This MA explores intercultural communication through a range of interdisciplinary perspectives. The understanding you gain will equip you to investigate in new ways questions around language, culture and diversity, helping you to overcome barriers to understanding while also preparing you for research, policy and practice in applied language studies, education and the workplace in a superdiverse and communicatively complex world.

About this degree

This programme will provide you with interdisciplinary insights into intercultural communication, drawing upon applied linguistic, anthropological, sociological, language educational and cultural studies perspectives. It will also develop your capacity to analyse, evaluate and synthesise sociocultural and linguistic data, primary and secondary sources, as well as helping you to design research.

Who this course is for

This programme is suitable for anyone with a keen interest in issues of communication across languages and cultures. In addition to language educators and communications professionals, it is also directed at graduates in languages, linguistics, education and all those with an interest in critical understandings of language, culture and identity.

What this course will give you

The Department of Culture, Communication and Media (CCM) is committed to excellence in teaching, research and consultancy across a range of areas including intercultural communication.

Our rich research culture will bring you into contact with thriving IOE research centres whose work feeds into our teaching and our wide range of internal and public events. These include the Centre for Applied Linguistics, which conducts research in areas such as bilingualism and multilingualism, linguistic ethnography, semiotics and language education policy and practice.

The IOE also has an International Centre for Intercultural Studies which develops innovative thinking in relation to the study of diversity, equity and social justice in education. The work of these two centres provides the basis for the knowledge and thinking behind this MA.

The foundation of your career

This programme not only provides you with an outstanding foundation for PhD research and an academic career but will also prepare you to develop yourself internationally in areas such as education, communications or public relations. Group discussions and debates in class will help you to acquire strong presentation and negotiation skills. Likewise, the analytical and research skills you will gain are highly valued by employers from a range of sectors. Additional activities are available both within the department and the wider IOE and UCL community to help you to develop your employability through public talks, seminars and other networking opportunities.

Employability

Graduates of this programme will include university and college lecturers, researchers, education professionals and others working, or planning to work, in diverse cultural and linguistic settings. Fields might include international schooling, NGOs, international development, international commercial enterprise, communications, consultancy and relevant academic disciplines.