English
A DISTINGUISHED HISTORY, A DYNAMIC PRESENT, A VIBRANT FUTURE
Situated in the heart of literary Belfast, English at Queen's has one of the most esteemed heritages of any English department in Britain and Ireland. Internationally renowned for hosting the 'Belfast Group', a collective of writers which included Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley as well as playwright Stewart Parker and novelist Bernard MacLaverty, English Studies has refused to rest on its creative laurels. In the 1970s the then School of English fostered the three very distinctive voices of the poets Ciaran Carson, Paul Muldoon and Medbh McGuckian. The Seamus Heaney Centre is one of the leading centres for creative writing in these islands, with a staff comprised of leading poets, screenwriters, and novelists.
Former staff have included multi-award winning poet and translator Ciaran Carson and Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize and National Poetry Competition winning poet Sinead Morrissey; current staff include Forward Prize winning poet Leontia Flynn, Betty Trask award-winning novelist Glenn Patterson, BBC Book of the Week writer Garrett Carr, acclaimed novelist and broadcaster Ian Sansom, award-winning writer-directorAislinn Clarke, Oscar-nominated director and screenwriter Tim Loane, award-winning playwrights Jimmy McAleavey and Michael West, and Stephen Sexton, winner of the National Poetry Competition and the 2019 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.
Ranked among the top 150 English departments world-wide (according to the QS World University Rankings by subject 2025), research and teaching in English at Queen’s covers all aspects of the discipline, from the earliest writings, through to contemporary fiction and poetry, as well as language and linguistics.
Discover more about our courses below.
BA ENGLISH
Choose from a selection of Single and Joint Honour Bachelor of Arts in English degrees.
Masters in English
Choose from a selection of Masters degrees in areas including Poetry, Creative Writing, and Broadcast Literacy
PhD in English
Join an invigorating research community with world leading academics and international networks.
THERE WERE OTHER UNIVERSITIES IN IRELAND... ... Trinity College, UCD, Cork, and so on. But there was a sense of that, from my perspective in County Derry... Queen's was the university we knew about, it was a natural progression... A happy choice. Seamus Heaney
2009
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