Creative Writing, English Literature and Film Studies

We provide the perfect setting for you to explore these overlapping academic fields of study in all their richness and diversity and for you to grow as a reader, critic and writer. In 2025 we joined the wider newly formed School of Humanities, a growing group of cognate subject areas, enabling us to maximise the opportunities this offers to our staff and students.

Our programmes are characterised by creative and critical engagement with processes of writing, language and textual production in relation to a variety of contexts, including social, cultural, political and environmental. We have a strong international dimension and sponsors exchanges with Japan, America and European countries. ​

We combine cutting-edge research with passionate teaching, fantastic careers support, and a varied calendar of extra-curricular and social events. To ensure that you are exposed to fresh ideas and new authors throughout your degree, you are taught by different lecturers with diverse approaches. We keep our class sizes small so that you receive as much individual attention as possible and are able to engage in debate and seminars.

The Culture-Media-Text Research Centre co-ordinates interdisciplinary work on literature, film, media and other forms of culture. The centre hosts visiting lectures and performances, including an annual symposium exploring a topic of current critical interest from interdisciplinary perspectives. Researchers in the centre were  instrumental in the establishment of Winchester University Press. We also play a leading role in the interdisciplinary Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research.

Public Engagement

We are an outward-looking department and our academics regularly participate in public engagement events, such as the Winchester Heritage Open Days. We also work closely with organisations such as the English Project and Hampshire Cultural Trust, as well as the Winchester Poetry Festival and Winchester Theatre Royal. These collaborations provide a wealth of exciting opportunities to our students.

Our particular expertise in song lyrics is evidenced in our frequent contributions on the topic to The Conversation, where academics publish research-informed articles with journalistic flair.

Image top of page: the first page of the epic poem Beowulf, written in an Anglo-Saxon dialect. Image from Wikimedia Commons.