I’m professor Suganthi John deputy director of education for the College of Arts and Law
and Professor of English Language welcome to the College of Arts and Law
home to students from across the world 30 of our students are international
and come from 70 different countries today we're going to focus on our school of English
drama and creative studies one of the most exciting diverse and dynamic areas of the college
where we offer an extensive range of undergraduate and postgraduate programs our areas of expertise
are equally diverse and we welcome international students and researchers from all over the world
our programs stretch across a range of disciplines including English literature English language and
linguistics film and creative writing drama and theatre arts and our leading Shakespeare institute
I chose to study at Birmingham because of the uniqueness of the Shakespeare institute
so nowhere else really has a program like that that offers such focused study and
creative options for someone interested in theatre in writing and in academia
let's take a look at what makes Birmingham a unique place to study and research English
in all its forms firstly our unrivalled access to specialist research facilities
including our linguistics research laboratories where you can conduct a range of experimental
studies in linguistics the Cadbury research library home to a collection of over 200 000
rare books dating back to the 1400s and 4 million manuscript items our barber institute of fine art
which not only supports the learning experience of our students but invites curiosity and exploration
from the wider world to Birmingham because I’m from Jakarta which is a really big city
I don't think I can be in a rural area I need a bit of like city life but also at the same time
I really want like a university like a campus university if that makes sense not like
university that is like this purse and the city so I thought Birmingham is like
such a nice mix between like the city and also like you know like greenery parts because like
the campus is just so green also the unique specialisms of our academic colleagues
support the range of subjects and areas covered in our curriculum in English language
and linguistics our curriculum stretches the breadth of linguistic study from cognitive
linguistics psycholinguistics corpus linguistics to discourse analysis grammar and stylistics
in English literature our interests encompass a range of literary specialisms Shakespeare
old English and digital cultures in drama and theatre arts there are opportunities to study
Greek tragedy alongside modern British playwrights and theatre for young audiences
and in film and creative writing the curriculum combines close text analysis with opportunities to
make films perform poetry and develop screenplays the professors are practicing writers as well
they're still like publishing books so I thought like Birmingham is my best choice
every Thursday we have a seminar and that can be from a visiting academic or a theatre practitioner
we've had royal Shakespeare theatre directors so that's been pretty amazing I volunteered
for there's this one literary festival on the campus itself that's called book to the future so
I was involved in like preparing for the festival and then like helping around when the festival was
going on I also took part in the Birmingham project which is only solely available for
first years that are taken in the summer during a week which is just we were required basically
to come up with a project and it just gains me like I gained so many research communications
and teamwork skills from that because I needed to work in a team and apart from that I found lots of
work experiences from here so I’ve been working as a student ambassador since first year so that
gave me lots of experience not only in terms of customer service but also like content creation
Birmingham shares some truly fantastic connections to the wider industry and the professional world
our unique collaboration with the royal Shakespeare company in Stratford our partnership
with the hay literary festival and the numerous international research events and conferences
named to name just a few offer unparalleled opportunities for our students to become
experts in their fields of study whilst developing their professional skills for their future careers
my advice for international students is to definitely apply and do everything you can
to go because it's been an incredible experience thank you for watching this short insight into
the school of English drama and creative studies here at Birmingham please visit our
website for further information on scholarships student life and entry requirements you can also
contact us via our course web pages or comment below should you have any further questions