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Finding the right MA
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
I'm really struggling to find an MA program that will actually allow me to do the dissertation that I want to. I don't really see the pont in doing an MA that doesn't even point me in the right direction of where I want to do further work. I'm starting to think about looking abroad/OU/MRes, but I'm not sure of my options. I'm looking at a possible september start if I can go part time, if not it will be the year after!
I want to do an MA in musicology, but I want a program that doesn't involve study of classical music (because thats not my background at all), and will allow me to either look at subcultures or visual arts and their relationship with music. But I haven't found anything...
I've used prospects, but I find it a really difficult site to use...
Any suggestions?
I want to do an MA in musicology, but I want a program that doesn't involve study of classical music (because thats not my background at all), and will allow me to either look at subcultures or visual arts and their relationship with music. But I haven't found anything...
I've used prospects, but I find it a really difficult site to use...
Any suggestions?
Post edited by JustV on
0
Comments
a careers adviser who can help you research programmes
or hotcourses website. I hope that helps. xxx
ETA: You could also try looking at Google Scholar to find relevant articles/books, which might be a short cut in looking for a potential supervisor, rather than randomly going through staff pages on the off-chance.
I wondering if I should be looking for something along the lines of cultural studies rather than musicology. I might contact one of the people I quoted a lot to see if he is at all interested in my line of research (although I'm not too sure how keen I am on going to uni of northampton, but this guy has many good theories)...
Any other ideas?
I thought MRes was Masters level? Certainly, I've found after a quick Google that the one offered at Southampton is, for example, (thus only requires a BA)
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgstudy/programmes/humanities/music/mres_musicology.html
That sounds like a good idea - go for it! Finding interested contacts is often the easy bit. And yes, broadening out the departments you're looking at may also help - people in your area might not be limited to Music departments.
Oh, and there's no reason you would have to live in Northampton - being more research-based allows a lot more flexibility to study at distance.
I wanted to see if I could do something through the OU, but I'm not sure exactly how I'd go about finding that out. Do I just give them a call to see if theres any MA programs that fit what I want?
You can find info about the OU MA in Music here: http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/qualification/f32.htm but you'll still hit the problem of needing to do taught modules, unless you just wish to do the dissertation module (but then you won't come out of it with a full qualification).
I might contact him and see what he suggests...
I don't know how this translates over to masters programmes though, I don't know how most people fund those other than saving up etc.
Yep, but there are a few studentships floating around for PhDs - university/departmental, as well as the research council ones (more so, it seems than postdoc jobs available afterwards - so anyone considering a PhD needs to think very carefully, about why they're doing it, and certainly in Arts and Hums I'd recommend only going for it if you definitely intend on going into academia: it tends to screw your career up otherwise).
In terms of funding for Masters there are a very few (very competitive) studentships available, but the ones from the research council see it as a PhD preparation course, so there's not much that's stand alone, if a PhD isn't definitely on the horizon. When I did my Masters I got a Career Development Loan, which covered (I think) 80% of my fees and some living expenses (It was £8k). It's meant to be for vocational/career related courses (which I was able to argue Public Policy was). I don't know how easy it would be to apply for one for something like Music, but it's worth looking into.
Miss_Riot - yes, definitely tap him up for advice! Good luck.