English Literature and Politics BA (Hons)

ENGLISH LITERATURE

*This course is only available as a combined honours for September 2025 entry

**Single honours course is open for 2026 entry only

Liverpool is the ideal city to study English Literature, with its thriving cultural scene, literary festivals, independent bookshops, and the renowned Central Library. Just a short walk from our Hope Park campus, you’ll also find The Reader Organisation in Calderstones Park—an inspiring hub for literature lovers.

Our English Literature degree explores a wide range of genres and historical periods, from fiction, poetry, and drama to autobiography, essays, travel writing, and slave narratives. You’ll study well-known authors as well as new voices offering fresh perspectives on key themes such as sustainability, identity, wellbeing, and power in society.

This English Literature course also looks beyond the texts themselves, inviting you to engage with the world of books through publishing, marketing, media, and digital technologies. You’ll even work with rare books and manuscripts from Liverpool Hope’s special collections.

Key features of the English Literature degree:

- A broad study of literature across periods, genres, and critical approaches

- Exploration of themes such as the environment, global perspectives, and wellbeing

- Hands-on opportunities in publishing, reading, and digital approaches

- Small group teaching and personalised support from expert tutors

- Employability skills embedded throughout the course

Our teaching team are internationally recognised researchers and published writers. In the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021), English at Liverpool Hope achieved outstanding results, with over 80% of staff publications rated “world leading” or “internationally excellent.”

By the end of the English Literature course, you’ll graduate with advanced critical, analytical, and communication skills that prepare you for careers in publishing, journalism, teaching, marketing, the creative industries, or further study.

Hear from one of our English Literature students.

POLITICS

Politics affects all of us. It is central to human life and human affairs. It is fundamental to how we organise and govern ourselves and to how we resolve conflicts. The decisions we make as political communities, who makes them and how, have consequences for how we live, from questions of war and peace, the distribution of wealth, our rights, freedoms, responsibilities, our access to education, transport and health care.

In this rapidly changing world, new challenges are constantly arising – from climate change to new technologies, from identity politics to Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic – and the study of politics needs to respond. At Liverpool Hope, therefore, we seek to engage with politics and political issues in the real world as they evolve and change over time. In doing so, we actively encourage free and open debate and discussion amongst our students, encouraging a stronger awareness and appreciation of different points of view.

On this programme of study, you will explore key ideas, institutions and politics in an international, national and local context. You will be taught by staff who are experts in their fields, who will teach you to engage with political research and develop the capacity to be an independent, critically-minded scholar. The course also aims to equip you with transferable skills to take into the world of work.

Liverpool Hope can also offer work placement opportunities. In Politics we’ve also organised a Practitioners in Politics series of events, in conjunction with our Careers Office, where individuals including MPs, the Mayor of Liverpool and the Merseyside Commissioner for Crime and Policing have come to advise students on pathways into political careers and the skills needed to get there.