M.A. seminars 2026–2028 in the extramural programme in English Philology

What is this list?

This is a list of M.A. seminars we intend to launch in our extramural programme in English Philology (Filologia angielska) whose first year of study is 2026; that is, the seminars are planned to start in 2026 and end in 2028, at the end of the two-year M.A. programme.

What about these seminars?

Part of the admissions procedure for the M.A. programme is an interview. The interview you take part in is with a small committee of our teachers headed by your prospective M.A. thesis supervisor, the teacher whose seminar you intend to join upon becoming a student in the programme. At some point between your registration for the given programme—see the easy step-by-step instruction linked to here—and the day of the interview we may contact you to ask about your preferred M.A. seminar. Your task is easy: browse this list for seminars on offer and let us know, when asked, which seminar is your favourite. We will take note of it and ensure your interview is with the right committee.

Please note: We do not guarantee that upon admission to the programme you will be able to join the preferred seminar. Enrolment into a particular seminar is subject to conditions such as the total number of candidates, the overall result of your enrolment process, and others.

How to navigate the list?

As you scroll the page down, you will note headers with names of the seminars planned for the 2026–2028 study cycle, with the name of the teacher and the description of the seminar below.

Law, Lawlessness, and (In)Justice in Contemporary (Non)Fiction

prof. UAM dr hab. Ryszard Bartnik

Description

This MA seminar explores the themes of law, lawlessness, and (in)justice in contemporary fiction and non-fiction. It takes as its point of departure a reflection on how legal institutions, systemic violence, the presence and absence of justice, and the moral dilemmas surrounding (non)compliance with human rights are represented in novels, short stories, essays, and literary journalism.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this course combines literary, socio-cultural, and legal perspectives. Its aim is not only to interpret selected texts but also to consider the role of literature in shaping socio-political sensitivity and awareness of the fundamental nature of our rights.

Numbers Don’t Lie — Or Do They? Translation Quality in the Digital Age: Human Judgement Meets Automatic Metrics

dr Marta Kajzer-Wietrzny

Description

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the landscape of translation. Neural machine translation (MT) systems and large language models (LLMs) now produce texts that are increasingly difficult to distinguish from those written by human professionals — yet quality remains uneven, domain-dependent, and hard to measure. This seminar places a very specific question at its centre: when automatic metrics say a translation is good, do human evaluators agree?

Students will investigate the relationship between human and automatic approaches to translation quality assessment, focusing on English-to-Polish language pairs across a range of communicative domains. On the automatic side, we will work with established and state-of-the-art automated metrics like COMET, and the LLM-powered GEMBA framework. On the human side, we will apply structured error annotation schemes like MQM (Multidimensional Quality Metrics). The core ambition of the seminar is to bring these two perspectives into dialogue: where do automatic metrics align with human judgement, and where do they diverge?

A central thread running through all MA projects will be the role of domain. Each student will select a communicative domain of their choice and investigate how human and automatic evaluation methods interact within that specific context. We will explore whether the alignment between human and automatic evaluation holds equally across text types — from legal documents to marketing texts and news articles — or whether certain domains expose the limits of metric-based assessment more sharply than others. Understanding these domain-specific patterns has direct practical relevance for translators, language service providers, and anyone relying on MT output in professional contexts.

This seminar is not afraid of technology: students should be open to testing and using new technological tools relevant to translation research and analysis. No prior technical expertise is required, as all methods and tools introduced during the seminar will be explained and supported throughout the course. However, technical savviness and a willingness to experiment with digital tools will be considered an advantage.

Selected bibliography

  • Freitag, M., Foster, G., Grangier, D., Ratnakar, V., Tan, Q., & Macherey, W. (2021). Experts, Errors, and Context: A Large-Scale Study of Human Evaluation for Machine Translation. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics, 9, 1460–1474.
  • Kocmi, T., & Federmann, C. (2023). Large Language Models Are State-of-the-Art Evaluators of Translation Quality. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference of the European Association for Machine Translation, 193–203.
  • Rei, R., Stewart, C., Farinha, A. C., & Lavie, A. (2020). COMET: A Neural Framework for MT Evaluation. In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), 2685–2702

Media, culture and society

prof. UAM dr hab. Janusz Kaźmierczak

Description

The seminar will focus on the representations carried and the role played by the media in modern society, and in so doing it will introduce the students to media theory and research. The conceptual and methodological apparatus thus built will enable the students to complete their MA thesis projects that will involve studying the representations carried or the role played by the media in British or American culture, or investigating links between British, American and Polish culture as observed in the media. Of special interest will be all forms of connection between media and literature. Accordingly, in addition to the theoretical input, the seminar will offer guidance in developing and applying research skills, including making library searches, assessing sources, as well as planning and writing MA theses.

Candidates for the seminar should have a keen interest in the modern media and in media and cultural theory, as well as a good background knowledge of British and American culture. For the interview, they are also encouraged to acquaint themselves at least with parts of the books listed in the “Selected references” section.

Selected bibliography

  • Fiske, John. 1990. Introduction to communication studies. London: Routledge.
  • Lindgren, Simon. 2025. Digital media and society: Theories, topics and tools. (3rd edition.) London: Sage Publications.
  • Thwaites, Tony, Lloyd Davis and Warwick Mules. 1994. Tools for cultural studies: An introduction. Melbourne: Macmillan.
  • Turow, Joseph. 2017. Media today: Mass communication in a converging world. (6th edition.) New York: Routledge.

More Than One Language in Mind:
Reading and Processing in Bilingual and Multilingual Speakers

dr Agnieszka Lijewska

Description

How do bilingual and multilingual readers understand written language, and what happens when more than one language is active in the mind? This M.A. seminar explores reading and language processing in the first language (L1) and in additional languages (L2, L3, and beyond), focusing on how languages interact in the bilingual and multilingual mind.

The seminar introduces key questions in psycholinguistic and cognitive research on multilingualism. Do bilinguals process language differently in their L1, L2, or L3? How does emotional content influence comprehension across languages? Does linguistic distance affect how efficiently multilingual speakers understand written texts? Students will engage with theoretical approaches and empirical studies situated at the intersection of linguistics, multilingualism, psycholinguistics, and the psychology of language. The main emphasis will be on understanding research questions, interpreting findings, and developing feasible M.A. thesis projects suitable for part-time study. Projects may draw on questionnaire methods, reading tasks, or other manageable research designs.

Importantly, this is not a seminar on language teaching methodology or classroom practice per se. Rather, it focuses on how multilingual speakers mentally represent, activate, and process the languages they know or are learning. With guidance and flexibility, students will learn how to formulate research questions, evaluate previous studies, choose appropriate methods, and design projects that contribute to our understanding of language processing in the multilingual mind.During the admissions interview, candidates will be invited to talk about their interests related to the topic of the seminar. To prepare for the conversation, they are encouraged to read at least one of the open-access publications listed below.

Selected bibliography

  • Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual Minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10 (3), 89–129.
  • Caldwell-Harris, C. L. (2014). Emotionality differences between a native and foreign language: Theoretical implications. Frontiers in Psychology, 5.
  • Cop, U., Drieghe, D., & Duyck, W. (2015). Eye Movement Patterns in Natural Reading: A Comparison of Monolingual and Bilingual Reading of a Novel. PLOS ONE, 10(8), e0134008.
  • Dylman, A. S., & Samuel, S. (2026). Does linguistic similarity matter in the foreign language effect in decision making and emotional resonance? Language and Cognition, 18, e27.
  • Friesen, D. C., Schmidt, K., Atwal, T., & Celebre, A. (2022). Reading comprehension and strategy use: Comparing bilingual children to their monolingual peers and to bilingual adults. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 986937.
  • Kroll, J. F., Dussias, P. E., Bice, K., & Perrotti, L. (2015). Bilingualism, Mind, and Brain. Annual Review of Linguistics, 1, 377–394. [external link]
  • Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., &Treiman, R. (2016). So Much to Read, So Little Time: How Do We Read, and Can Speed Reading Help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17 (1), 4–34.