Research opportunities in English Language and English Literature are available for either full-time or part-time study, and are offered at all levels, enabling you to be innovative, critical and original.
In English Language, our teaching staff’s research expertise covers Critical Discourse Analysis, Language Variation and Change, Language and Identity, Rhetoric, Language and Ecology, Ecolinguistics, Sociolinguistics, Language and Gender, Dialectology and New Media Literacy. In English Literature, our teaching staff’s research expertise ranges from the Renaissance to the present and in particular boasts extensive supervision experience in contemporary writing and theory. Topics include Renaissance and Caroline drama, 19th-century literature and culture, textual editing, children’s literature, American literature, women’s writing and psychoanalysis. We welcome especially research proposals on regional writers.
English Language and Literature enjoy an established research reputation, having been recognised for our world-leading and internationally excellent research output in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise. We also offer our students a strong and supportive postgraduate community. Along with our libraries and University Archives, we offer postgraduate students some first-class resources, such as the Dymock Poets Archive, containing manuscripts, first editions and other materials relating to Robert Frost, Lascelles Abercrombie, Edward Thomas, Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Gibson and Eleanor Farjeon. Scholarly interest in these important regional writers has been rekindled in recent years, and in 1998 the Department of Humanities founded the Cyder Press to reprint long out-of-print or little known works by these poets and other writers with regional, literary or period connections.
The Department of Humanities maintains close links with the Cheltenham Festival of Literature and sponsors the annual Laurie Lee Memorial Lecture in tribute to this famous Gloucestershire writer. Cheltenham’s vibrant cultural life enriches our research environment. We offer visiting lectures and seminars across the university, and you will be invited to contribute to these events. You will be encouraged to attend and participate in research conferences. You’ll be well supported by your supervisory team and can expect regular tutorials with supervisors, combined with peer group seminars and discussions.
Interdisciplinary study
We offer opportunities for interdisciplinary research within Humanities and across the university. Our system of using a supervisory team, as opposed to an individual supervisor, makes this mode of study particularly appropriate. Applications for Interdisciplinary Research Degrees in Creative Writing and in other areas listed under individual staff entries opposite are
also possible.
Training in Research Methods
All research students who have not completed a relevant Masters Degree, or other appropriate research methods training, are required to complete two core modules of the Master of Research (MRes).
Entry requirements
- you will normally need an Honours Degree of upper second class or above from a UK university in a subject area relevant to the proposed research topic
- in exceptional circumstances, the University will consider applications from mature nongraduates with experience of undertaking research. Registration may be for an MA by Research, an MPhil or a PhD
- candidates with a recent Masters qualification in a relevant subject, which contained appropriate research methods training, may register for a PhD directly. Masters by Research and MPhil students have the possibility of transfer to a PhD.
Staff offering supervision
Dr Rebecca Bailey MA PhD
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Early Modern literature; textual editing; recusancy; Caroline drama.
Charlotte Beyer Cand.Mag. MA PhD
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Contemporary literature; Crime Fiction; women’s writing; postcolonial and black British literature; Margaret Atwood; Willa Cather; literary journalism; life-writing
Professor Peter Childs BA MA PhD ILTM
Professor of Modern English Literature
Postcolonial Writing; Modernism; Twentieth-Century Fiction
Kirsten Daly BA PhD
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Byron; Romanticism; 18th Century Literature
John Hughes BA DPhil
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Literary Theory; Hardy; Wordsworth; 19th Century Literature; Philosophy & Literature
Jonathan Marshall BA (Hons) PhD
Senior Lecturer in English Language
Sociolinguistics, language variation and change, social dialectology, dialect contact and levelling, international varieties of English
Lisa Regan BA MA PhD
Lecturer in English Literature
Women’s writing; Winifred Holtby; modernism and middlebrow; travel and empire narratives; early twentieth-century literature
Shelley Saguaro BA MA PhD
Head of Humanities
North American Literature; Literary Theory; Psychoanalysis & Writing; Gardens and Landscape in Fiction
Arran Stibbe PhD MSc BEng
Lecturer in English Language
Critical Discourse Analysis applied to Health, Politics and Ecology
Michelle Straw BA MA PhD
Lecturer in English Language
Sociolinguistics, language variation and change, dialectology, international varieties of English
Debby Thacker BA MA PhD
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Reader-Response Theory; Social Construction of Readers; Children's Literature
Hilary Weeks BA MA PhD
Senior Lecturer in English Literature
Nineteenth-century English and European literature; religion; aesthetics; architecture and urban space; travel writing