Liverpool Hope University launches Beatles masters degree

A postgraduate masters course in The Beatles, Popular Music and Society is being launched by Liverpool Hope University.

The MA will open to students in September 2009, with no more than 30 places available. It is hoped that guest lecturers will include people who worked with and knew The Beatles.

The course, which can be studied both full and part time, covers four modules with specific issues relating to The Beatles and popular music, consisting of four 12-week taught modules plus a dissertation. Full-time students will attend two evening sessions a week and cover all four modules in one academic year. Part-time students, meanwhile, will attend one evening session a week for two years. In both cases a dissertation will be due towards the end of the following August.

Dr Mike Brocken, senior lecturer in popular music at Hope University, said: “There have been over 8,000 books about The Beatles but there has never been serious academic study and that is what we are going to address.

“Forty years on from their break-up, now is the right time and Liverpool is the right place to study The Beatles. This MA is expected to attract a great deal of attention, not just locally but nationally and we have already had enquiries from abroad, particularly the United States.

“‘The Beatles, Popular Music and Society’ marks a seminal advance in popular music studies. For the first time in the UK and possibly the world, a postgraduate taught course is offered to research into The Beatles, the city from which they emerged, the contexts of the 1960s, technology, sound and songwriting and the industries that have set up in their wake to capitalise on tourism in the city of Liverpool.”