Social & Public Policy/English Literature

Social and Public Policy combined with English Literature is a pairing that brings together the analysis of how societies are governed and the study of how literature imagines, represents and interrogates social life. Social and public policy investigates the welfare state, education, healthcare, housing, criminal justice, poverty and inequality, asking how these systems work, how they are designed and reformed, and how they affect different groups in society. English Literature examines how those same social realities are rendered in fiction, poetry and drama, how writers have responded to political conditions and how texts both reflect and shape social consciousness.

At the University of Glasgow, the four-year full-time MA programme develops your analytical skills in both disciplines simultaneously. You will study literature across a wide range of periods and traditions, from early modern to contemporary, with particular strengths in American literature, Irish and postcolonial writing, critical theory, and the relationship between literature and other arts and sciences. The social and public policy strand develops your understanding of policy processes, the welfare state and comparative social policy, giving you a framework for analysing how political decisions affect social outcomes.

The degree includes a year abroad, which gives you the opportunity to study comparative social policy and literary cultures in a different national context.

Graduates work in public policy, the third sector, education, journalism, social work, arts administration, government and research. The combination of literary and policy analytical skills is valuable wherever understanding and communicating about complex social issues matters. Postgraduate study in social policy, literature, public administration or social research is a natural continuation.