Master of Research Arts Music

The Arts MRes allows you to undertake a one year full-time or, two year part-time, research project in one or more of the School of the Arts’ key subject areas: Architecture, Communications and Media, English, Music and Philosophy. You will receive training in research skills and supervision from one or more academic specialists in their subject area(s).

Why School of Music?

Strong research culture

Across the School, our research activity has a strong interdisciplinary nature and is concentrated in three cross-cutting areas:

• Critical and Contextual Approaches
• Creative Practice
• Media and Industry Studies.

We're at the forefront of research and postgraduate teaching. Our Institute of Popular Music (IPM) was the first academic centre created specifically to study popular music – and where better than in the home of the Beatles? It also boasts an enviable archive of donated recorded material.

Staff and students contribute fully to our research areas, which are informed by the broadly defined fields of:

• Critical theory
• Musicology
• Music Analysis
• Music and the moving image (including new media)
• Ethnomusicology
• Composition
• Music industries
• Media and cultural studies.

Research students participate fully in our research activity. They present papers at the School’s research seminars, work as Teaching Assistants within the School (with pedagogical training and support provided). There are also weekly research, career, and teaching seminars for all postgrads.

As a postgraduate student you'll be able to attend research seminars involving guest speakers from many disciplines and subdisciplines. You'll also be closely involved in classical, traditional and popular music concerts performed by professional musicians and students.

• Minimum Level of Education Required: 4-Year Bachelor's Degree
• Min GPA: 70.0%
• English Proficiency Requirements:
  For direct admission, applicant must be from an English speaking country or meet either of the following English test scores:
  • Min TOEFL iBT: 88 (Min Listening: 21.0, Min Reading: 22.0, Min Speaking: 23.0, Min Writing: 21.0)
  • Min IELTS overall: 6.5 (Min Listening: 6.0, Min Reading: 6.5, Min Speaking: 6.0, Min Writing: 6.0)
  • Min PTE overall: 62 (Min Listening: 51, Min Reading: 51, Min Speaking: 51, Min Writing: 51)
  Applicants interested in applying for direct admission, but are yet to complete an acceptable language test, can do so, but must provide valid results before receiving a final offer letter.
  For conditional admission, you are required to provide English proficiency scores:
  • Min TOEFL iBT: 46 (Min Listening: 4, Min Reading: 4, Min Speaking: 14, Min Writing: 14)
  • Min IELTS overall: 5 (Min Listening: 4.5, Min Reading: 4.5, Min Speaking: 4.5, Min Writing: 4.5)
  • Min PTE overall: 46 (Min Listening: 36, Min Reading: 36, Min Speaking: 36, Min Writing: 36)