Dickens Studies (Research)

The University of Buckingham is:

• Home of the two-year degree, the University of Buckingham, based in the South East of England, is ranked 6th for Student Satisfaction in the UK (National Student Survey, 2020).

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• Based in Buckingham on a riverside campus, we are only 20 minutes’ from Milton Keynes central station and a short drive from Bicester, Aylesbury, Banbury and Northampton. There is free parking on-site and we are within easy reach of London and Oxford.

• Our award-winning small class tutorials ensure every student is known by name and supported throughout their studies, including by dedicated personal tutors.

• As pioneers of the two-year degree, we offer a condensed version of the traditional three-year degree, meaning you can gain a full honours degree and complete your studies a whole year earlier. Alternatively, you can complete both your undergraduate and master’s degree with us in just three years: saving you time and money.

Based in the city that gave Charles Dickens inspiration throughout his writing life, this ground-breaking London research programme offers students unique access not only to world-class scholars and practitioners drawn from the field of Dickens Studies and the media but furthermore to the unique collections of the Charles Dickens Museum

Charles Dickens Museum - interior and exterior photography. It is directed by Professor John Drew and Dr Pete Orford, Dickens experts of international reputation, who are also full-time members of the University’s highly regarded Department of English.

The course enables the student to undertake research on a specific topic, agreed with the supervisor, in any area of Dickens Studies: his novels, short fiction, journalism, plays, the public readings, adaptations of his work (cinematic, theatrical) as well as comparative work on translations, writing by precursors, contemporaries, rivals, imitators and inheritors. The research is presented in the form of three ‘Project Preliminaries’: an extended research proposal, an annotated bibliography, and a short research-based case study for which students will be invited to investigate either the archive holdings of the Charles Dickens Museum or the network of Dickens’s collaborators for his journals, as made available by the University’s celebrated project Dickens Journals Online. On successful completion of these three preliminary projects, students will then progress to their dissertation, written under the guidance of the supervisor, of not less than 20,000 words.

A central feature of the course will be its series of ten evening seminars with distinguished speakers, held both at the University’s Gower Street premises and in the Board Room of the Charles Dickens Museum, each followed by a dinner and discussion, in private rooms at a nearby restaurant in Bloomsbury.