The MA by Research (MAR) programme is designed for students who wish to undertake a period of sustained independent research at Masters level. This type of research study works through close one-to-one supervision, tailored specifically to the needs of the project and the student. You'll research and write a thesis of approximately 30,000 words on a subject of your choice. This postgraduate research degree can be completed in one year (full-time) or two years (part-time). The part-time route allows you to continue a career throughout your studies and to schedule supervision sessions to fit around your working life.<br><br>The Bodies and Performance research group seeks to explore the way bodies are performed in their cultural, biological, philosophical, aesthetic and mediated contexts and manifestations. The group's mission is to understand contemporary performance and theory which articulate, aestheticize and politicize the desires and demands of the lived body. The lived body is intersectional, experiential, embodied and digitalised. Contemporary practice and discourse is moving us beyond fixed cultural and social binaries and categories into a more ‘trans' relationship with the body. The body is embedded and extended in its political, virtual social and historical environment but it is also driven by its own internal workings – its personal demands, needs and desires. The Bodies and Performance research group would like to consider the pleasure, joy, pain and everyday experiences of the lived body – gender, love, fear, sex, sexuality, motherhood, pregnancy, parenthood, cooking and eating, domestic work, hormonal shifts, ageing and illness, as well as technologies that enhance and shape the body as lived. Central to our concerns is how those bodily experiences are articulated and represented in and through performance. The group also seeks to understand the way in which these new configurations of the lived body impacts on the political as a critical dialogue.