German (PhD / MPhil) - 2012/2013 entry

Our doctoral programme aims to respond to the needs and interests both of students seeking an academic career or other professional employment and of those who wish to pursue a line of intellectual enquiry for its own sake. We aim to recruit both recent graduates and mature students who now have the time to pursue an intellectual enthusiasm, perhaps after a lifetime of professional work.

We offer supervision in most areas of German studies, including: baroque literature; eighteenth to twenty-first century literature, especially the novel; Anglo-German cultural relations; German literature in philosophical context; gender studies and women's writing; twentieth century German history; history of German thought; German film and memory studies. There are also opportunities for supervision in interdisciplinary research, and candidates with such interests are especially welcome.

Find out more about studying German at Birkbeck.

We attract a substantial number of research students. Nearby facilities include the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies and the German Historical Institute, both within five minutes' walk. Study resources include a series of first-year workshops on research skills. You will also be provided with access to computer workstations with email and internet facilities. 

The Department of European Cultures and Languages hosts its own regular seminar, in which academic staff and graduate students have the chance to discuss their projects.

• Silke Arnold-de Simine, MA, DPhil: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century German literature (especially WG Sebald); cultural theory; gender studies and memory media; photography; early German film; museum studies.
• Peter Damrau, MA, PhD: Devotional literature of the seventeenth century and women's writing of the eighteenth century.
• Nicolette David, MA, MA, PhD: Critical theory, especially psychoanalysis and gender; drama and the novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; German and Austrian Modernism; Weimar Culture; film studies.
• Joanne Leal, BA, PhD: Post-war German literature and film, especially literature/film and gender, the modern German novel and the films of Wim Wenders.
• Eckard Michels, MA, PhD, Habil: Twentieth-century German history, especially diplomatic and military history.
• Anna Richards, MPhil, DPhil: Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature, especially the novel and its medical historical context; women's writing.
• John Walker, MA, PhD: Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature and philosophy, especially the German realist novel, and the history of ideas.
• Alexander Weber, Staatsexamen, PhD: German literature from the seventeenth century to the present; Anglo-German cultural relations; history of ideas; literature and theology.

• You can apply, and start studying, at any time during the year.