. (Friday of the inter-‐semester break) 

10am – 4pm: Auditorium, McClay library 

Archival Research for MA Work and Preparing for PhD level Work 

3.) Friday 27 th April, 2012. (Friday of week 10) 

10am – 4pm: Auditorium, McClay library 


(for all students excepting Creative Writing students, who will have a separate information session 

on their writing portfolio at a similar date). 

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Each MA course will also provide more specifically oriented research methods seminars. These three 

research methods symposia offer core information and advice about postgraduate study and 

research methods in general. They also serve to introduce MA students to our staff, and to each 

other. 

Recommended texts to purchase: 

A key text for literary studies postgraduate scholars is the seventh edition of the MLA Handbook for 

Writers of Research Papers (New York: Modern Language Association, 2003), an essential guide to 

presenting a piece of scholarly writing. Alternatively, you may wish to purchase the second edition of 

the more advanced guide, Joseph Gibaldi’s MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing 

(New York: Modern Language Association, 1998), specifically designed for graduate students and 

academics. In addition, the second edition of Joseph Gibaldi (ed.), Introduction to Scholarship in 

Modern Languages and Literatures (New York: Modern Language Association, 1992), presents a 

collection of essays addressing the development and directions of modern study in English. Students 

might also acquire a copy of the second edition of the MHRA Style Guide: A Handbook for Authors, 

Editors, and Writers of Theses (London: MHRA, 2008). You can download a free copy of this from 

www.style.mhra.org or purchase a printed copy. Copies of these key texts are available for purchase 

in No Alibis bookshop, Botanic Avenue. 

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Studying for a MA course 

The taught Master’s degree is usually considered attractive either as a ‘top-‐up’ degree, which probes 

deeper into specialised areas of literary study than the BA, or as a ‘bridge’ degree, which enables 

students to make the transition from taught undergraduate study to the independent research skills 

necessary for advanced postgraduate work. Whether or not you intend to pursue academic study 

beyond the Master’s degree, the time you spend studying for the Master’s is an opportunity to 

refine your skills as a literary scholar, language specialist or writer and to engage in critical discussion 

with a small group of committed students and staff who are interested in advanced study of various 

kinds. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of taking a Master’s course is that there is very little time 

to ‘settle in’. It is important that you get to know your way around the resources available in the 

library, speak to your tutors about your taught courses, and begin to work on ideas for your 

dissertation in the first few weeks of term. Right from the start, you should look to read as widely as 

possible for your taught courses and come to every class prepared to engage in discussion with your 

peers. 

The skills and methods appropriate to Master’s study 

MA courses are aimed primarily at students wishing to pursue further academic study, and to 

develop their expertise in literary study for professional careers in teaching, journalism, publishing, 

or research posts in both the private and public sectors. Beyond this, the profile of high level 

research and communication skills which a successful MA graduate in English could offer is always 

attractive to a wide range of employers. The taught Master’s degree continues to develop some of 

the key skills of an undergraduate education in English, such as close textual analysis, contextual and 

conceptual understanding, writing and communication, working independently and in small groups, 

engaging critically with a diversity of arguments and opinions, and learning how to acquire and use 

knowledge effectively. It also invites students, often for the first time in their educational 

experience, to research and write a dissertation on a specialised area of literary study, and to 

introduce students therefore to key research skills. This is vital training for those students 

considering PhD research, and has a wider function in training students to manage their own 

research project, and motivate themselves to produce research and written work independently. 

How you should approach the taught courses 

The methods of study appropriate to the taught courses differ very little from those of 

undergraduate work. You will attend seminars which are longer and more intensive than BA 

seminars, write essays which are longer and more specialised, and read a more extensive range of 

literary and scholarly books and articles. But because postgraduate teaching is often more focused 

on a specialised area, and involves students who are very committed, and staff who are heavily 

involved in researching the topics they are teaching, participating in a MA course can seem to be a 

giant leap up from undergraduate study. Taking a MA course is a test of how well you can work as an 

independent scholar, and this is not just the case when you are preparing your dissertation, but is 

also a factor in how you undertake the work for your taught course units. Most MA course units are 

taught over a short period of time (some for as few as five or six weeks), and you should endeavour 

to get the most out of each class by preparing thoroughly in advance. Read as much of the course 

bibliography as you can, and prepare notes or questions in advance of the class. Be prepared to 

engage in discussion, and if there are points you wish to articulate, or questions you wish to ask, try 

to think of specific examples to which you might direct the attention of the class. You should also 

spend some time after the class writing up what you have learned, and use these notes to begin 

your preparations for the next class. If you are experiencing problems with understanding the 

course, or having difficulties with particular reading materials or essay topics, MA tutors always 

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publicise set times when they are available for consultation, and you should discuss your problems 

with the most relevant tutor or the MA convenor. 

First semester modules 

These may be comprised of ‘full’ (12-‐week) or ‘half’ (6-‐week) modules. In most instances, these are 

core modules which set up issues and methods which will underpin your studies throughout the 

year. These are usually team-‐taught modules , which draw on the expertise of different staff. Each 

module will have its own module convenor, however, who is responsible for the teaching and 

assessment of the module. (See following pages for 1 st semester modules for each MA pathway.) 

The deadline for first semester final assessments will be announced via e-‐mail early in the semester. 

Second Semester Modules 

Second semester modules are usually taught by a single tutor, due to the specialised nature of these 

options. (See following pages for 2nd semester modules for each MA pathway.) 

N.B Students may choose second semester elective modules outside of their chosen pathway. This is 

particularly common across the 3 pathways within modern literary studies (ie Irish Writing, Modern 

Literary Studies, Modern Poetry). If two modules are scheduled for the same time, contact Moyra or 

Ramona, as we will seek to ensure that your preferred choices can be made. 

Further information on all MA modules can be obtained by contacting the relevant module 

convenor. (For core modules, unless otherwise directed, you may contact the MA convenor.) 

The deadline for second semester final assessments will be announced via e-‐mail early in the first 

semester. 

The School of English prides itself on the excellence of its teaching. As part of on-‐going staff 

development, and the dissemination of good teaching practice, the School operates a system of 

regular peer-‐observation, in which colleagues sit in on each other’s lectures, tutorials and seminars. 

The system operates across undergraduate and postgraduate teaching, and in both semesters. 

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First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Broadcast Literacy 

ENG7201 Research Methods 1 Broadcast Literacy (Core) 

6 x 4 hour seminar (wks 1-6) 

Monday 3-5 & Thursday 11-1 

ENG7202 Research Methods 2 Broadcast Literacy (Core) 

6 x 4 hour seminar (wks 7-12) 

Monday 1-3 & Thursday 2-4 

First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Creative Writing 

ENG7090 Research Methods Creative Writing (Core) 


Thursday 2-4 

ENG7091 Poetry Workshops 1 (M McGuckian) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-12) 

Thursday 10-12 

ENG7093 Creative Writing Craft and Technique (Core) 


Thursday 2-4 

Prose: I Sansom; Poetry: S Morrissey; Scriptwriting: T Loane 

ENG7097 Scriptwriting Workshops 1 (T Loane) 


Friday 10-12 

ENG7292 Fiction Workshops 1 (I Sansom) 


Tuesday 10-12 

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First semester modules, 2011-‐12: English Language and Linguistics 

ENG7087 Research Methods 1 English Language (Core) 

6 x 4 hour seminar (wks 1-6) 30 CATS 

Monday 3-5 and Thursday 11-1 

ENG7088 Research Methods 2 English Language (Core) 

6 x 4 hour seminar (wks 7-12) 30 CATS 

Monday 3-5 and Thursday 11-1 

First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Irish Writing 

ENG7100 NI Since the 1960s (Core) 


Monday 4-6 

ENG7010 Research Methods Irish Writing (Core) 


Monday 4-6 

ENG7115 Irish Intellectual History (Core) 


Thursday 4-6 

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First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Medieval Studies 

ENG7040 Research Methods Medieval Studies (Core) 

12 x 2 hours seminar (wks 1-12) 

Monday 4-6 

ENG7246 Medieval Literatures and Cultures (Core) 


Tuesday 2-4 

ENG7057 Inventing the Middle Ages (Core) 


Tuesday 2-4 

First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Modern Literary Studies 

ENG7160 Theorising Modernity (Core) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (weeks 1-6) 

Monday 3-5 

ENG7060 Research Methods Modern Literary Studies (Core) 


Monday 3-5 

ENG7161 The Literature of Modernity (Core) 


Tuesday 3-5 

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First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Modern Poetry 

ENG7300 Structure and Serendipity (Core) 


Monday 3-5 

ENG7301 Approaches to Poetry: Methods and Sources (Core) 


Monday 3-5 

ENG7302 Poetry and Criticism 1880-2005 (Core) 


Wednesday 10-12 

First semester modules, 2011-‐12: Reconceiving the Renaissance 

ENG7021 Material Worlds (Core) 

2 x 3 hour seminars & 3 x 6 hour workshops 

Seminars Fri 10-1 weeks 1 & 12 

Workshops Fri 11-5 weeks 4, 6 & 8 

ENG7037 Literature, Religion and Politics (R Abraham) 

12 x 2 hour seminars (wks 1-12) 

Monday 4-6 

ENG7124 Literature and Mobility in early modern England (P 

Frazer) 

12 x 2 hour seminars (wks 1-12) 

Tuesday 3-5 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Broadcast Literacy 

ENG7180 Media Discourses of Crime and Deviance (A Mayr) 


Tuesday 2-4 

ENG7194 Page to Stage (T Loane) 


Thursday 11-1 

ENG7195 The Radio Talk (M O’Doherty) 



ENG7002 Irish Writing 1920-1960 (Core) 


Thursday 4-6 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Creative Writing 

ENG7092 Poetic Form (L Flynn) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-6): Monday 11-1 

ENG7094 Poetry Workshops 2 (M McGuckian) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-12): Thursday 11-1 

ENG7095 Fiction Workshops 2 (I Sansom) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-12): Friday 1-3 

ENG7096 Scriptwriting Workshops 2 (T Loane) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-12): Friday 10-12 

ENG7192 Poetics of Translation (C Carson) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 7-12): Monday 11-1 

ENG7194 Page to Stage (T Loane) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 7-12): Thursday 11-1 

ENG7195 The Radio Talk (M O’Doherty) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 7-12): Wednesday 10-12 

ENG7199 Special Topic Creative Writing (Fulbright Fellow) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (weeks 1-9 & 10-12): Thursday 2-4 

ENG7291 Life Writing (I Sansom) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 7-12): Thursday 11-1 

ENG7293 Seven Basic Plots (T Loane/I Sansom) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-6): Thursday 11-1 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: English Language and Linguistics 

ENG7083 Irish English (J Kirk) 


Wednesday 11-1 

ENG7084 Scots (J Kirk) 


Tuesday 4-6 

ENG7085 Phonological Concepts (J Rahilly) 


Thursday 11-1 

ENG7086 The Discourse of Humour (P Simpson) 


Tuesday 11-1 

ENG7180 Media Discourses of Crime and Deviance (A Mayr) 


Tuesday 2-4 

ENG7181 Corpus Linguistics (J Kirk) 


Wednesday 11-1 

ENG7187 Advanced Study in the History of English (J Kirk) 


Tuesday 4-6 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Irish Writing 

ENG7001 Social Joyce (B Caraher) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-‐6) 

Monday 3-‐5 

ENG7002 Irish Writing 1920-‐1960 (Core) 


Thursday 4-‐6 

ENG7003 Modern Irish Drama 1 (M McAteer) 



ENG7007 Autobiography (E Hughes) 

6 x 2 hour seminar (wks 7-‐12) 

Thursday 4-‐6 

ENG7012 Swift and Ireland (M Haslett) 


Wednesday 11-‐1 

ENG7109 Modern Irish Drama 2 (M McAteer) 



ENG7110 Rhetoric, Revolution and Empire (D Dwan) 


Thu 2-‐4 

ENG7119 Special Topic Irish Writing (Fulbright Fellow) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (wks 1-‐12) 

Thursday 10-‐12 

N.B Students may also choose second semester elective modules from ‘Modern Literary Studies’ 

and ‘Modern Poetry’. 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Medieval Studies 

ENG7041 Cultures of Piety (S Kelly) 



ENG7047 Chaucer, Gower and the Competitive Spirit (M Urban) 



ENG7049 Anglo Saxon Voices (M Cesario) 


Thursday 2-4 

ENG7159 Special Research Topic (J Thompson) 


Friday 10-12 

ENG7247 Forbidden Knowledge (I Herbison) 


Friday 2-4 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Modern Literary Studies 

ENG7063 Private, Public Women (M Haslett) 


Friday 12-2 

ENG7067 Modern Indian Literature (D Roberts) 


Tuesday 1-3 

ENG7068 Modernisms and the Postmodern in Anglophone Poetry (B Caraher) 


Thursday 2-4 

ENG7071 Slavery, Empire and Abolition, 1660-1840 (S Regan) 


Tuesday 11-1 

ENG7072 Subjectivity and Modernity (D Dwan) 



ENG7075 Literary Culture at the Fin de Siecle (CG) 

12 x 2 hour seminar (weeks 1-12) 


ENG7078 Contemporary American Fiction (A Pepper) 


Tuesday 10-12 

ENG7162 Milton Among the Moderns (E Sheehan) 



N.B Students may also choose second semester elective modules from the ‘Irish Writing’ and 

‘Modern Poetry’ pathways. If two modules that you would like to take are scheduled to run at the 

same time, please contact Moyra or Ramona. 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Modern Poetry 

ENG7303 British Poetry (E Larrissy) 



ENG7304 American Poetry (P McGowan) 


Tuesday 2-4 

ENG7305 Irish Poetry (F Brearton) 


Thursday 2-4 

ENG7306 Paul Muldoon (L Flynn) 


Monday 2-4 

N.B Students may also choose second semester elective modules from other pathways (eg 

‘Modernism and the Postmodern in Anglophone poetry’ within Modern Literary Studies) 

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Second Semester Modules, 2011-‐12: Reconceiving the Renaissance 

ENG7036 Women and Autobiography in C17th England (R Wray) 


Tuesday 3-5 

ENG7038 Shakespeare and World Cinema (M Burnett) 


Thursday 3-5 

Modules in ‘Writing Conflict in early modern Ireland’ and ‘Poetry, Piety, Patronage’, taught in 

University College Dublin, are also available to MA students in ‘Reconceiving the Renaissance’. 

Please contact Dr Ramona Wray (r.wray@qub.ac.uk) for details on how to register for modules 

delivered at UCD. 

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The following notes apply to all MA students excepting Creative Writing students. 

Students who have attained a pass mark (50%) for the taught modules may proceed to a 

dissertation, which constitutes the last two modules of the MA programme, researched during the 

summer months of the MA year. 

Deadline: Friday, 14 th September, 2012 

Word count: 15,000 words (inclusive of bibliography and notes) 

How you should prepare for the dissertation 

The MA dissertation is an independent research project, which offers you an exciting opportunity to 

choose what to study and write about in a dissertation which accounts for a third of the MA award. 

You are not entirely on your own, of course. You will be assigned a supervisor who will advise you 

about the scope of your topic, the organisation of your material, the list of books and articles you 

should consult, and who will read drafts of your dissertation prior to submission. The dissertation 

should test your skills in working independently on a research project, and the supervisor is there 

simply to advise on the direction of your studies. You are ultimately responsible for ensuring that 

your dissertation meets the required standards for submission, and for acting on the advice given to 

you by your supervisor. You will have a set number of meetings with your supervisor. Three or four 

meetings are common. The first will be an opportunity to discuss what topic you wish to research, 

the viability and scope of your research topic, and what problems you might anticipate in completing 

it. The last meeting will be a chance to review the draft which you will have submitted to your 

supervisor prior to the formal submission. Try to use the time with your supervisor wisely. Prepare in 

advance for the meeting, making a list of all the questions or problems you wish to discuss. 

Supervision takes place over the summer months when academics are frequently attending 

conferences, working on or writing up research and, at some point, taking some summer leave. In 

the first meeting with your supervisor you will agree a schedule for submitting draft chapters which 

can take these factors into consideration. 

Choice of topic: Scope and methodology, topics and approaches: these factors can vary widely. Past 

MA dissertations submitted as part of your MA programme give some indication of the potential 

variety. If you are uncertain how to shape your interests into a coherent, realistic dissertation topic, 

you should make contact with a relevant member of staff, who will be happy to advise. 

Supervisor: Usually a member of staff on the teaching team of your specific MA programme, and 

someone whose own research interests intersect to some degree with the topic of your dissertation. 

Meetings or correspondence with your supervisor will take place June-‐August, by arrangement on an 

individual basis. 

Format and layout (those in square brackets are optional): 

Title-‐page 

[Acknowledgements] 

Table of contents (keyed to page numbers at beginning of each chapter) 

Introduction 

Chapters (usually 3 or 4) 

Conclusion 

Bibliography 

[Appendices] 

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Structure: 

The introduction should present and explain the scope of the dissertation, survey existing work on 

the topic and explain how the dissertation represents an original response to such existing work (or 

its lack). It should also introduce each chapter briefly. 

Each chapter should have its own introductory and concluding sections, with the more general 

‘Introduction’ and ‘Conclusion’ of the dissertation providing the opportunity to discuss issues of 

relevance across all of the individual chapters. 

Think about the overall pace of the dissertation, keeping an eye on the word-‐count of each chapter. 

A possible structure might be: Introduction, 1500 words approx 

3 chapters, 4000 words approx each 

Conclusion, 1500 words approx 

The dissertation structure can vary, but this provides an indication of how you should think about 

the overall structure of the dissertation. It is quite common for the general introduction and 

conclusion to be written last. 

You must submit two soft bound / spiral bound copies of a typed version of the dissertation, and 

should observe the following features: 

• 1.5 or double spacing. 

• 2.5 cm margins all around except binding edge (left-‐hand margin) where it’s 4cm. 

• 12 point font. 

• Typing on one-‐side of paginated (i.e. page numbers) A4 paper only. 

• Quotes longer than 30 words indented in separate paragraph without inverted commas. 

• Footnotes or endnotes (at bottom of each page or the end of each chapter, or after Conclusion). 

• Sub-‐headings within chapters (if used) should be in bold or underlined on a separate line. 

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Submission of written assessments 

Essays and projects required for final assessment must be submitted to the School Office (House 2, 

University Square) on or before the deadline. TWO hard copies must be submitted in addition to an 

electronic copy, uploaded onto QOL. 

Assessed work submitted after the deadline will be penalised at a rate of 5% of the total marks 

available for each day of lateness up to a maximum of 5 days in accordance with University 

regulations. For example, if your assignment is worth 60% of the module marks and is submitted 5 

days late, we are obliged to deduct 15 marks from the mark you are awarded . After 5 days a mark 

of zero will be awarded. Please note that essays not received by 12:00 noon on the day of 

submission will be considered a day late. 

Late penalties will be applied automatically unless an extension has been granted on the piece of 

work in question (see below). Where an extension has been granted, there will be no penalty so 

long as the new deadline is met. 

When calculating days of lateness, weekends will not be included. 

Extensions 

Extensions will be granted only to students who can produce documentary evidence of extenuating 

circumstances which they believe have led to late submission. In most cases, this would be a 

certificate signed by a medical practitioner. It is up to the student to ensure that evidence is 

provided. No extensions will be granted without documentary evidence. 

Extensions must be requested within three working days of the due date: i.e., if work is due on a 

Monday, an extension must have been sought by the following Thursday. After that, the work will 

be counted as late. Retrospective extensions will not be granted. 

Students wishing for apply for extensions must do so by contacting the relevant Co-‐Director of PG 

Education (Moyra Haslett or Ramona Wray). 

Plagiarism 

All assessed work must fully acknowledge the secondary sources used in the preparation of the 

submitted piece. These sources may be in print or electronic form: use of the words or ideas of 

others must be properly referenced in the form of parenthetical citation or footnote / endnote form 

and supplemented with full bibliographical details in the bibliography. Plagiarism – the act of passing 

off the work of others as your own – will be severely penalized. The University regulations on 

plagiarism can be accessed at http://www.qub.ac.uk/calendar. 

23

Release of marks 

All assessment at MA level is double-‐marked and a high percentage of scripts are also sent to our 

external examiners for final confirmation. Marks for all modules are then ratified at the MA Exam 

Boards (January, June, September). The School adheres to the University publication of results 

deadlines and students receive an email from the University to alert them to these deadlines; results 

can be accessed via QSIS. The School also emails students (using qub addresses) one week in 

advance of each deadline. 

Receiving Feedback on Your Work 

In advance of receiving written feedback, all students must fill out a self-‐reflective statement, which 

can be downloaded from the module resources on QOL. This is designed to encourage you to reflect 

upon the development of your own work. Once this form is submitted to the module convenor, s/he 

will then provide written feedback on assessed work. All students MUST complete this process, as a 

key aspect of their ongoing skills development. 

Marking Criteria 

General Standards 

MA classifications 

The ‘pass’ mark for the MA in English is 50%. A mark between 40% and 50% indicates a pass at 

Diploma level; a mark below 40% is a Fail. The MA degree at Queen’s is classified as 

• 50% and above Pass 

• 60% and above Pass with Commendation 

• 70% and above Pass with Distinction. 

For MA degrees, a Pass with distinction will only be awarded where an overall average of 70%+ is 

achieved, a mark of 70%+ is achieved in the dissertation, and the average mark for other modules (ie 

the taught modules) is 65% +. 

Marks for MA modules 

Marking at MA level in the School of English is conducted according to the Conceptual Equivalents 

Scales as set out in Appendix A of the General Regulations and as reproduced on the following page 

(p.25). 

24

How the School is run 

You are always free to ask at the School Office if you are in doubt about which staff member to 

consult on a particular issue that concerns you. But, in order to gain some preliminary impression of 

the way the School is administered, you may find it useful to consult the list of staff below (with a 

brief summary of their particular administrative responsibilities). These are all experienced staff 

who are prepared to assist all students in making the most of their time in the School. 

Key Administrators in the School you may need to consult 

The Head of the School is Professor Ed Larrissy. He is responsible for all aspects of the School’s 

activities. He is also the Chair of the School Board. Students who are having problems that cannot 

be resolved by consultation with their tutors, MA convenors or PG DEs should make an appointment 

to see the Head by contacting the School Office. 

The Co-‐Directors of Postgraduate Education (Dr Moyra Haslett and Dr Ramona Wray) also chair the 

School Postgraduate Examining Board. They are responsible for developing and overseeing the 

implementation of the School's teaching and learning strategy for Postgraduate Studies, in 

conjunction with the Head of School and the School Management Board. 

The School Manager (Ms Carmel Beaney) is responsible for contributing to the development and the 

delivery of the School's strategic and operational academic objectives and managing its financial 

resources, in conjunction with the Head of School and the School Management Board. 

Key committees in the School 

It may be helpful for you to know where major School issues are discussed and decisions made on 

matters that directly affect you. The following is a list of the key committees in the School and the 

types of work they do: 

The School Management Board meets regularly, and is chaired by the Head of School. It is made up 

of the Directors of Research, the Directors of Education, the Director of the Seamus Heaney Centre, 

the Chair of Research Committee, the School Manager and an elected representative from the staff 

of the School. 

The School Board meets monthly and is also chaired by the Head of School. It comprises all 

permanent members of the teaching staff, the School Manager and other support staff. The School 

Board also includes SSCC student members (representing Stage 1, Stage 2, Stage 3 and postgraduate 

students) and circulates the unreserved minutes of its meetings to SSCC. Meetings of the School 

Board will usually have a reserved section (for business such as examining and confidential staffing 

matters) which is not attended by the student representatives. If you have business that you would 

like the School Board to discuss, you should approach your Student representative or consult with 

the Head of School at least one week in advance of the next stated Board meeting. The names of 

your MA student representatives will be distributed to you by e-‐mail at the beginning of each 

academic year. Nominations for these representatives will be sought at the beginning of each 

academic year. 

The Education Committee is chaired by the Director of Education and meets at least twice per 

semester in order to discuss curriculum provision, development and review. 

26

The Postgraduate Committee 

The Postgraduate Committee is chaired by the Director of PG Education and meets at last three 

times per semester to discuss issues pertaining to PG students, both MA and PhD. Postgraduate 

student representatives attend for the ‘unreserved’ section of the agenda of this meeting. 

Postgraduate Committee will meet on the following dates in 2011-‐12: 

Thursday, 15 th September, 2011 

Wednesday 2 nd November, 2011 (week 6) 

Wednesday 7 th December, 2011 (week 11) 

Wednesday, 15 th February, 2012 (week 3) 

Wednesday, 28 th March, 2012 (week 9) 

Wednesday, 23 rd May, 2012 

How can your views be heard in the School? 

Postgraduate student representatives sit on the following School committees: School Board, 

Education Committee, Postgraduate Committee (see above) and SSCC (see below). Becoming a MA 

rep means that you might become a member of one or two of these committees. 

The Staff/Student Consultative Committee (SSCC) is made up of a number of staff members and 

student representatives who have been elected by the student body at the beginning of each 

academic year. The Chair of the committee is chosen by the members. Since you can vote to elect 

the SSCC members from your year who you feel will best represent student opinion, you should 

ensure that you not only play a part in the election process but also that your representatives are 

kept informed of the School issues that are most important to you. The SSCC also provides student 

representation for the School Board. 

We take the work of the SSCC very seriously, firstly because this is one of the places where our 

students can make their collective voices clearly heard, and secondly, because this is where staff 

members in the School can test student opinion on important issues that may affect our teaching 

and administrative systems and your general well-‐being. For example, recommendations made by 

the SSCC play their part in the information contained in this Handbook. Some years ago, it was the 

SSCC who designed the Tutor Feedback document which has proved its worth for students and 

tutors alike. And, more recently, SSCC student representatives have played a crucial role in shaping 

the 10% assessment component for tutorial contribution and the current Module Evaluation 

Questionnaire. Your response questionnaires influence not only how we will teach the same module 

to other students next year, but also, perhaps, how we will teach you next semester. The SSCC also 

played a large part in the Quality Assessment exercise, in which the School was judged "Excellent", 

and commented on the School’s self-‐appraisal document which is our blueprint for the future. 

These examples testify to the fact that today’s SSCC is one of the most important committees in the 

School. 

Dates of SSCC meetings in 2011-‐12: 

Wednesday 19 th October, 1-‐2pm (week 4) 

Wednesday 30 th November, 1-‐2pm (week 10) 

27

Wednesday 22 nd February, 1-‐2pm (week 4) 

Wednesday 21 st March, 1-‐2pm (week 8) 

Wednesday 9 th May, 1-‐2pm (week 12) 

We do like to hear from others when they have positive things to say about us, so please tell us 

when you feel that things are working well for you in the School. As part of our efforts to improve 

the quality of life in the School for yourself and others, we would also like to hear from you when 

you are aware of matters that may not otherwise get raised in the School. We list here a number of 

obvious ways in which you can make your views known: 

i. Talk to your tutors and other members of the School staff named in this Handbook. If you feel 

that something is wrong or malfunctioning, tell us directly! 

ii. Make sure you know who represents you on SSCC and make sure they know your views (why 

not stand for election yourself?). 

iii. Use the Module Evaluation Questionnaire to give Module Convenors feedback, both positive 

and negative. 

iv. Join the English Society (see below). 

28

The Culture of the School 

Research Culture in the School: weekly seminars 

As postgraduate students in the School of English, you join a lively body of active researchers, of 

academic staff, postgraduate students, post-‐doctoral fellows, visiting scholars and teaching 

assistants. We are a relatively ‘large’ School, in terms of numbers of permanent staff, and this 

allows us to provide breadth of research coverage, across all literary periods, aspects of English 

language study and in creative writing. Staff profiles below give an indication of this diversity (pp.29-‐ 

35). 

One of the most important venues for the School’s research culture are our weekly Research 

Seminars. Each Wednesday afternoon, in term time, the School hosts a research seminar paper or 

papers. This takes place on: 

Wednesdays, 4.15pm. Faculty (AHSS) PG Centre, College Green. 

Current staff and postgraduate students, in addition to visiting speakers, attend and participate in 

these seminars, which provide an important dimension to the introduction of research methods and 

potential areas of research topic to current MA students. All MA students are encourage to attend 

on a regular basis. 

In 2011-‐12, the School’s Research Seminar series is organized by David Dwan. 

Staff and students from the School also participate in a range of research seminars hosted by fora 

across the Faculty, including: Medieval Cultures, the Centre for Eighteenth-‐Century Studies, Post-colonial 

studies, Women’s History, and the Institute of Irish Studies. 

There are also regular conferences and symposia held throughout the year. 

Postgraduate Conferences, 2011-‐12: 

At least 5 Postgraduate student conferences will be held in 2011-‐12 (known to us at time of press): 

• 1st Interdisciplinary Linguistics Conference, 14-‐15 October 2011. 

• 'Collaboration, Authorship and the Renaissance: Early Modern and Post Modern 

Perspectives', 13-‐14 January 2012 

• The 5 th Annual International Joyce PG Conference, 2-‐4 February 2012 

• ‘New Voices in Irish Criticism’, 19-‐21 April 2012 

• Common Grounds III, 11-‐12 June 2012 (Faculty PG Centre, College Gardens) 

Reading Groups 

In past years, the School of English has seen its PG students establish a number of initiatives, such as 

regular reading groups, publications (such as the recently formed Yellow Nib, a magazine of creative 

writing) and conferences. PG students who wish to begin new initiatives should speak to a relevant 

member of staff, as the School would hope to facilitate such endeavours. 

29

Staff Profiles 

BREARTON, Dr Fran *Modern British and Irish literature 

Fran’s research interests are in modern British and Irish poetry, with particular interests in war 

literature, literary modernism, the work of Robert Graves, and contemporary poetry. She is author of 

The Great War in Irish Poetry (OUP 2000) and Reading Michael Longley (Bloodaxe 2006). She is co-editor 

of Last before America: Irish and American Writing (Blackstaff 2001), Modern Irish and Scottish 

Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2011) and Incorrigibly Plural: Louis MacNeice and His Legacy, which will be 

published by Carcanet Press in 2012. She is currently working on a study of Seamus Heaney and 

America, and is co-‐editing the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry. 

BURNETT, Professor Mark *Renaissance literature and culture 

Mark teaches and researches on early modern literature and culture, on Shakespeare and film, and 

on adaptation and appropriation. He is the author of Masters and Servants in English Renaissance 

Drama and Culture: Authority and Obedience (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997), Constructing 

‘Monsters’ in Shakespearean Drama and Early Modern Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) and 

Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), the editor of The 

Complete Plays of Christopher Marlowe (London: Dent, 1999) and The Complete Poems of 

Christopher Marlowe (London: Everyman, 2000), and the co-‐editor of New Essays on ‘Hamlet’ (New 

York: AMS Press, 1994), Shakespeare and Ireland: History, Politics, Culture (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 

1997), Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), Reconceiving the 

Renaissance: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), Screening Shakespeare in the 

Twenty-‐First Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), Filming and Performing 

Renaissance History (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011) and The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare 

and the Arts (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012). 

CARAHER, Professor Brian *Modern literature and literary theory 

Brian’s teaching and research dwell on literary theory and modern literature -‐-‐ especially poetics, 

cultural modernity and literary modernism. He has edited several books, including On Contradiction, 

Empiricism and Hermeneutics and Intimate Conflict and authored work on Wordsworth, Joyce and 

theories of reading. His new book, with Palgrave, is called Trespassing Tragedy: Melodramas of 

Horror: Intertextual Studies in the Ideology of Literary Form, and he is preparing The Joyce of Reading 

and Joycean Negotiations for publication. 

CARSON, Professor Ciaran *Director, Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry 

An internationally distinguished, multi-‐prize winning poet and prose stylist, Ciaran is the author of 

Belfast Confetti, The Irish for No, First Language, Opera et Cetera, The Alexandrine Plan, The Twelfth 

of Never, Breaking News, For All We Know, and On The Night Watch as well as the brilliantly 

innovative fictions Last Night’s Fun, The Star Factory, Fishing for Amber and Shamrock Tea. He 

assumed the directorship of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry in October 2003. 

CESARIO, DR Marilina *Old English Language and Literature and Historical Linguistics 

Marilina teaches Old English Language and Literature and Historical Linguistics and her research 

interests focus on prognostication, magic, science, and weather-‐lore in Medieval England. She has 

published articles on Anglo-‐Saxon Prognostics in Anglo-‐Saxon England and English Studies and is the 

author, with Gale Owen-‐Crocker, of “Handling Anglo-‐Saxon Manuscripts”, in the textbook Working 

with Anglo-‐Saxon Manuscripts (Exeter, 2009). She is also interested in the reception of Greek and 

Latin mythology (particularly Ovid’s Metamorphoses) in Anglo-‐Saxon England. She is currently 

researching the role and significance of natural phenomena in Anglo-‐Saxon prose. 

30

DOUGLAS-‐COWIE, Professor Ellen *Speech analysis & speech pathology 

Ellen’s teaching interests cover a range of topics in the study of language-‐-‐such as patterns of spoken 

English, phonetics and sociolinguistics-‐-‐while her research is focused in speech analysis, especially 

prosody and speech pathology. Her publications include co-‐authorship of Postlingually Acquired 

Deafness: Speech Deterioration and the Wider Consequences, the editing of a special volume of 

Speech Communication, and numerous journal articles. 

DWAN, Dr David *Twentieth-‐century literature and intellectual history 

David’s research and teaching interests are in modernist-‐era Anglophone writing and literary culture, 

especially Yeats and Woolf. He has published a set of essays on Yeats and the cultural politics of 

modernity and The Great Community: Culture and Nationalism in Ireland (Dublin: Field 

Day/NotreDame) was published in 2008. The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke, which he has 

co-‐edited with Chris Insole, will appear in 2012. 

FLYNN, DR Leontia *Modern Poetry/Creative Writing (Poetry) 

Currently Research Fellow in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, Leontia is preparing a 

monograph on the work of Medbh McGuckian for publication. To date she has authored three 

collections with Jonathan Cape: the Forward Prize winning These Days (2004), which was also 

shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award; Drives (2008), when she was awarded the 2008 Rooney 

Prize for Irish Literature; and Profit and Loss (2011), which has recently been shortlisted for the T.S. 

Eliot Prize for Poetry. 

HASLETT, Dr Moyra *Eighteenth-‐century and Romantic literature 

Moyra’s publications include Byron’s Don Juan and the Don Juan Legend (Clarendon, 1997), Marxist 

literary and cultural theories (Macmillan, 1999) and Pope to Burney, Scriblerians to Bluestockings 

(Palgrave, 2003). More recently, she has published articles on friendships between women and on 

literary representations of the bluestockings as part of a larger project on ideas of female community 

in the long eighteenth century. She is also one of the general editors of the ‘Early Irish Fiction, 1680-‐ 

1820’ series, a collaborative research project between the School of English, QUB and Trinity College 

Dublin, and has co-‐edited a special issue of the Irish University Review, 41.1 (2011) and completed a 

critical edition of Thomas Amory’s The Life of John Buncle, Esq (1756; Four Courts Press, 2011) for this 

series. 

HERBISON, Dr Ivan *Old English literature 

Ivan’s teaching interests encompass Medieval English literature and research interests include the 

history of Old English scholarship, OE biblical narrative poetry and hagiography, and Ulster-‐Scots 

language and culture. 

HUGHES, Dr Eamonn *Irish literature in English 

Eamonn’s teaching interests include Irish writing and culture, critical theory, and cultural studies. He 

has edited Northern Ireland: Culture and Politics 1960-‐1990 and co-‐edited with Fran Brearton Last 

before America: Irish and American Writing (Blackstaff Press, 2001). He is the author of various 

articles on modern and contemporary Irish writing in English. His current major projects are a book 

on Irish autobiography from the seventeenth century to the present and a book on ideas of place in 

contemporary Northern Irish poetry. 

KELLY, Dr Stephen *Late Medieval literature and culture 

Stephen's interests span late medieval religious cultural practices, including literary, theological and 

philosophical writings, visual and material culture, historiography and performance. Current projects 

include Imagining History in Medieval Britain (Continuum, 2012), an account of the ideological 

31

interests and literary strategies of English historiography from Bede to the English Reformation 

and Tears and Saints, an investigation of 'religious enthusiasm' both in later medieval English culture 

and among contemporary scholars of the medieval past. With David Griffith (Birmingham), Stephen 

is co-‐editing the second edition of Chaucer to Spenser (Wiley-‐Blackwell, 2013). He is also preparing 

'Meke Reverence and Devocyon': A Reader in Late Medieval English Religious Writing (Exeter), co-edited 

by Ryan Perry, which will be the first anthology of Middle English devotional texts since 

Horstmann's Yorkshire Writers (1895-‐6). He is co-‐director of the Queen's Research Forum on 

Translation and Cultural Encounter and is director of the Medieval Forum. 

KIRK, Dr John *English and Scottish language 

John specialises in corpus linguistics and dialectology (especially Scots and Hiberno-‐English), with 

interests in the history of English, syntax, pragmatics, and register and text-‐type variation. He is a 

compiler of the AHRB-‐funded Ireland component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-‐Ireland, 

2007-‐); a developer of the AHRB-‐funded annotation system for SPICE-‐Ireland (‘Systems of Pragmatic 

Annotation in ICE-‐Ireland’, completed 2011); and author of the User’s Guide for each of these. He co-organised 

annual symposia for the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies on the language and 

politics of the Gaeltacht and Scotstacht (2000-‐2010), and edited eight proceedings volumes, in the 

series Belfast Studies in Language, Culture and Politics. In 2008–09, he held an AHRC research 

network grant for a project on multi-‐lingual, pan-‐British political poetry and song in the Age of 

Revolution. His editing of two volumes of proceedings has led to a general editorship of a new series 

on political poetry and song (Pickering & Chatto). 

LAMB, Dr Edel *Renaissance literature and culture 

Edel’s research and teaching focuses on Renaissance literature (including Shakespeare, Jonson, Marston, 

Beaumont, Chapman and Field), Renaissance performance cultures and theatre practices and childhood 

studies. She has published essays on boy actors and early children’s literature in Ben Jonson Journal (2008), 

Literature Compass (2010) and The New Companion to Renaissance Literature and Culture (2010) and is the 

author of Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre: The Children’s Playing Companies (1599-‐1613) 

(Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). She is currently writing a monograph on early modern books for children, 

Reading Children in Early Modern Culture. 

LARRISSY, Professor Edward *Romantic and Modern Poetry 

Ed’s work centres on two areas: Romantic poetry and twentieth-‐century poetry (British, Irish and 

American). Irish writing of both periods is a special interest. He is also fascinated by the relationship 

between the two periods -‐ in twentieth-‐century constructions of Romanticism, and in the influence 

of Romantic writing in the twentieth century. Yeats, the subject of a 1994 monograph Yeats the Poet: 

The Measures of Difference, is only the most obvious case. His edited CUP volume, Romanticism and 

Postmodernism (1999), addresses the most recent form of this relationship, and contains the only 

substantial body of work on this subject. His monograph Blake and Modern Literature (2006), looks at 

the influence of Blake on writers from Yeats, Joyce and Auden to Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, 

Salman Rushdie and Angela Carter. A further monograph from Edinburgh University Press, The Blind 

and Blindness in Literature of the Romantic Period, was published in 2007. 

LITVACK, Dr Leon *Nineteenth-‐century and Canadian literature 

Leon teaches 19th and 20th century literature, especially Victorian and Canadian writing, and current 

research includes cultural studies and post-‐colonial theory. He has authored John Mason Neale and 

the Quest for Sobornost, Dombey and Son: An Annotated Bibliography and Literatures of the 

Nineteenth Century: Romanticism to Victorianism and has edited Ireland in the Nineteenth Century: 

Regional Identity. He has completed a book-‐length critical guide to Dickens for Routledge and is 

preparing the Clarenden Press edition of Our Mutual Friend. 

32

LOANE, Tim *Creative Writing (Script-‐writing) 

Tim has worked extensively as a writer, director and actor in film, television, theatre and radio. He 

co-‐founded Tinderbox Theatre Company in 1988, Northern Ireland’s leading independent company 

dedicated to developing and producing new writing, of which he was joint Artistic Director until 

1996. For the stage he has written the political satires Caught Red Handed and To Be Sure and for 

BBC radio, the inner-‐city thriller The Tunnel and the post-‐ceasefire ensemble comedy I can see 

clearly. Screenwriting includes the comedy films Out of The Deep Pan (BBC), Reversals (ITV) and he 

was creator and lead writer of Bafta-‐nominated Teachers for Channel 4, the format adapted by NBC 

(US) in 2006. He wrote the four-‐part conspiracy thriller Proof 2 (RTE), the three-‐part family drama 

serial Little Devil (ITV) and the 2009 updating of 80’s television classic Minder (Channel 5). In addition 

to numerous theatre productions, he directed the short film Dance Lexie Dance which was 

nominated for an Academy Award in 1997. 

MAGENNIS, Professor Hugh *Old English literature and culture 

Hugh’s teaching and research interests are in Old English, particularly focusing on traditions of 

hagiographical writing and the history of literary ideas and images. His publications include editions 

of The Anonymous Old English Legend of the Seven Sleepers, The Old English Lives of St Margaret and 

The Old English Life of St Mary of Egypt. He has authored the books, Images of Community in Old 

English Poetry and Anglo-‐Saxon Appetites: Eating and Drinking in Old English and Related Literature. 

MAYR, Dr Andrea *Sociolinguistics 

Andrea’s teaching and research interests cover Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis with a focus on 

the media, and in particular media representations of crime and deviance, and True Crime. Her 

publications include Prison Discourse (2004), Language and Power: an Introduction to Institutional 

Discourse (2008)), and Language and Power: A Resource book for Students (2010, co-‐written with 

Paul Simpson). Her forthcoming books are The Language of Crime and Deviance (2012) and How to 

Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction (2012). 

MCATEER, Dr Michael *Irish writing in English 

Michael’s teaching and research interests include late nineteenth Irish literature in political and 

historical contexts, twentieth-‐century Irish drama and the European avant-‐garde, modern literature, 

existentialism and social theory. He is the author of Standish O'Grady, Æ and Yeats: History, Politics, 

Culture (Irish Academic Press, 2002) and Yeats and European Drama (Cambridge University Press, 

2010), and is currently in the process of developing a comparative research project on Irish and 

Hungarian cultural history, as well as the question of Ireland and Europe in the drama of George 

Bernard Shaw. 

MCGOWAN, Dr Philip *American literature 

Philip offers an American Poetry module at MA level, and researches nineteenth-‐ and twentieth-century 

US poetry, fiction and film. His publications include American Carnival: Seeing & Reading 

American Culture (2001), Anne Sexton and Middle Generation Poetry: The Geography of Grief (2004), 

and the co-‐edited collection After Thirty Falls: New Essays on John Berryman (Rodopi, 2006). He is 

currently completing a literary and cultural study, Reading Las Vegas (Berg). 

MCGUCKIAN, Ms Medbh *Creative writing (Poetry) 

Medbh’s collections of poetry include: The Flower Master (1982), Venus and the Rain (1984), On 

Ballycastle Beach (1988), Marconi’s Cottage (1992), Captain Lavender (1995), Shelmalier (1998), 

Drawing Ballerinas (2001), The Face of the Earth (2002) and The Book of the Angel (2004). Her 

Selected Poems 1978-‐1994 was published in 1997. 

33

MORRISSEY, Dr Sinéad * Creative writing (Poetry) 

Sinéad is the author of four poetry collections: There Was Fire in Vancouver (1996), Between Here 

and There (2002); The State of the Prisons (2005) and Through the Square Window (2009), all of 

which are published by Carcanet Press. Her awards include the Patrick Kavanagh Award, an Eric 

Gregory Award, the Rupert and Eithne Strong Award, and the Michael Hartnett Poetry Prize. Her last 

three collections have all been shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. In 2007 she received a Lannan 

Literary Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation, U.S.A. Her poem ‘Through the Square Window’ 

took first place in the UK National Poetry Competition the same year. Her collection ‘Through the 

Square Window’ was shortlisted for the Forward Prize and was the winner of the Irish Times/Poetry 

Now Award. She is currently working on a fifth collection, due in 2013. 

O’DOHERTY, Malachi. Creative Writing (Prose) 

Malachi is currently the Louis MacNeice Writer in Residence at Queens University. His specialisms are 

journalism, broadcast journalism and the writing of memoir. To date he has authored five works of 

non fiction, including appraisals of the strategy of the Provisional IRA (The Trouble With Guns 1998) 

and an assessment of the decline of the Catholic Church in Ireland (Empty Pulpits 2008). Three of his 

books are themed memoirs dealing with religion, journalism and his father, and a fourth, due for 

publication in Spring 2012, is a reflection on the bicycle. Malachi has done over a thousand radio 

talks on varied themes and writes often in the local media. 

PATTERSON, Dr Glenn *Creative writing (Fiction) 

Glenn is the author of seven acclaimed novels: Burning Your Own (1988), for which he was awarded 

the Rooney Prize and a Betty Trask first novel prize; Fat Lad (1992); Black Night at Big Thunder 

Moutntain (1995), The International (1999); Number 5 (2003), That Which Was (2004), The Third 

Party (2007). He is also the author of the essay collection Lapsed Protestant (2006), and the family 

memoir, Once upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2009). His short stories have been broadcast on 

Radio 3 and Radio 4, and he has also presented a number of television documentaries on literary and 

cultural subjects. 

PEPPER, Dr Andrew *Twentieth-‐century American literature 

Andrew’s research and teaching interests cover various aspects of 20th century American prose, film 

and cultural studies, and crime fiction in particular. He has published a book entitled The 

Contemporary American Crime Novel: Race, Ethnicity, Gender (Edinburgh, 2000) and is co-‐author of 

American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film (Edinburgh, 2005). He is also the author of four 

(to date) crime novels set in London between the 1820s and 1840s: The Last Days of Newgate 

(2006), The Revenge of Captain Paine (2007), Kill-‐Devil and Water (2008), and Bloody Winter (2011) 

all published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 

RAHILLY, Dr Joan Speech Analysis 

Joan’s primary research and teaching interest is in the phonetics of normal and disordered speech, 

with particular emphasis on the contribution of speech analysis to interaction and literacy issues. 

Recent published work includes a study of the communicative consequences of errors in phonetic 

perception and categorisation, an analysis of vowel systems among hearing-‐impaired speakers, a 

critical account of techniques for speech imaging, and reflections on interfaces between current 

transcription practices and clinical speech profiling. 

REGAN, Dr Shaun Eighteenth-‐century and Romantic literature 

Shaun’s research and teaching interests include prose fiction, comic discourse, the culture of 

politeness, and the early Black Atlantic. With Professor Brean Hammond (University of Nottingham), 

34

he is the author of Making the Novel: Fiction and Society in Britain, 1660-‐1789 (Palgrave Macmillan, 

2006). He has published articles on Sterne, satire, print culture and the novel, and on Olaudah 

Equiano's The Interesting Narrative. He is currently writing a monograph titled Comic Writing and the 

Culture of Politeness in Britain, 1690-‐1789, and editing essay collections on 1759 and the Seven Years' 

War. 

ROBERTS, Dr Daniel Romantic literature 

Daniel’s teaching interests range from eighteenth-‐century literature to contemporary Indian 

literature and postcolonial theory, though his research is focussed largely in the Romantic period. He 

has produced definitive scholarly editions of Thomas De Quincey’s Autobiographic Sketches (volume 

19 of The Works of Thomas De Quincey) and Robert Southey’s The Curse of Kehama (volume 4 of 

Robert Southey: Poetical Works 1793-‐1810). His most recent book is Thomas De Quincey: New 

Theoretical and Critical Approaches edited with Robert Morrison. He is currently editing Charles 

Johnstone’s Oriental novel, The History of Arsaces, Prince of Betlis (1774) for the Early Irish Fiction 

series from Four Courts Press. 

SANSOM, Dr Ian *Creative Writing 

Ian is the author of eight books, including The Truth About Babies (2002), Ring Road (2004), the 

Mobile Library detective series, The Enthusiast Almanack (2006) and The Enthusiast Field Guide to 

Poetry (2007). He writes for The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Irish Times, and The 

Spectator, and his essays have appeared in numerous books, magazines and journals. He is a regular 

broadcaster on Radio 3 and Radio 4. 

SHEEHAN, Professor Estelle Haan *Seventeenth-‐and eighteenth-‐century literature & literary culture 

Estelle specialises in classical and later Latin literary cultures and their influence on writers in 

seventeenth-‐ and eighteenth-‐century England. In addition to her stream of articles on Milton she has 

authored/edited eleven books, including From Academia to Amicitia: Milton’s Latin Writings and the 

Italian Academies (1998), Thomas Gray’s Latin Poetry: Some Classical, Neo-‐Latin and Vernacular 

Contexts (2000), Andrew Marvell’s Latin Poetry: From Text to Context (2003), Vergilius Redivivus: 

Studies in Joseph Addison’s Latin Poetry (2005), Classical Romantic: Identity in the Latin Poetry of 

Vincent Bourne (2007), Sporting with the Classics: The Latin Poetry of William Dillingham (2010), a 

full-‐scale edition of Milton’s Latin Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2012), and Both English and Latin: 

Bilingualism and Biculturalism in Milton’s Neo-‐Latin Writings (American Philosophical Society, 2012). 

She is currently working on an authored monograph on Georgic transformations in eighteenth-century 

poetry and culture. 

SIMPSON, Professor Paul *Sociolinguistics and stylistics 

Paul’s teaching and research involve study of the English language, with specific interests in stylistics, 

discourse pragmatics and critical linguistics. He is the new general editor of the journal Language 

and Literature and has published Language, Ideology and Point of View and Language through 

Literature, both with Routledge. He has recently published On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a 

Stylistic Model of Satirical Humour (2003) and Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (Routledge) 

appeared in 2004. 

STREETE, Dr Adrian *Renaissance literature 

Adrian researches and teaches on early modern literature, with a focus on Calvinism, Puritanism, 

Catholicism, apocalypticism, early modern politics and the history of ideas. He has published articles 

in journals such as Textual Practice, The Review of English Studies, Literature and History, 

Shakespeare, and Literature and Theology, and is the author of Protestantism and Drama in Early 

Modern England (CUP, 2009), and co-‐editor of Re-‐Figuring Mimesis: Representation in Early Modern 

35

Literature (UHP, 2005). He is currently working on The Edinburgh Companion to Shakespeare and the 

Arts (EUP, 2010, with Mark Burnett and Ramona Wray), a collection of essays called Early Modern 

Drama and the Politics of Biblical Reading and a book on early modern drama and apocalypse. 

STURGEON, Dr Sinéad *Irish writing in English 

Sinéad teaches nineteenth-‐century Irish writing in English, and has particular research interests in 

popular culture and the literary representation of law. She has published on the cultural and literary 

life of illegal Irish whiskey, and is a contributor to the Dictionary of Irish Biography (Cambridge 

University Press). She is currently working on a monograph exploring the significance of legal 

discourse and tropes in early nineteenth-‐century Irish writing. 

SUMPTER, Dr Caroline *Nineteenth-‐century literature 

Caroline’s research interests include the nineteenth-‐century press, Victorian literature and science, 

and political appropriations of fantasy (including the fairy tale and science fiction). She is the author 

of The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) and has published on late 

Victorian politics and culture in journals including Victorian Studies, Literature and History, 

Nineteenth-‐Century Contexts and Cultural and Social History. She is currently working on a book 

which explores links between literature and debates over moral evolution in the late nineteenth 

century. 

THOMPSON, Professor John *Later Medieval literature 

John teaches Medieval literature, especially Chaucer and post-‐Chaucerian romance and lyric poetry, 

and researches the production and circulation of ME manuscripts and early prints, most recently 

through the AHRB-‐funded ‘Traditions of the Book’ project. He has authored two monographs: Robert 

Thornton & the London Thornton Manuscript, and The Middle English Cursor Mundi: poem, text and 

context, and many articles on the sociology of medieval literature and medieval textual cultures; He 

has co-‐edited two books: The Court and Cultural Diversity (with Evelyn Mullally) and Imagining the 

Book (with Stephen Kelly). With Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry he has published Making Histories: the 

Middle English Prose Brut and the Bibliographical Imagination (2007). A monograph on Anglophone 

textual cultures in Ireland is also under way. 

URBAN, Dr Malte *Medieval literature 

Malte’s research interests focus on late-‐medieval English literature, especially Geoffrey Chaucer and 

John Gower. He is particularly interested in the ways in which medieval writers appropriate older 

texts, manipulating their cultural past for poetical and political purposes in their immediate present. 

Malte’s work also queries the current position of post-‐medieval, twenty-‐first-‐century readers of 

medieval texts and the usability and validity of poststructuralist theories for our understanding of the 

medieval past in the present. 

WRAY, Dr Ramona *Renaissance literature 

Ramona teaches and researches on Renaissance literature in English, specializing in Shakespeare and 

women’s writing of the period. She is the editor of the Arden Early Modern Drama edition of 

Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam (2012) and the author of Women Writers in the Seventeenth 

Century (Northcote House, 2004). She is also the co-‐editor of The Edinburgh Companion to 

Shakespeare and the Arts (Edinburgh University Press, 2011), Screening Shakespeare in the Twenty-‐ 

First Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2006), Reconceiving the Renaissance: A Critical Reader 

(Oxford University Press, 2004), Shakespeare, Film, Fin de Siècle (Macmillan, 2000) and Shakespeare 

and Ireland: History, Politics, Culture (Macmillan, 1997). Her articles on Shakespeare appropriation, 

Shakespeare on film and early modern women’s writing have appeared in Shakespeare Bulletin, 

Shakespeare Quarterly, Women’s Writing and elsewhere. 

36

Fulbright Distinguished Scholars (2012) 

The School of English, QUB, has secured three UK/US Fulbright Commission Distinguished Scholar 

Awards. These scholars will be attached to the School from January –June 2012. 

Jeffrey THOMSON is the author of four major collections of poems, including Birdwatching in 

Wartime, winner of the 2010 Maine Book Award, and Renovation (2005), both published by 

Carnegie Mellon University Press in Pittsburgh. He is also the author of The Country of Lost Sons 

(2004) and The Halo Brace (1998), as well as various chapbooks and limited edition art books and 

translations. He has also co-‐edited an anthology of emerging poets, From the Fishouse: An 

Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great 

(2009). Jeff Thomson has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 

Pennsylvania Arts Commission, and, most recently, was named the 2008 Individual Arts Fellow in the 

Literary Arts by the Maine Arts Commission. He is currently Associate Professor of Creative Writing 

at the University of Maine, Farmington. At the Seamus Heaney Centre he will be working on a new 

collection of poems engaging his ancestor William Thomson’s emigration experience from Scotland 

and Northern Ireland as well as recording emerging Irish poets for his popular website and online 

archive, From the Fishouse, including liaising locally with staff and poets involved in the new Seamus 

Heaney Centre Digital Archive. 

Connie VOISINE is the author of Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, published by University 

of Chicago Press in 2008, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her first book, Cathedral 

of the North, won the Associated Writing Program’s Award in Poetry and was published by 

University of Pittsburgh Press in 2001. Her work was recently featured at The Lab at Belmar, 

Colorado, a museum show pairing prehistoric stone tools with poems. Educated at Yale University, 

University of California at Irvine, and University of Utah, Voisine directs the creative writing 

programme at New Mexico State University and also coordinates La Sociedad para las Artes, its 

outreach organization. She is also a well regarded critic and reviewer of poetry, poetics and politics 

Stateside. During her time as a Fulbright Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre, Connie Voisine looks 

forward to furthering her research into contemporary Anglophone Irish poetry, especially in terms of 

assisting her to research and write a series of essays on poetic borderlands and regions where 

history and identity are contested. Her work to date has examined creatively and critically culturally 

contested regions involving the Canadian/ Maine border as well as the Mexican/New Mexico border. 

Scott BOLTWOOD will work cross-‐disciplinarily among English, Drama and the Institute of Irish 

Studies. Scott received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and his Ph.D. in English 

from the University of Virginia. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Emory & Henry 

College, Virginia, where he teaches courses in both the history of Irish literature and Twentieth-‐ 

Century Anglophone literature. His first book, Brian Friel, Ireland, and the North (Cambridge UP, 

2007) sought to map ways in which the Northern Irish Troubles resonate through the work of this 

major Irish playwright. As a Fulbright Scholar at Queen's, Scott will research the history of the Ulster 

Group Theatre, which was arguably Ireland's most influential acting company throughout the 1940s 

and 1950s. This research will examine ways in which the company's plays staged nuanced 

negotiations of the region's sectarian tensions. In association with his project, the Lagan Press has 

agreed to publish several volumes of Group plays, almost all of which have not been in print for over 

fifty years. 

37

All three Fulbright Scholars will also contribute to the postgraduate and undergraduate teaching 

profiles of the School of English, offering various specialist seminars and workshops. 

The English Society 

The English Society organises readings and social events during the academic year. It is run by a 

committee of students and new committee members are always welcome. Society events feature 

new writing by students in the university. It is responsible for organising the annual School of 

English formal dinner and arranges occasional trips to conferences and theatres outside Belfast. 

Details of events and further information can be found on the English Society noticeboard on the 

ground floor of 2 University Square, and on the website: 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofEnglish/AboutUs/TheEnglishSociety/ 

Creative writing in the School 

The School is renowned for its vibrant and highly successful community of creative writers: Ciaran 

Carson, Leontia Flynn, Glenn Patterson, Tim Loane, Medbh McGuckian, Sinéad Morrissey, Malachi 

O’Doherty and Ian Sansom. Details of their work can be found in the ‘Staff Profiles’ section. The 

School also hosts an on-‐line poetry magazine, POETRY PROPER: 

http://poetryproper.blogspot.com/ 

and publishes Yellow Nib, the annual journal of the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry and edited by 

Leontia Flynn. 

The Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry 

Poetry is one of the activities for which Queen’s has always been best known. Nobel Prize winner 

Seamus Heaney was a student and later a lecturer in the School of English at Queen’s, one of a 

number of internationally renowned poets and writers who have worked or studied at the University 

over the last forty years. The Centre for Poetry is located in 46-‐48 University Road, connected to the 

School through 1 University Square. Its director is the internationally-‐renowned poet, Professor 

Ciaran Carson. The creative writing staff are located in the Centre, along with the Heaney Centre 

Research Fellow. The Centre promotes the study and practice of poetry. It contains a library of 

contemporary poetry, and runs various events – for example, readings, seminars, creative writing 

workshops – which complement the activities of the School of English. In the last few years visitors 

to the School of English have included Allen Ginsberg, James Fenton, Andrew Motion, Carol Ann 

Duffy, Seamus Heaney, Graham Swift, Alasdair Gray, Simon Callow, Seamus Deane, Edwin Morgan, 

Paul Durcan, Doris Lessing, Simon Armitage, and Trevor Griffiths. There is a lively and ever-increasing 

interactive traffic through the Centre: poets, academics, research students, creative 

writing students, members of the public, visitors from outside Northern Ireland. The Centre 

provides a focal point for poetry as a living art, and for criticism of/research into modern poetry: 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/heaneycentre 

Queen’s Writers’ Group 

The Queen’s Writers’ Group has been in existence since the first appointment of a Writer-‐in-‐ 

Residence at the University in the 1970s. The ethos of the group, however, stretches back still 

further than that, to the 60s, when the famous Belfast Group -‐ Heaney, Mahon, Longley et al -‐ 

gathered in the University to read and discuss their work. The Writers’ Group still follows roughly 

the same format. It is an open forum for anyone interested in writing, from published writers 

through to absolute beginners, to share their work and discuss it with their peers. The Group meets 

once a week, on Wednesday afternoons (4.00-‐6.00pm) in the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry. 

The atmosphere is open, friendly and inclusive. 

38

For further information contact the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry, on (028) 90971070. 

School-‐based Social Events for PG students 2011/2012 

Friday 23 September 

Thursday 3 November 

December (date tba) 

Monday 11 – 

Tuesday 12 June 

Welcome Reception for new PG students (5pm, Social Space, School 

of English) 

Annual Postgraduate Party for all PG students (6pm, AHSS PG 

Centre, College Green) 

PGT Graduation Event for all those graduating 

Common Ground III: The Annual PG Conference 

All PG students should attend the Staff and PG Student Research Seminar. This weekly seminar is an 

opportunity to hear more about the research that is going on in your School and to meet up with 

staff and peers in a relaxed and informal setting. The seminars take place every Wednesday in 

semester at 4:15 in the AHSS PG Centre, College Green. 

For more information on any of the above events, contact Ramona Wray (r.wray@qub.ac.uk) 

39

Information on Facilities for Postgraduate Taught Students 

The McClay Library 

Library opening hours are available on the library’s home-‐page: www.qub.ac.uk/lib. These vary 

across the year, according to teaching and assessment schedules. In assessment weeks (weeks 13-‐15 

of semesters 1 and 2), 24-‐hour opening is usually available. 

Details of books and journals held in the library can be accessed through the electronic Library 

catalogue (QCat). 

PCs and printing facilities are available on the ground and first floors and the wireless network is 

fully operational throughout the building, apart from the cafe area. Laptops may also be borrowed 

from the main enquiries desk on the ground floor. Self issue facilities (for borrowing and returning 

books) are available on all floors. 

The following services are in operation in the McClay library: 

• Borrower Services Desk 

• Information and Enquiry Desks 

• Special Collections 

• Law and Official Publications 

• Computer Help Desk 

There are other important research resources within Belfast. The Public Record Office of Northern 

Ireland is located in the ‘Titanic Quarter’; the Newspaper Library, the Belfast Public Library and the Linen 

Hall Library are all in the City Centre. Queen's has reciprocal borrowing rights with the University of 

Ulster. Further afield, the Robinson Library in Armagh and the Derry and Raphoe Diocesan library in 

Derry / Londonderry contain a number of early printed books and are particularly valuable resources for 

people working on early literature. Trinity College, Dublin and the National Library of Ireland can also be 

easily visited from Belfast. 

Theses and Dissertations 

The School has archived copies of dissertations and theses written over the last forty years under 

research supervision in the School in the Exams Office and external examiners’ consultation room. A 

comprehensive list of past PhD theses (since 1990) is available on-‐line: see 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofEnglish/Research/CompletedPhDsintheSchoolofEnglishsince19 

90/. Most of these theses are available for consultation in the McClay library. 

40

Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry: Reading Room 

The School has a resources room affiliated with the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry: The Reading 

Room. Room 1002 is located on the first floor of 46/48 University Road. It contains a number of 

essential reference works, as well as an ample and growing selection of several thousand books related 

to modern and contemporary poetry, poetics and criticism. It also has a web-‐linked computer to 

expedite cross-‐checking and cross-‐searching for materials. You need to get the permission of the 

Heaney Centre secretary, Gerry Hellawell, in order to gain admission to this locked room. The Heaney 

Centre is an important resource for postgraduate students not only on the MA and PhD programmes in 

Creative Writing but also across the board. Many of its rooms, especially on the ground and first floors, 

provide important workplaces and social space for the literary research and creative writing cultures of 

the School. 

The International and Postgraduate Student Centre (IPSC) 

Located close to The McClay Library, the Centre provides dedicated support to, and is a hub for 

many aspects of information, advice and guidance for international and postgraduate students. 

Students have the opportunity to meet and socialise with their peers from other Schools and 

disciplines and wireless access to the University network is provided throughout the Centre. 

The Postgraduate Student Centre located on the first and second floors serves as a focal point for 

the postgraduate community, where all postgraduate students can access tailored information and 

advice on a range of postgraduate issues. 

The second floor of the building provides dedicated study and social space for postgraduates. This 

includes a computer facility offering 50 networked computers with black and white and colour 

printing, scanning and photocopying facilities. The second floor also houses the Postgraduate 

Students’ Association (PGSA), which represents the interests of all postgraduate students in the 

University and co-‐ordinates a number of research-‐related and social events throughout the year. 

Opening hours for postgraduate students are 9:00am–10:00pm Monday–Friday. 

Postgraduate Centre 

International and Postgraduate Student Centre 

T: 028 9097 2585 

E: pg.office@qub.ac.uk 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/sgc/aboutus/ipsc 

41

GENERAL INFORMATION 

School of English contact details: 

The School Office is located on the Ground Floor of 2 University Square. 

Office hours are: Monday to Friday, 9 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 4.15 pm. 

Tel.: 028 9097 3320. 

Fax: 028 9097 3334. 

Email: english@qub.ac.uk 

Postal address: School of English, Queen’s University, Belfast, BT7 1NN 

Postgraduate students should also consult the “Postgraduate Students” webpages at: 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofEnglish/Education/Postgraduates/ 

Semester dates for 2011-‐2012: 

Autumn Semester 

Teaching 

Christmas vacation 

Assessment 

Inter-‐Semester Break 

Spring Semester 

Teaching 

Easter Vacation 

Teaching 

Revision Period 

Assessment 

Monday 28 September – Friday 18 December 2011 

Monday 21 December 2011 – Friday 8 January 2012 

Monday 11 January – Tuesday 26 January 2012 

Wednesday 27 January – Friday 29 January 2012 

Monday 1 February – Friday 26 March 2012 

Monday 29 March – Friday 16 April 2012 

Monday 19 April – Friday 14 May 2012 

Monday 17 May – Wednesday 19 May 2012 

Thursday 20 May – Saturday 5 June 2012 

Holidays and Key dates when University closure applies: 

Christmas/New Year: Friday 23 December 2011 -‐ Tuesday 3 January 2012 (inclusive) 

St Patrick's Day: Monday 19 March 

Easter: Friday 6 April -‐ Friday 13 April (inclusive) 

May Day: Monday 7 May 

July Holidays: Thursday 12 and Friday 13 July 

42

SUPPORT FOR POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS 

It is important that you maintain contact with your tutors and immediately inform them of any difficulties or 

problems you are having with your work. Although we are a large School, we do the best we can to support 

our students who are having genuine difficulties. 

Student Support Staff in the School 

If you feel that you would rather talk to someone else in the School other than your tutor or the convenor of 

your MA pathway, you are invited to contact either Dr Moyra Haslett or Dr Ramona Wray, Co-‐Directors of 

Postgraduate Education. 

Academic Problems and Issues 

There are some academic problems and issues that can only be dealt with by consulting particular 

members of staff. We list here a number of staff and the procedures you should follow in each case. As 

always, however, if you have any doubts about who you should see or what you should do in certain 

circumstances, you should consider asking a member of the academic staff or the Postgraduate 

secretary, all of whose advice will usually be worth following. 

Have you medical or other problems that are affecting your academic progress? These can be discussed 

confidentially with the Director of Postgraduate Education or with the Head of School. If you have 

medical or other certification to explain absences from the University, you should ensure that you 

deliver this to the School Office, Ground Floor, 2 University Square. You may well want to explain to 

your tutors that such certification exists. Don't hesitate to tell them, if you have been ill. 

Are you unhappy with the way the School has dealt with your academic problems? We hope that we 

always deal fairly with our students. If you are not satisfied with the way we have dealt with your 

academic problem or complaint, you may want to discuss the matter further with the Director of 

Postgraduate Education. As a last resort, if you wish to proceed with a formal complaint against the 

School, you should do so either by writing to the Dean of the Faculty or making an appointment to see 

the Dean through the Faculty Office. 

43

Further Support for students at Queen’s 

Introduction 

The School works closely with both the Student Guidance Centre and the Students’ Union to provide 

a full set of support services during your time at Queen’s: 

The 

University takes the view that all aspects of student life offer opportunities for learning and 

development. This is reflected in the range of services to both support you and help you develop 

your skills as you study. 

University Support 

The University takes the view that all aspects of student life offer opportunities for learning and 

development. This is reflected in the range of services we offer both to support you and to help you 

develop your skills as you study. 

Specialist support services are offered through both the University’s Student Guidance Centre and 

the Students’ Union. The Student Guidance Centre and the Students’ Union work closely together 

to provide comprehensive services. The Students’ Union is located on University Road, opposite the 

Lanyon Building. The Student Guidance Centre is also on University Road, above the Ulster Bank, 

Post Office and the University Bookshop. 

44

What follows is a brief summary of support that is available and how to access them. If you are not 

sure which service is most appropriate, call the Student Guidance Centre on 028 9097 2727 and one 

of the Information Assistants will point you in the right direction. 

Accommodation 

The University has a range of accommodations for students, based mainly at the Elms Village which 

is a 15 minute walk from the main campus. If you would like to be considered for a place in 

University accommodation or need assistance in searching for private accommodation, or if you are 

a resident and have any queries, please contact: 

Accommodation Office Elms Village 

78 Malone Road, BT9 5BW 

Tel: 028 9097 4403 

Email: accommodation@qub.ac.uk 

http://www.stayatqueens.com 

If you are living in the private sector and need advice on tenancy issues or any other matter related 

to your accommodation contact, please contact: 

Brian Slevin 

Education & Welfare Adviser 

Student Advice Centre 

2 nd Floor, Students’ Union 

University Road 

Tel: 028 9097 1135 / 028 9097 3106 

b.slevin@qub.ac.uk 

Careers and Employability 

The School’s Career Liaison Officer is Sinead Morrissey (semester 1); Carmel Beaney (semester 2) . 

The Careers Service has a range of facilities including a drop-‐in service, appointments, workshops, 

careers fairs and other events to help students map their career path. It is never too early to visit 

the Careers Service and talk about how you can use your time at Queen’s to enhance you 

employability: 

Student Guidance Centre 

University Terrace 

Belfast BT7 1NN 

Tel: 028 9097 2727 

Email: careers@qub.ac.uk 

www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/sgc/careers/ 

Chaplaincy 

The University Chaplaincy is available to support students regardless of their own personal 

convictions. The Chaplaincy website is the best source of information: 

www.qub.ac.uk/chaps 

The four main chaplaincy centres and points of contact are: 

45

Roman Catholic 28 Elmwood Avenue Rev Fr Gary Toman 

Presbyterian 12 Elmwood Avenue Rev Karen Mbayo 

Church of Ireland 22 Elmwood Avenue Rev Barry Forde 

Methodist 24 Elmwood Avenue Rev John Alderdice 

Counselling 

Whilst we hope your time at Queen’s is trouble-‐free, there may be times when you find things 

difficult for a range of reasons. If that is the case then please speak to the Counselling Service. Staff 

are friendly, approachable and experienced in dealing with issues that University students have to 

cope with. Don’t leave things until the problem escalates; speak to them at the earliest opportunity. 

Counselling is free and confidential to any student of the University: 




Tel: 028 9097 2727 

Email: counsellor@qub.ac.uk 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/counselling 

Disability 

The School’s Disability Officer is Carmel Beaney (semester 1); Caroline Sumpter (semester 2). 

The Disability Service assists students with disabilities in arranging study-‐related support. This 

includes specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia. If you have a disability or have become 

disabled since studying at Queen’s staff are happy to help you get the support that you need: 

Linda Maguire, Disability Co-‐ordinator 




Tel: 028 9097 2727 

Email: disability.office@qub.ac.uk 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/disability 

Finance 

The Student Income and Finance Office deals with all the administration in relation to fee payments 

for your course. If you have any concerns about your fee assessment speak to staff in the office, 

who have experience in advising students on these matters. They also administrate a range of 

bursaries and hardship funds to help students in financial difficulty, and which do not need to be 

repaid: 




Tel: 028 9097 2727 

Email: IncomeOffice@qub.ac.uk 

www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/sgc/finance 

46

The Students’ Union Advice Centre also has two members of staff who provide advice and guidance 

on personal finance, debt management, income maximisation and applying for bursaries. They are 

usually free to see students from 9.30am – 4.30pm, Monday – Thursday and 9.00am – 3pm on 

Friday: 

Connie Craig 

Financial Adviser: advises on grants, loans, fees, Support/Hardship Funds, the financial 

aspects of repeating years and course changes, Social Security Benefits and other financial 

issues. 




Tel: 028 9027 1049 

Email: connie.craig@qub.ac.uk 

Debbie Forsey 

Money Management Adviser: advises on debt, including overdrafts, credit cards, loan 

agreements, arrears of rents, negotiating with creditors. Also offers guidance on budgeting 

and money management and students do not need to be in a ‘crisis situation’ in order to 

seek advice. 




Tel: 028 9097 1166 

Email: d.forsey@qub.ac.uk 

Health Centre 

The University Health Centre at Queen’s is a General Practice that provides both general National 

Health services and University-‐funded, non-‐NHS services for students at Queen’s. We strongly 

recommend that you register with the Centre even if you come from Northern Ireland. This is so 

that they can provide you with care should you become unwell at University. International Students 

in the UK for 6 months or more on a student visa are entitled to free NHS care and can also register 

with the practice: 

University Health Centre 

5 Lennoxvale 

Belfast BT9 5BY 

028 9097 5551 

reception.157@uhcq.gp.n-‐i.nhs.uk 

www.universityhealthcentreatqueens.co.uk 

Queen’s Sport (Physical Education Centre) 

The PEC is a unique facility for students at Queen’s. Its recently renovated facilities offer a state-‐of-the-‐art 

gym, a range of indoor facilities for team sports, a climbing wall, exercise studios, a 

comprehensive class timetable, an outdoor training area and much more. The PEC is located in 

Botanic Park, a five-‐minute walk from the main Queen’s campus. All fully enrolled Queen’s students 

are automatic members of the PEC and are entitled to subsidised, All Inclusive memberships. Some 

47

students may also qualify for a bursary for heavily subsidised membership – please contact the 

Income and Finance Office: 

Physical Education Centre 

Botanic Park, 

Belfast BT9 5EX 

Tel: 028 9068 1126 

Email: sport@qub.ac.uk 

www.queenssport.com 


The Student Guidance Centre is a co-‐location of a number of support services for students, including 

Student Administration (Exams, Records and Graduation), Admissions and Access Services, the 

Widening Participation Unit, Disability Services, Counselling Services and Student Affairs. The Centre 

has a reception desk with trained Information Assistants who will be your first point of contact and 

will happily help you or refer you to someone who can help with your query: 




Tel: 028 9097 2727 

sgc@qub.ac.uk 

www.qub.ac.uk/directorates/sgc/ 

Students’ Union 

The Students’ Union offers a range of membership services including entertainment venues, food 

and other retail outlets, non-‐alcoholic study space in the SPACE, a student enterprise centre, a 

Welfare Advice Service, clubs and societies, student volunteering, campaigns and representative 

work and much more. There is something for every student in the Students’ Union. The Sabbatical 

Officers, elected from the student body for a year to run the Union, as well as the full-‐time members 

of staff, work with the student body to ensure the improvement of facilities and support services for 

students of Queen’s: http://www.qubsu.org/ 

International Students (non-‐EU) 

The School’s International Students Officer is Dr Andrea Mayr. 

All the services listed in this Handbook are equally applicable to international students, and staff are 

happy to support you during your time at Queen’s. 

In addition, the International Students Support Office (ISSO) has staff specifically trained to provide 

advice, support and guidance for international students. 

The staff in the ISSO are the only staff in the University who are permitted to provide advice or 

guidance on immigration/visa matters. The ISSO is located in the International and Postgraduate 

Student Centre (IPSC). We offer a wide range of services including confidential advice on 

immigration, problems affecting your studies or personal concerns. We provide information on 

matters relating to arriving in the UK, opening a bank account, police registration, healthcare and 

48

doctors, safety and security, working in the UK, driving in the UK, activities in the University, local 

activities and events, travel, British culture, local shops and services, facilities for families. More 

general support is provided to help with settling in the UK, life in Belfast, academic life and study 

methods, homesickness and culture shock and schools and childcare. 

It is very important that international students meet the conditions of their visa while they live in the 

UK. This means that if you have a job you must not work more hours than you are permitted. 

If you want to work (paid or unpaid) you should make an appointment with the ISSO to discuss what 

you are allowed to do in the UK. 

The UK has introduced new immigration rules called the Points Based System. This affects both you 

and the University. The University has a number of obligations to meet for the UK Border Agency, 

which include (but are not restricted to) keeping copies of your immigration documents, monitoring 

your arrival/enrolment and you attendance. The International Student Handbook contains a list of 

the recording and reporting obligations which must be carried out by the University. If you have any 

questions about these please contact the ISSO. 

You can contact the ISSO at internationalstudentsupport@qub.ac.uk with any questions, enquiries 

or to make an appointment. Alternatively you can drop into the IPSC where we will be delighted to 

meet you and help with any problems you may be having. 

When you attend an appointment at the ISSO you should always bring your passport with you. 

International Student Support Office 

International and Postgraduate Centre 

Ground Floor 

T: +44 (0)28 9097 3899 

E: internationalstudentsupport@qub.ac.uk 

Paid Employment and Part-‐time Work 

A high percentage of students work part-‐time whilst completing their degree. There are a number of 

good reasons for doing this as part-‐time work can help you: 

• Develop valuable employability skills that will impress future employers 

• Gain experience and a greater understanding of the workplace 

• Access and develop networking opportunities 

• Help financially during your studies 

Register with the Student Jobshop to access a range of opportunities and fairly paid part-‐time jobs at 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/careers > Vacancies. 

Please note: the University strongly recommends that students do not exceed 15 hours part-‐time 

work per week as there is strong evidence to show that significant levels of part-‐time work can affect 

degree outcomes. 

Paid Employment and Part-‐time Work for International Students 

International Students may have prohibitions or restrictions on working in the UK. It is very 

important that you confirm you have a legal right to work and if you do have the right to work, that 

you don’t exceed the permitted hours. If you want to work, you must bring your visa to the 

49

International Student Support Office where your visa will be checked to confirm whether or not you 

can work and if you can, how many hours you are allowed to work. 

T: +44 (0)28 9097 3899 

E: internationalstudentsupport@qub.ac.uk 

http://www.qub.ac.uk/isso 

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MA Handbook 2011-12 (1) - Queen's University Belfast

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