Our students
From module choices, to dissertation topics, to staff support, our past and current students share their experiences of what it's really like to study English at Nottingham.
Undergraduate students
Devraj Jheet, second-year English and History BA
Each time I’d go to a seminar, there’d just be a really enriching discussion about a new book. It felt a bit like a book club! The discussions flowed really well and everything was worth noting down.
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Maddi Maya, second-year English BA
I struggle to just do one thing all the time, so I like that it feels like a more specific version of A levels. It’s still all English, but you’re doing different subjects at the same time. I really like that. It really works well for me.
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Priya Joshi, third-year English BA
People often ask me why I've taken English if I struggle so much with reading and concentration. But, I've always really loved the subject and wanted to find a university that despite all my difficulties, will still support me to do something I'm passionate about.
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Postgraduate students
Bailey McNamara, Viking and Early Medieval English Studies MA
When you look at place name you don't ever think ‘Where does that come from?’, it's just a label, it doesn't mean anything. In my undergraduate degree, I studied these big texts and realised that if you look at a place-name, you can see it as being like a small text that you have to decipher.
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Sarah Toler, Viking and Early Medieval English Studies MA
The reason I switched from 19th century literature to Viking and Early Medieval English, was that I developed an interest in runes. I started studying it and I just enjoyed that so much. On this course I’m learning about the culture which is associated with the runes.
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Cassidy Croci, English PhD
I have had more fun doing this PhD than anything else in my life. It has brought me to so many cool places and allowed me to meet interesting individuals. Who thinks of going to the Isle of Man?! And I've been there a couple of times now. Or, being able to go to Wales and then obviously Iceland.
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Charlotte Emma Jones, English Studies MA
I’ve enjoyed coming to my masters having already been a student at Nottingham. You’re given a lot of independent work but it’s rewarding. You know what you’re doing, you’re getting the right answers and you’re pushing yourself, with the help of your professors.
Charlotte's full profile
Tabitha Gresty, Viking and Early Medieval English Studies MA
I was always the kid who had all of the Horrible History books and was always very interested in medieval as an area, but I came to it more from a language basis. I wanted to do Old English and when they said you get to do Old Norse as well, I was like, ‘Where do I sign up?!’
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Postgraduate distance learning students
Nicole Whitton, Applied English (now MA English (online))
The opportunity to study some subjects that I would never have thought about studying before was nice. And I liked the pick and mix opportunity, where it's not a very fixed programme but instead you can select from a wide variety of topics.
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Gillian Walters,
Applied English (now MA English (online))
The tutors aren’t just there marking your work, we can have these chats and you get to see the faculty as humans, so they are an important part of our community too.
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Our graduates
Rob Temple, Freelance journalist and author
English and Philosophy BA graduate (2005)
They’re both about how we live our lives. Philosophy is the most concentrated version of that, and English is the poetic version. If you want to write a book, then usually you need to know how people think.
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Olivia French, Marketing and Communications Manager, HarperCollins
English with Creative Writing BA graduate (2014)
One of the skills that’s definitely useful in my job, is knowing how to communicate with different stakeholders. If I’m talking to an editor about a book, I’m going to have a different conversation with them than I would have with the author.
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