English Literature/Mathematics

English literature and mathematics is a combination that might initially seem unlikely, but it represents two of the most rigorous and distinctive modes of human inquiry. Mathematics is the study of abstract structure, pattern and logical necessity: it develops the capacity for precise reasoning, formal proof and quantitative analysis. English literature is the study of imaginative writing as an aesthetic and cultural phenomenon: it develops close reading, critical interpretation, historical contextualisation and the ability to construct sustained arguments about meaning and value.

Both disciplines, in their different ways, train the mind to engage with complexity, ambiguity and the relationship between form and content.

At the University of Glasgow, this four-year full-time programme takes both disciplines seriously and in depth. You will study English literature across its range from early modern to postmodern, benefiting from Glasgow's expertise in American, Irish and postcolonial literatures, critical theory, creative writing, and the relationship between literature and other arts, media and science. The mathematics component develops your knowledge across pure and applied areas, building the analytical and proof-writing skills that mathematical education develops to its highest level.

A year abroad is available, giving you the opportunity to study in another academic environment and to develop your independence and international perspective.

The combination produces a graduate who can reason formally and precisely in mathematical contexts and engage with texts and ideas with critical depth and interpretive sophistication, which is an unusual and genuinely distinctive profile.

Graduates move into a wide range of careers: data science, finance, education, research, publishing, the civil service, consultancy, technology, and the creative industries. The combination of mathematical rigour and humanistic analytical training gives you a flexible and genuinely distinctive graduate profile. Postgraduate study in either mathematics or English is a well-supported pathway.