PhD Modern Languages

Overview

A PhD in Modern Languages allows candidates to draw on Departmental research strengths across the eight different language areas and multiple disciplinary intersections. Language-based expertise is supported by specialists researching literature, history, visual cultures, gender studies, sociolinguistics, and translation and interpreting. With staff involved in major research programmes such as ‘Translating Cultures’, and projects such as ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages’, the Department has pioneered studies that incorporate post- and de-colonial perspectives to theory and practice, integrating these into pedagogical approaches to language study.

The range of specialisms in Modern Languages and Cultures is enhanced by collaborations across departments and schools, such as the Department of English and that of Communications and Media, whilst maintaining the multilingual and multicultural perspectives as a necessary interpretive key to an understanding of the contemporary world. We also offer opportunities to collaborate with non-academic partners, locally, nationally and internationally, supported by the many research projects across five continents that scholars in the department lead.

Research interests

We welcome proposals that are multidisciplinary, multilingual and inspired by language-based approaches to research that facilitate the emergence of diverse conceptualisations of knowledge. Central to our research is a sensitivity to language and culture, both historically and in the contemporary world and a commitment to addressing the urgent questions to which language and culture relate.