On this course, applicants will have the option of studying one of two streams: Modern and contemporary Chinese Studies; or Pre-modern Chinese Studies. With the consent of their supervisor and the relevant teacher(s), applicants may combine papers from both streams. Students can expect to receive one-to-one supervisions four times per year. At the end of the MPhil programme, students will be expected to have: acquired the ability to read, interpret and translate primary sources in Modern and/or Classical Chinese; acquired a good knowledge of the general scholarship on Modern and/or Pre-Modern Chinese culture(s); acquired an in-depth knowledge of the secondary literature relevant to the subject of their dissertation; developed the ability to formulate original research questions and produce a well-constructed, argument to answer them, in the form of an independent piece of research based on the use of primary and secondary sources and acquired the skills to use library and internet resources independently.