The Applied Educational Leadership MA is a world-class, fully online programme for middle or senior leaders in schools, colleges, universities, charities, edu-businesses and government. It is a powerful boost to personal development, employability and promotion. Students bring change to their professional contexts through personal study and research, enabled by high-quality dialogue with their tutors and global network of peers.

The MSt in the History of Design is a master's degree offered part-time over two years, taught through synchronous virtual and face-to-face teaching. The programme focuses upon design produced worldwide since 1851. Students progress from a grounding in material and historical analysis to dissertation research.

Our Christianity & the Arts MA is unique in being taught in association with the National Gallery in London. The course investigates how Christian scripture, beliefs and practices have found expression in art for over 2,000 years. It also traces the idea of beauty in Western theological tradition. It takes advantage of King's exceptional location by exploring art in London's collections.Students on the course go on to careers in teaching, journalism or the church, or to further research.

Ancient Visual and Material Culture MA will train you for further research in the fields of art, numismatics or epigraphy. Acquire necessary research techniques and skills at Warwick's Classics and Ancient History department.

The MA in Visual Culture at Durham is a distinctive interdisciplinary course that invites you to develop your knowledge and understanding of the visual arts and of visual culture. To study visual arts and culture is a way of paying attention to phenomena that are everywhere. The concept of ‘visual culture’ acknowledges the pervasive nature of visual phenomena, and signals openness towards both the breadth of objects and images, and the range of theoretical and methodological perspectives needed to understand them adequately.

Drawing upon research strengths across the departments that contribute to the course, the MA in Visual Culture encourages a broad geographical and chronological scope, while allowing you to engage with a wide range of visual phenomena, including fine art, film, photography, architecture, and scientific and medical imaging practices.

The importance of critical visual literacy in the contemporary world cannot be exaggerated. ‘The illiterate of the future’, wrote the Bauhaus artist and theoretician László Moholy-Nagy, ‘will be the person ignorant of the camera as well as of the pen’. This observation was made in the 1920s, when photography was first used in the periodical press and in political propaganda. The rich visual world of the early twentieth century pales in comparison with the visual saturation that now characterises everyday experience throughout the developed societies and much of the developing world. But the study of visual culture is by no means limited to the twentieth century. Turning our attention to past cultures with a particular eye to the significance of visual objects of all kinds yields new forms of knowledge and understanding.

Our course facilitates the development of critical visual literacy in three main ways. First, it attends to the specificity of visual objects, images and events, encouraging you to develop approaches that are sensitive to the individual works they encounter. Second, it investigates the nature of perception, asking how it is that we make meaning out of that which we see. Finally, it investigates how our relationships with other people, and with things, are bound up in the act of looking.

Course structure

The course consists of one core module, two optional modules and a dissertation. The core module sets out the intellectual framework for the course, offering a broad overview of key conceptual debates in the field of visual culture, together with training in analysis of visual objects of different kinds, an advanced introduction to understanding museum practice, and key research skills in visual arts and culture. The optional modules provide further specialised areas of study in related topics of interest to individual students, and the 12,000-15,000 word dissertation involves detailed study of a particular aspect of a topic related to the broad area of visual culture.

Examples of optional modules:

• Critical Curatorship
• Visual Modernities
• Crossing Cultures: Word, Text and Image in Translation
• Transnational Cinema
• Things That Matter: Material and Culture in/for the Digital Age
• German Reading Skills for Research
• French Reading Skills for Research 1
• The Anglo-Saxon World Societies and Cultures: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Medieval England
• An Exhibitionary Complex: Museums, Collecting and the Historical Imagination
• Visualising Revolution: The Image of French Political Culture c.1789-1914
• Grant-Writing for Master Students
• Ethics of Cultural Heritage
• Classical Modernisms
• Modernism and Touch.

Arts management plays a vital role in designing, shaping and supporting the arts, helping to ensure that access, freedom and equality are achieved across all aspects of the cultural sector. Our flexible Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Management is ideal if you are an arts manager already, and wish to develop your practice and deepen your understanding of the background, theories and principles of arts and cultural management. Alternatively, if you are contemplating a career in arts policy and management and aim to understand current trends and debates that inform the day-to-day running of arts organisations, it provides a comprehensive overview of the sector.
 

Making the most of our central London location, you can take advantage of one of the largest concentrations of art spaces, cultural organisations and festivals, with the British Museum, Wellcome Gallery, Bloomsbury Festival and West End theatres and a wealth of other museums and galleries within walking distance. For those who want to deepen their sector experience, we offer a placement module that encourages students to work on their own research interests within an arts organisation. Past students have had valuable experiences in organisations ranging from the Greater London Authority to the Hackney Museum, and from the Big Dance Project to the Wallace Collection.

The MRes Visual Cultures is ideal if you have already completed an advanced course of study in art history and theory but would like to further develop your thought and research projects before studying at MPhil/PhD level.

This programme is assessed primarily by a dissertation on a topic of your choice, with additional assessed taught modules in research methods.

It qualifies you to carry out higher research, but is also a degree in its own right and can be tailored to suit your requirements.

MFA Fine Art provides a stimulating environment in which you will be guided to develop your creative aspirations, reach a critical maturity, and gain the self-confidence and skills that will enable you to work as a successful artist.

The course is studio practice driven and relies on experimentation and critical reflection supported by individualised mentoring, lectures, seminars and group critiques. It emphasises the articulation of ideas, development of working methods and the realisation of independent work. Seminars are structured to investigate a broad range of themes relevant to the practicing artist and provide a rich diet of inspiration.

The MA is a blended distance learning course, allowing you the flexibility learn about theories and practises surrounding peace and conflict.

Recognised as one of the most significant and innovative courses in its field and highly-regarded in the international art world, this Aesthetics and Art Theory MA course combines a grounding in philosophical aesthetics in the modern European tradition with study of contemporary art theory and the philosophy of art history.

This degree is designed to develop the core skills and knowledge often required by managers in the arts and cultural sector. We aim to enable you to develop an understanding of the environment within which cultural and creative organisations operate and identify the issues that influence them.

In the second term you will conduct a creative industries research project with fellow students. Through a brief agreed with a supervisor, you will have the opportunity to carry out a piece of research focusing on a particular issue relating to the sector or an issue relating to a particular organisation. Through planning, delivering and reflecting on your project, you will have the opportunity to explore environmental factors influencing creative arts organisations, whist developing skills in interpersonal working, negotiation and team working.

Offering the perfect blend of theory and practice in the context of business and society, the MA Design course will enable you to focus on your own specialist area of design practice. You will cover disciplines such as 3D design, fashion communication, fashion design, fashion marketing, graphic design, communication design, service design, interaction design, industrial design, interior design, 3D design and transportation design.

Developed specifically for those with an interest in design, and who have relevant experience, you will undertake a series of taught modules to develop your knowledge and practical skills, before completing a final project or thesis around your chosen specialism.