Culture, Heritage and Literature

Culture, heritage, and literature is an interdisciplinary degree that explores the relationships between the texts, objects, places, and practices through which human communities express, preserve, and transmit their identities and values. Culture in this context is understood broadly, encompassing the literary traditions, material heritage, landscape, music, and collective memory that make a place and its people distinctive. Literature provides the textual core, engaging you with the imaginative and documentary resources through which communities make sense of themselves and their pasts.

Heritage adds the dimension of how the past is preserved, interpreted, and contested in the present.

At the University of the Highlands and Islands you will study this programme part time, giving you flexibility to combine your studies with work, family, or other commitments while engaging with questions that are particularly resonant in the Highland and island context, where issues of language, identity, cultural survival, and the relationship to land and landscape are live and pressing. UHI's distributed model of delivery connects you to learning centres across one of Scotland's most culturally rich and historically layered regions. You will develop strong analytical, research, and communication skills alongside deep engagement with the cultural, literary, and heritage dimensions of the communities the university serves.

Graduates of culture, heritage, and literature enter careers in museums, archives, heritage organisations, cultural trusts, community arts, education, publishing, broadcasting, journalism, and the many public and voluntary sector organisations concerned with cultural preservation and engagement. The programme is particularly relevant for those who wish to work within and for the communities of the Highlands and islands, contributing to the cultural, educational, and heritage institutions that sustain those communities. Postgraduate study in heritage studies, literary studies, cultural history, or museum studies is a natural continuation for those who wish to develop specialist expertise.