MA Research Biography
The cutting-edge Taught MA in Biography remains unique to ³Ô¹ÏÍø and is consistently rated ‘excellent’ by examiners and inspectors.
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Course overview
About the Course
Course outline
This cutting-edge Master’s in Biography was founded in 1996, originally as a Taught MA programme, and remains unique to ³Ô¹ÏÍø. The course is consistently rated ‘excellent’ by external examiners and inspectors. Study can be on either a full-time (one year) or a part-time (two year) basis, with the latter generally recommended so that students can devote the second year entirely to writing on a biographical subject of their choice.
During the past 25 years, students have researched subjects ranging from Queen Victoria to the Bengali film-maker Ritwik Ghatak, or from Bernard Levin to the gardening author Jane Loudon; they have sometimes written on their own eminent ancestors, or on figures they knew personally. The team has expertise in a broad range of historical periods, from the Early Modern period to the present day, and the course places particular emphasis on understanding individual subjects within their historical, social and political context. We also encourage those looking to work on Life Writing or Literary Biography to join us, and to benefit from the experience of academics working across the faculties (including Dr Pete Orford who has published a biography of Charles Dickens, and Dr Peter Sloane who works on refugee life writing and memoir).
Course structure
In their first year of study, students attend weekly seminars for three of four terms (the Summer Term being for independent research). These seminars provide the critical awareness of different approaches to the discipline which are essential prerequisites for Dissertation work, and they are one of the most distinctive and valuable elements of the MA. They take place as follows:
- Autobiography (September to December)
- Biography (January to June)
- Research Methods (January to June)
Applications for entry in either January or September can be considered, depending on the size of the cohort.
All seminar teaching currently takes place at the University’s central London campus on Tuesdays, though supervisions can also take place online and at other mutually convenient times.
The modules on Biography and Autobiography are designed to combine the study of classic biographies and memoirs with analysis of contemporary writing in the auto/biography genres. The Research Methods module meanwhile provides an invaluable training for biographers, introducing them to essential skills and resources, including the location and use of archives as sources in their Dissertations.
Students are expected to produce, as a preliminary to their own research project, written coursework for the Research Methods module (an annotated bibliography and a short biography, with supporting material, produced according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry format), and students will also be asked to produce a short essay of 3-5,000 words that reflects on the Autobiography or Biography module content, though such essays do not count towards the final grade. During the early part of the course, students are guided to refine their topic and research proposal. Once the research proposal has been accepted by the University’s Research Officer, students then work with their tutor on individual research and the preparation of the Dissertation.
Guest biographers, memoirists, critics, publishers, and agents are regularly invited to lead seminars during the teaching terms. Past teachers and speakers on the course have included Andrew Motion, Kathryn Hughes, Frances Wilson, Frances Spalding, Jeremy Lewis, Rupert Shortt, Caroline Dawnay, Andrew Lownie, Miranda Seymour, John Cornwell, Simon Heffer and Craig Brown.
Programme staff
The Programme Director, Ophelia Field, is the author of a critically acclaimed life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744) titled The Favourite, first published in 2002 and in revised edition in 2018. In 2008, she produced a group biography, again set in the early eighteenth century, titled The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation, which was one of the Financial Times’ History Books of the Year. Ophelia has also worked for over 25 years as a policy analyst and communications consultant for a range of human rights and refugee organisations including ECRE, Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, and the Council of Europe. She has been teaching on the University of ³Ô¹ÏÍø’s Biography Programme since 2019, and previously taught at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL).
Dr Christina Dykes is a Lecturer on the Programme. She is a historian whose PhD, taken under the Biography Programme in 2021, was titled Bendor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, 1879-1953: A Reappraisal. Her wider professional experience includes 35 years working in public affairs, which has given her a deep awareness and knowledge of political processes. Together with Prof. Jo Silvester she has published ‘Selecting Political Candidates: A longitudinal study of assessment centre performance and political success in the 2005 UK election’ in the Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology, 25 March 2007. She headed the Development Department at CCHQ, was instrumental in the creation of the Conservative Muslim Forum, advised the Leadership Centre for Local Government and has provided leadership coaching. She is a Deputy Chairman of the London Recruitment Advisory Board concerned with the appointment of London’s Justices of the Peace.
The Biography Programme was designed and founded by Professor Jane Ridley, an Oxford-trained historian and biographer. Her extensive and award-winning biographical publications include The Young Disraeli (1995); The Architect and his Wife: A Life of Edwin Lutyens (2002); Bertie: A Life of Edward VII (2012); and George V: Never a Dull Moment (2021). She has contributed widely to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and to publications such as the Spectator, the Literary Review and the Times Literary Supplement. She remains closely associated with the Programme as a Professor Emerita, and regularly speaks to our students.
Location
Teaching takes place at the University’s London premises:
51 Gower Street
Bloomsbury
London
WC1E 6HJ
Timescale
The recommended period of study for achieving this research degree is two years part-time. A few students are capable of completing it within one year full-time and, if that is their preference, should discuss this with the Programme Director upon application.
Administrative arrangements
A system of preliminary registration for all research degrees is in operation to allow students to prepare a formal proposal during the early part of their course. Admission to research degrees is normally on a provisional basis while the candidate, with the help of the supervisor, refines the proposal for the research, including developing a work plan and identifying the requirements for support and resources and how these will be met.
All research students must also subject their work to an annual progress review.
Entry Requirements
Entry requirements
The minimum entry level required for this course is as follows:
• a first or second-class honours degree from a recognised university or,
• a recognised professional qualification with relevant work experience
Mature students
Age is no barrier to learning and we welcome all applications from suitably qualified students. Due to their flexibility, our London-based MAs by research attract a wide variety of applicants from a range of backgrounds, including people in full-time employment and retirees. Our current students range in age from 21 to 75.
International students
We are happy to consider all international applications and if you are an international student, you may find it useful to visit our international pages for details of entry requirements from your home country.
The University is a UKVI Student Sponsor.
English levels
If English is not your first language, please check our postgraduate English language requirements. If your English levels don’t meet our minimum requirements, you may be interested in applying for our Pre-sessional English Language Foundation Programmes.
Selection process
Candidates apply online, sending in their supporting documents, and will be assessed on this basis by the Programme Director. The Programme Director or Admissions Assistant will be happy to answer any enquiries. Call us on +44 (0)1280 820227 or get in touch via our online form.
Student Contract for prospective students
When you are offered a place at the University you will be notified of the student contract between the University and students on our courses of study. When you accept an offer of a place on the course at the University a legal contract is formed between you and the University on the basis of the student contract in your offer letter. Your offer letter and the student contract contain important information which you should read carefully before accepting an offer. Read the Student Contract.
Teaching & Assessment
Quality teaching
We offer high quality, traditional Oxbridge-style teaching, which leads to our degrees being recognised around the world. The standards of degrees and awards are safeguarded by distinguished external examiners – senior academic staff from other universities in the UK – who approve and moderate assessed work.
Teaching methods
One of the distinctive features of the programme is the value attached to the supervision which is provided for students working on dissertations. One-on-one supervisions are held at least twice a term while the dissertation is being prepared. While the dissertation must be the candidate’s independent work, it is the supervisor who offers advice, as needed, on refining the topic, on primary sources, on secondary reading, on research techniques and on writing and structure. Regular group discussions between research students at all degree levels (MA and PhD) allow the exchange of research experiences and mutual support.
Assessment methods
These are degrees by research which require an original contribution to the body of knowledge in a particular academic or professional discipline.
Assessment is by a combination of short pieces of coursework, followed by a dissertation as follows:
- MA: Dissertation of 25,000 – 40,000 words
- PhD: Dissertation of 80,000 – 100,000 words
All research degrees are regulated by the Research Committee and students are required to conform to guidelines laid down in the Research Degrees Handbook.
After Your Course
Graduate employment
Our graduates have gone on to further study at most of the world’s leading universities, including Harvard, London, Oxford and Cambridge and secured jobs in senior positions around the world. Among our alumni we have a graduate who became the head of his country’s civil service and one who became a leading Formula One motor-racing driver. Another secured a position as the Minister of Sabah and one female law graduate became the first British lawyer to become a French Advocate.
What our students and alumni say
“I came across an advert for the Biography MA, one afternoon, whilst idly trawling the internet at the magazine publishing house where I was working. I had graduated in English from Bristol University in the previous year. Though the magazine work was interesting, it was the research that interested me most and I was desperate to write something longer than 100 words. I eventually decided to do an MA but I didn’t want a course that just felt like a continuation or a development of my first degree. So when I saw the advert for the ³Ô¹ÏÍø course I was immediately intrigued. As an avid reader of biographies, I was excited by the prospect of studying the history and development of biography writing and, more importantly, by the opportunity to write a biography of my own, under the guidance of a respected and prize-winning biographer.
“I was not disappointed by my decision. Very early on I decided to do the MA by research so that I could write a larger dissertation, rather than as a taught course with a number of smaller assignments. In 2007 I was upgraded to MPhil because of the quality and extent of my research. And in that year my biography was shortlisted for the Daily Mail Biographers’ Club Prize.
“Jane Ridley is incredibly friendly, knowledgeable and supportive. As a published biographer she knows the business of writing and publishing biography inside-out and as a historian she encourages thorough research, good writing and an academic engagement with the subject. My fellow students were a fascinating mix of people, both younger and older and from all walks of life. The course has given me access to agents, publishers and many well-known biographers. I am so glad that I made the decision to study Biography at ³Ô¹ÏÍø, I now have a book that I’m hoping to publish. The course is fascinating and I would strongly recommend it to anyone wanting to do an MA, but one that’s a little bit different to the rest.â€
Anna Thomasson
“After twenty years in the Army, I set up a ships’ crewing business to employ the Gurkha soldiers with whom I’d served. I settled for a while in ³Ô¹ÏÍø and took the MA in Biography from 2001-2002, attracted by the course’s unique melding of history and literature. Highly stimulating and great fun, the course offered a perfect balance of theory and the study of an eclectic range of biographies, giving students scope to study subjects of their choice. I found the dissertation subject I had chosen was of such interest that I carried on with the research after gaining the MA and turned it into a book. This, The Butcher of Amritsar, a life of Brigadier Reginald Dyer, the perpetrator of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 1919, was published in 2005.
“The Biography MA gave me the tools to launch out on a career as a biographer: the theoretical framework; a knowledge of the major biographical figures, texts and techniques; an exposure to British research resources and an introduction to agents and publishers, one of whom published my book. Above all, it gave me a thirst to write.
“As a result of launching my book in Hong Kong, where I now live, I was invited in 2005 to become a moderator for the Man Hong Kong International Literary Festival and am now a member of the Festival’s Authors Committee. I review regularly for the online Asian Review of Books and occasionally for other journals. In 2008, with others, I founded and still chair the Hong Kong Tongzhi Literary Society, a group dedicated to the fostering of local literature in both English and Chinese. I am still writing, and am now working on a life of Leslie Cheung, a hugely popular Hong Kong film and pop star.â€
Nigel Collett
“Bernard Shaw once remarked that youth is wasted on the young, and much the same can be said for education. I managed a Third Class degree in English from New College, Oxford, and then spent thirty years properly educating myself in preparation for an MA in Biography at ³Ô¹ÏÍø. Where there had been stress, here was pleasure, where there had been intellectual pride, here was genuine curiosity, where there had been tortuous essays on Donne, here were enjoyable bibliographies to compile.
“Jane Ridley’s gently sardonic approach, combined as it is with an understated rigour and first rate academic proficiency, makes the course agreeably sociable as well as intellectually stimulating. Indeed, in many ways it is perhaps as close to a Platonically ideal notion of what being at university is for as it is possible nowadays to get.
“I applied in order to be made to write about my father, Huw Wheldon; this was initially a need, not a want, but the unfailing support and encouragement I received from Jane and from other tutors (and fellow students) made it less an act of piety than an act of literary endeavour (though I hesitate to go so far as to say an act of scholarship).
“I heartily recommend this course to anyone with an interest either in themselves or in someone else: it will demonstrate that biography is not simply a way of seeing an individual, but is also a way of seeing a world.â€
Wynn Wheldon
Fees & Scholarships
The fees for this course are:
| Start | Type | First Year | Total cost |
|---|---|---|---|
Jan 2025 Full-time (1 Year) | UK | £10,300 | £10,300 |
| INT | £16,480 | £16,480 | |
Jan 2025 Part-time (2 Years) | UK | £5,150 | £10,300 |
| INT | £8,240 | £16,480 | |
Sep 2025 Part-time (2 Years) | UK | £5,150 | £10,300 |
| INT | £8,240 | £16,480 | |
Jan 2026 Full-time (1 Year) | UK | £10,300 | £10,300 |
| INT | £16,480 | £16,480 | |
Jan 2026 Part-time (2 Years) | UK | £5,150 | £10,300 |
| INT | £8,240 | £16,480 |
The University reserves the right to increase course fees annually in line with inflation linked to the Retail Price Index (RPI). If the University intends to increase your course fees it will notify you via email of this as soon as reasonably practicable.
Course fees do not include additional costs such as books, equipment, writing up fees and other ancillary charges. Where applicable, these additional costs will be made clear.
Postgraduate loan scheme
A system of postgraduate loans for Masters’ degrees in the UK is supported by the UK Government. The loan will provide up to £11,222 for taught and research Masters’ courses in all subject areas. The loans can be used for tuition fees, living expenses or both.
Scholarships
Details of scholarships can be found on our Bursaries and Scholarships page. You should make an application to study at the University and receive an offer letter confirming our acceptance of your application before applying for a scholarship.
You may also find it useful to visit our External Funding page.
Accommodation
Due to the mode of study on this course you will not normally need a room in University accommodation during your degree.