English and Humanities (PhD / MPhil) - 2012/2013 entry

The Department of English and Humanities offers committed, enthusiastic and dynamic research-based teaching, with a constantly evolving curriculum sensitive to developments in contemporary culture.

We actively foster the creation of a graduate intellectual community and our students' professional development. A large number of our recent PhDs have successfully obtained permanent academic posts in leading universities in Britain, the United States and other countries. We have an excellent record in securing postgraduate studentships from the major funding bodies, and are able to offer a substantial number of studentships through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Block Grant Scheme.

We welcome applications for research in all areas of English, cultural studies and related areas, including: Old English, Old Norse, medieval literature and culture, the Renaissance and early modern periods, the Enlightenment, Romantic and Victorian studies, the modern and postmodern periods, literary and cultural theory, gender studies, theatre studies, poetics and creative writing (including practice-based research).

Find out more about current students' research projects.

Birkbeck is at the geographical centre of London's research library complex, a short distance from the British Library, the University of London Library, the Warburg Institute, the Institute of Historical Research and the Wellcome Institute. The National Archives are easily accessible. The University of London Library has an outstanding collection of literary periodicals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Fawcett Library and Women's Library are major sources for women's unity and gender history. The poetry library at London's South Bank Centre on the River Thames is rich in twentieth-century poetry.

The Department of English and Humanities has a thriving research culture. It holds a seminar in critical theory, numerous reading groups and a regular programme of major visiting speakers. All postgraduate students follow courses in research skills and other forms of graduate training. We have long experience in the supervision of both full-time and part-time research students and currently have over 100 research students, half of whom are full-time.

The department is well known for its leading international research. It hosts the Centre for Contemporary Theatre, the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies and the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre; it initiated the London Renaissance Seminar; and it runs a number of other research seminars, including the Birkbeck Medieval Seminar, the London Beckett Seminar, the Material Texts Network and the Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination Seminar. There are also frequent national conferences and symposia.

The department's provision is complemented by the work of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, and by interdisciplinary activities in the School of Arts; visit our thriving postgraduate community.

• We offer research students the opportunity of teaching on the undergraduate courses.
• This is subject to financial and other limits, and we try to spread the available hours among as many applicants as is feasible.
• Research students who have progressed satisfactorily with their study can apply annually and will be put on a list of available teachers, subject to a satisfactory interview with the graduate teaching panel.
• During the spring term we offer all students the opportunity of attending a ten-week course on teaching in higher education; only those research students who have attended are eligible for teaching positions in the department.

• The MPhil thesis is not more than 60,000 words; the PhD thesis is not more than 100,000 words. Both the MPhil and the PhD are assessed by a viva voce examination.

With more than 100 students undertaking research for MPhil and PhDs, Birkbeck's Department of English has a large and thriving postgraduate community; the largest body of graduate students in English studies in the University of London. Supervision is available in literature from Old Icelandic to contemporary writing, and we are also well regarded for our work on interdisciplinary research topics in cultural history and theory. We achieved notable success in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, with 90 per cent of our research being deemed of 'quality that is recognised internationally in terms of originality, significance and rigour', of which 35 per cent was declared to be 'world-leading'.

We place great emphasis on ensuring that graduate supervision is thorough, professionally conducted and leads to the successful completion of a thesis. We offer a dedicated research skills course at the start of the degree with the option of a paleography course for those working on early periods. As well as observing strict guidelines on supervision, a senior member of staff acts as director of graduate studies and co-ordinates the monitoring of our students' progress. A termly graduate forum allows students formally to discuss issues of graduate provision and resources with staff.

Formal requirements

Students are required to attend seminars on Research Skills and seminars on Theory throughout the first two terms in the first year of study. Subsequent attendance is optional. You are also required to participate in some of the seminars or other activities put on by the department, School of Arts, or other institute of the university in each year you are a registered student.

The department does not lay down a specific timetable for meetings with your supervisor, although all supervisors will agree a personal timetable of consultation with their students. But we do expect as a minimum that all full-time research students will meet with their supervisors three times a term, and that part-time research students will meet their supervisors twice a term. If no formal timetable of meetings has been arranged, it is up to you to take the initiative in arranging supervisory meetings.

In a similar way, the school requires all full-time students to submit at least two substantial pieces of written work in every academic year and part-time students to submit at least one substantial piece of written work.

In addition, all students will be required to submit annually to the department's Graduate Panel a detailed written report on their progress through the year. Supervisors will in turn be responsible for submitting to the Panel annual reports on students' progress; every student will be interviewed annually be a member of staff who is not their supervisor after the reports have been received.

Supervision 

Among the responsibilities of your supervisor are the following:

• advise you on the formulation and following through of your research and to advise you about work already published in your area
• discuss with you questions of approach and methodology
• guide you in the use of primary and secondary literature, as well as historical, archive and other source materials
• comment in detail and in a reasonable time upon the written work that you submit
• advise you on how to acquire skills and techniques necessary for your research (for example, learning another language, or editorial or bibliographical skills)
• advise you where to go or whom to consult if you have difficulties which your supervisor cannot herself or himself resolve
• put you in touch with students and teachers with whom you may share research interests
• keep you informed about how far your work meets the standards required by the university and about university regulations and requirements regarding the organisation and submission of your thesis
• provide pastoral advice and support
• write references as and when these may be requested.

You in turn have a responsibility, in addition to those more formal responsibilities specified above, to keep your supervisor informed at all times about the progress of your work, and to take part in the academic life of the department.

Every research student is appointed a primary supervisor who is the person, or one of the persons, in the department best suited to give the advice and direction that he or she needs. Sometimes students will be supervised jointly by more than one person in the department, or between departments, although there will always be one principal supervisor who will be responsible for formal and administrative arrangements. In the case of joint supervision, both your supervisors should specify clearly the ways in which the sharing will operate.

During the course of your degree, your supervisor may be absent for a prolonged period. You will be assigned a deputy supervisor who will look after your work in the same way as the supervisor until she/he returns. Your supervisor should give you good warning about planned absences and organise alternate supervision.

Although a student's principal point of contact at Birkbeck is his or her supervisor(s), the department as a whole has responsibility for each student's academic progress and well-being. It exercises this responsibility through its Graduate Panel, which monitors the progress of all research students and approves transfers from MPhil to PhD status. The annual interview you have with a staff member is an opportunity for you to report on and discuss your satisfaction or dissatisfaction with your research progress, your supervision and others aspects of the school's provision for graduate study.

If you are considering applying for MPhil/PhD research in any of these areas, you are advised to contact the department about your research plan before making an application.

For information about applying as a research student, read our Guide for Applicants.

• Anthony Bale, MA, MA, DPhil: Medieval English literature, especially Lydgate; medieval popular culture and popular religion; book history, marginalia and histories of reading; medieval Jewish history, Jewish–Christian relations and the history of antisemitism; medieval pilgrimage culture and travel writing, especially Mandeville.
• Heike Bauer, MA, PhD: Discourses of modernity; feminism; histories and theories of sexuality and gender, especially in relation to sexology; Lesbian and gay writing; Queer and feminist fiction; Race and sexuality; The fin de siècle; Translation theory and cultural exchange; Victorian England and Germany; Victorian science and literature.
• Julia Bell, MA: Creative writing.
• Nicola Bown, BA, MA, DPhil: The supernatural in literature and art; nineteenth-century literature and art; nineteenth-century science photography; relationships between literature, the visual arts and science; interdisciplinarity.
• Joe Brooker, BA, MA, PhD: Irish writing; modernism; contemporary British culture.
• Carolyn Burdett, BA, MA, DPhil: Fin-de-siècle literature, culture and society; Victorian emotions; the Victorian novel; nineteenth-century feminism; science (especially Darwinian evolution and psychology) and literature.
• Luisa Cale, Letters Degree Rome, PhD, DPhil: Romantic period literature, culture and public sphere; visual culture and theory; cultures of collecting; visual forms and sites of textual transmission; translation; reader response.
• Professor Russell Celyn Jones, BA, MA: Creative writing.
• Stephen Clucas, BA, PhD: Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English and European Intellectual History; the history of Renaissance magic; Renaissance philosophy; Renaissance mythography; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophical poetry.
• Professor Steven Connor, BA, DPhil: Nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature and literary theory; cultural history; contemporary culture; science and culture.
• Isabel Davis, BA, MA, PhD: Late medieval and Renaissance literature and culture; sexual domestic ethics.
• Professor Alison Finlay, BA, BPhil, DPhil: Old Icelandic sagas and skaldic poetry; Old English poetry.
• Professor Hilary Fraser, BA, DPhil: Nineteenth-century literature and cultural history; Victorian art criticism; history and aesthetic of women's writing; the Victorian periodical press.
• Anna Hartnell, BA, MA, PhD: Twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature and culture, with a special focus on race, nation and religion; post-colonial and diasporic literatures; literary and cultural responses to ‘the contemporary’, particularly perceived moments of rupture and crisis;
• Professor Esther Leslie, BA, MA, DPhil: Critical theory and the Frankfurt School, especially Walter Benjamin; European modernism and avant-garde; Marxism; science, technology and material culture; animation; situationist theory and psychogeography.
• Professor Roger Luckhurst, BA, MA, PhD: Late nineteenth-century literature and pseudo-science; modernism; science fiction; literary theory; contemporary literature and culture.
• Kate McLoughlin, MA, MPhil, MSt, DPhil, ARCM, LGSM, PGDipLATHE: Twentieth-century British and American literature; war writing (all periods); Modernism; comparative literature; women's writing.
• Aoife Monks, BA, PhD: Cross-dressing in contemporary theatre; impersonation in performance; Irishness in performance; theatre studies; performance theory.
• Mpalive Msiska, BA, MA, PhD: Post-colonial theory and literature; post-colonial life-writing; African literature; cultural identity; reception theory; popular culture; Wole Soyinka.
• Louise Owen, BA, MA, PhD: Contemporary theatre and performance; histories of community art, theatre and performance in Britain; cultural policy; globalisation and culture; performance and public space; feminism and gender.
• Ana Parejo Vadillo, PhD: Victorian and fin-de-siècle London; fin de siècle literature; Victorian travel and technologies; any aspect of Victorian poetry; women and Victorian cities; the country and the city; omnibuses; railways; Amy Levy, Alice Meynell, Michael Field, Christina Rossetti, Oscar Wilde, Arthur Symons; decadent and aestheticist writing by both men and women. 
• Professor William Rowe, BA, PhD: Modern British and American poetry and poetics; cultural theory.
• Laura Salisbury, BA, MA, PhD: Samuel Beckett; modernist and contemporary fiction; modernity, postmodernity and the contemporary; post-structuralism; nineteenth- and twentieth-century philosophies of temporality; twentieth-century neurological discourses.
• Adam Smyth, BA, MA, PhD: Literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in particular autobiographical writing; cultures of manuscript and print; and the circulation and evolution of poetry between different readers and different forms of publication.
• Carol Watts, MA, DPhil: Eighteenth-century and contemporary literature and culture; gender and writing; contemporary poetry and poetics; cultural theory; American literature; film.
• Joanne Winning, MA, PhD: Modernisms, especially female and lesbian modernism; critical and cultural theory in the twentieth century; theories of gender and sexuality; lesbian subjectivities and cultural production; psychoanalysis and its theories; twentieth-century and contemporary Australian and Scottish literature and culture; relations between illness, language and the clinical encounter; medical humanities.
• Professor Susan Wiseman, BA, PhD: Literature and culture 1500-1700, particularly the English Civil War; gender and writing (including women's writing); Renaissance drama; early modern colonial encounters.

• You can apply at any time during the year. Students who wish to be considered for AHRC and other funding need to apply early, by the end of January 2012 for entry in October 2012.