Program Overview

Our MA in Victorian Studies provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the Victorian period. Leicester is home to the internationally renowned Victorian Studies Centre and you’ll benefit from our expertise as the longest established Victorian Studies Centre in the UK.

Founded in 1966, our Centre has over half-a-century's tradition of innovation and excellence, with research strengths in Victorian science and medicine, Life-Writing, Dickens, and the Brontës, among others. Our students also benefit from a range of extracurricular activities from reading groups and public seminars, to our annual Victorian Studies Lecture. We were also proud to host the George Eliot Bicentenary Conference in July 2019, which brought together scholars from across the globe. Our welcoming, internationally-diverse postgraduate community will provide a supportive and stimulating environment for your studies.

This course offers you an ideal platform to delve into the areas of Victorian life that interest you the most, offering you greater depth and insight than previous studies. You will also be exposed both to canonical works and hidden gems of the time, giving you an excellent grounding in this engaging period of history.

Because you study the Victorian Perspectives module in your first semester, you will be fully equipped with an understanding of the impact of social, cultural, and historical factors in exploring texts and contexts. This knowledge will be invaluable throughout the rest of your MA in all core and option modules.

The option modules available to you reflect the huge range of our academics' research interests - from nineteenth-century literature to social history and the history of science and medicine. You are bound to uncover unique aspects of Victorian life whilst doing this MA.

The Victorian Studies Centre draws on a number of research areas, including History of Art and Film, History, English Local History, Urban History, English, and the History of Science and Medicine. These offer a broad and exciting range of perspectives on Victorian literature, art and society, and provide a fresh outlook on familiar (or not so familiar) works.