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POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH
Those students who feel the urge to move to a deeper understanding of an area of their undergraduate studies may approach the Department for admission to postgraduate studies. The usual path is to begin with the MA, which consists of coursework and an examination in both the language and a literary or linguistic area, under the supervision of one or more members of the academic staff, followed by a Thesis. Although most of the fields of study undertaken in the undergraduate programme may be studied at MA level, the Department has special expertise in the following areas: Medieval Studies, Golden Age Literature (secular and religious), Modern Prose, Drama and Poetry (especially the post-Civil War novel and the works of Federico García Lorca), Applied Linguistics, Galician Studies, Catalan Studies, Portuguese Studies and Latin-American Studies.
The MA coursework lasts a full academic year, and the dissertation can be completed over the summer, for submission in early October, though it is not unusual for candidates to take somewhat longer.
Once the MA has been successfully negotiated, representing as it does a sort of academic apprenticeship, the student is considered fully qualified to embark on a longer and more original piece of research, leading to the degrees of MPhil or PhD (the difference between the two being fundamentally one of length). No coursework is appropriate at this level, where the student negotiates a topic of research with the supervisor, who is very much the companion and guide: the path has to be trodden by the student, who works his or her way to a necessarily intense and personal acquaintance with the chosen subject. This, after all, is the equivalent of writing a book on the topic, and becoming an expert in the field.
An MA is always useful. It signals to any employer that you are better qualified than someone with a BA, and those wishing to go into second-level teaching will never regret having invested the extra time in honing their linguistic skills and coming to a deeper understanding of an area of Hispanic culture. The MPhil and PhD degrees speak volumes to an employer about your personal abilities: not only are you a fluent and versatile speaker and writer of two major languages, you have also demonstrated staying power, sophisticated verbal and reasoning skills, capacity to structure an argument, ability in the management of information, and so on. Of course, the research degree is absolutely essential for anyone wishing to teach at Third Level.
Members of staff are always delighted to discuss research with interested students, and you should approach the person most likely to be involved in the supervision of study in your preferred area, or alternatively the Research Officer, Dr Nuala Finnegan. Although the University requires a 2:2 Honours degree as the minimum standard of entry to postgraduate programmes, the Department has agreed that it will normally only admit those students with a 2:1 Honours degree, at least 50% of which must be in Spanish.
