MPhil and PhD Study in English
The School of English invites applications from students wishing to undertake research in the literary and linguistic areas indicated below. Applications are especially encouraged in areas affiliated to the expertise of academic staff (see staff details). Applicants should normally possess a good first degree and a Masters degree in English.
Applicants not holding a Masters degree which includes an element of research methods training, and having successfully completed that training, will be required to undertake mandatory research methods modules, which in the School of English forms an AHRC-approved programme, as soon as possible following enrolment. Students may also be directed to attend other taught modules where their research topic requires knowledge of specialist historical, literary, or linguistic fields pertinent to their investigations. Initial enrolment for students not holding an MA is for the M.Phil (with possibility of transfer to Ph.D status at a later date). A Director of Studies and a second supervisor will normally be appointed.
Applicants should note that general university statements emphasising university-wide "business-facing" research do not govern academic research in the School of English. Such research is not ruled out, if intelligently conceived; but the primary determinants are intellectual and cultural, not commercial. We see ourselves as training high quality professional scholars of literature and language who are able, on graduation, to compete for university positions in research and teaching in British and overseas institutions.
Applicants interested in conducting research into the literary life of the late Victorian period and the earlier 20th-century should note that the university possesses a comprehensive copy of the John Lane Archive. This includes substantial, largely untilled resources of correspondence, readers' reports, and other material relating to the Bodley Head publishing house and to the work of the major and minor authors whose work was published by John Lane and Bodley Head (see index on the School "Research" pages).
Applicants interested in researching eighteenth-century texts should note the specialist holdings of the Birmingham Central Reference Library, and its special collection of Johnsoniana (and for 17th-century researchers Miltoniana). The proximity of the Shakespearean collections at the nearby Stratford-upon-Avon (see below) makes new research into eighteenth-century Shakespeares a particularly well-resourced field and one that is encouraged by the School. Other themes that could be pursued to particular advantage in the School, given its current range of expertise and location, include aspects of Augustan-Romantic poetic and literary relations, literary-philosophical relations, and critical theory and thought both recent and historical.
All our research students enjoy full access to office and university facilities. In addition to the holdings in English literary and language materials in the Kenrick Library, with its large stock of books, journals and on-line resources (LION, J-STOR, ECCO and EEBO), researchers at Birmingham City University have access to the Library of the University of Birmingham and to the resources of the Birmingham Central Reference Library (with its important collections of materials on Milton and Samuel Johnson--see above). The Library of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-on-Avon is around 45 minutes away by road, while the Bodleian Library in Oxford is only one and a half hours away by train. The British Library is also easily accessible for day visits. Research students have the opportunity to play a full part in the life of the School, including attendance at staff seminars and, where appropriate, teaching.
A number of staff in the School enjoy world reputations in their fields. We particularly welcome applications in the general fields of:
- Romantic and Eighteenth-Century Studies
- Descriptive Linguistics
- Twentieth-Century Literature and Theory
- Renaissance and Restoration Drama
- Victorian Literature
For more information see the staff profiles and research groups in the School. If you are interested in applying for a place to study for an MPhil/PhD, contact the Faculty's research degrees officer, Liz Reeve at Liz.Reeve@bcu.ac.uk
Recent MPhil and PhD completions include:
- The Science Fiction of Octavia Butler
- The Works of William Rowley
- Samuel Johnson and Science
- The Discourse Structure of E-Mail Discussions
Current projects include:
- The Marginal and the Ethical in Contemporary British Fiction
- Victorian Doubles and Victorian Psychology
- Affective Lexis and Lexicography
- Kantian Aesthetics and Problems in Fiction
- John Fowles and the Contemporary Novel
- Thirties Fiction and the Arab World
- Treacherous Letters in Renaissance Drama
- Language Planning in Jordan
- David Mamet on Stage and Screen
- Sixties US Literature and the Anti-Hero