Research areas
Our research areas include contemporary writing, film studies, intercultural communication, medieval literature, Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, theoretical linguistics, and the long nineteenth century.
We invite contact from prospective postgraduate research students.
Languages, communication, translation and interpreting
Intercultural communication
We are investigating how intercultural exchanges are enacted when communication takes place between parties who share linguistic resources, but differ in the cultural backgrounds and assumptions they bring to bear upon the communication. Our interests include communication in commercial for profit settings, intergenerational communication with family and friends, institutional communication and communication in transnational contexts, resulting from globalisation.
Researchers
Theoretical linguistics
Our research combines the investigation of grammatical categories in a broad sample of languages with the use of explicit formal and statistical frameworks for the expression of typological and theoretical generalisations.
Researchers
Dr Matthew Baerman, Dr Oliver Bond, Dr Nadežda Christopher, Dr Marina Chumakina, Professor Greville G. Corbett, Penny Everson, Dr Timothy Feist, Dr Michael Franjieh, Dávid Győrfi, Dr Steven Kaye, Lisa Mack, Dr Jérémy Pasquereau and Dr Helen Sims-Williams.
Literature and creative writing
Contemporary writing
Our research in contemporary writing is diverse and includes both literary-critical and creative work. In this area, our research interests and expertise are focused on contemporary literature and its aesthetic, literary-theoretical, cultural, ethical, and political contexts. Our approach to contemporary writing insists on the interconnection between creative artists and literary critics/theorists, and assesses the work of living writers, the tradition and future of innovative writing, the environment and climate change, the nature of publishing as an innovative and radical political enterprise, medical humanities, literature and the body, questions of literary and political freedom, and distinctions between genre and literary fiction.
Researchers
Dr Lucy Bell, Dr Helen Hughes, Dr Adeline Johns-Putra, Dr Allan Kilner-Johnson, Dr Donna McCormack, Prof Bran Nicol, Dr Stephen Mooney, Dr Angela Szczepaniak, Dr Paul Vlitos and Prof Marion Wynne-Davies.
Film studies
We are researching a range of specialist topics within the areas of cinema studies and visual studies, including issues of gender, the interface between music and the cinema, documentary film and media, genre cinema, cognitive analysis of the moving image, and animation studies.
Researchers
Dr Bella Honess Roe, Dr Helen Hughes, Prof Bran Nicol, Dr Maria Poulaki and Prof Phil Powrie.
Medieval literature
We are exploring the intersection between medieval literature, women’s writing, gender and sexuality. We have special interests in women’s literary culture in England from 650-1150, in queer theory and medieval literature, and in cultural, scholarly and religious interactions between East and West, including medieval western representations of Islam.
Researchers
Dr Amy Morgan and Prof Diane Watt.
Shakespeare and Renaissance drama
We are examining the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries in a range of contexts, including political and moral philosophy, performance, cognitive psychology, early modern history, literary theory, historiography, and gender.
Researchers
The long nineteenth century
We are researching Romantic literature, Victorian literature and culture, fin-de-siècle writing and the arts, and the literature, culture and politics of the early twentieth century. Our interests range across literary genres and forms, with particular research highlights in travel writing and mobility in both the Romantic and Victorian eras, and in Victorian poetry, popular fiction, theatre, sensation fiction, esotericism and the occult, French political exiles in Britain and anarchist transnationalism between 1880 and 1914, and the intersection between writing and sculpture.
Researchers
Dr Constance Bantman, Dr Allan Kilner-Johnson, Dr Charlotte Mathieson, Dr Beth Palmer, Prof Patricia Pulham, Dr Lucy Ella Rose and Dr Carl Thompson.