Celtic Studies/English Literature

Celtic studies and English literature is a combination that places one of the most distinctive and underrepresented literary traditions of the British Isles alongside one of the world's most extensively studied and critically debated bodies of writing. Celtic studies opens the medieval and modern literatures of Irish, Welsh, and Scottish Gaelic culture, offering access to texts and traditions that most English literature curricula never reach, and that carry their own profound perspectives on landscape, community, loss, and identity. English literature provides the broader comparative framework, engaging with poetry, fiction, and drama from the medieval period to the present, and developing the critical and analytical tools that literary study demands.

At the University of Glasgow, you will study both disciplines over four years full-time, developing skills in close reading, textual analysis, and the historical contextualisation of literary works. The Celtic studies strand gives you the opportunity to study at least one Celtic language alongside the literatures and cultures associated with it, providing a linguistic grounding that enriches your engagement with the texts. The English literature strand ranges widely in period and genre, and the combination of the two disciplines develops a genuinely comparative sensibility.

The programme includes a year abroad, giving you the opportunity to study at a partner institution in a different country. The typical entry tariff is 200 UCAS points.

Graduates carry a distinctive and widely valued combination of skills: linguistic depth, literary sensitivity, historical breadth, and the capacity for careful, sustained argument. Teaching, publishing, journalism, heritage and cultural organisations, archival work, the civil service, and academic research are all common destinations. Many go on to postgraduate study in Celtic studies, English, linguistics, or creative writing.