The Sussex English faculty has an international reputation, attracting outstanding students from all over the world. The diverse research skills of members of faculty and their commitment to progressive critical analysis place Sussex at the forefront of English studies in the UK, developing and extending the boundaries of the subject. In the UK government's 2001 Research Assessment Exercise, English at Sussex was awarded a grade 5.

English faculty edit many well known journals and book series (see links on right), including:

• Arden Critical Companions - The Arden Critical Companions explore a variety of different critical approaches to Shakespeare and his plays and provide fresh insight to the student, scholar and theatre-goer. Engaging, lucid and readable, the Arden Critical Companions make leading contemporary scholarship accessible and provide fresh insight to the student, scholar and theatre-goer. By putting Shakespeare's work into context, highlighting the culture in which he lived and worked, and examining the different ways in which his plays have been interpreted, each volume helps the reader develop a richer understanding of both individual plays and his work as a whole. General Editors: Andrew Hadfield, University of Sussex and Paul Hammond, University of Leeds.
• Early Modern Literature in History Series - Within the period 1520-1740, this series discusses many different kinds of writing, both within and outside the established canon. The volumes may employ different theoretical perspectives, but they share an historical awareness and an interest in seeing their texts in lively negotiation with their own and successive cultures. Series Editors: Andrew Hadfield, Univeristy of Sussex, UK and Cedric Brown, University of Reading, UK.
• Hegel (from September 2007, Katerina Deligiorgi will edit the Hegel Bulletin) - The Hegel Society of Great Britain (HSGB) is a forum for those interested in the work of the German philosopher G.W.F.Hegel (1770-1831), his predecessors and contemporaries, his followers and his critics.
• Lang Series on Gender, Sexuality, and Culture - This book series, based at Peter Lang Publishing in New York, is a forum for the critical investigation and analysis of the contested terrain between culture, gender, and sexuality. The books collected in the Series are productive of new directions in queer studies and gender studies as they critically examine the relation(s) between culture and gender and/or sexuality in a range of historical periods, past as well as contemporary. Some projects retheorise gender in relation to, or its constitution through, sexuality, race, class, or culture. Other books are studies of sexuality and sexual identity that produce new understandings of gender, or are broad inquiries into culture that raise compelling implications for the ways in which we think about gender and sexuality at the beginning of a new century. The Series is edited by William J Spurlin.
• Renaissance Studies - Renaissance Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal which publishes articles and editions of documents on all aspects of Renaissance history and culture. The articles range over the history, art, architecture, religion, literature, and languages of Europe during the period. Edited by Andrew Hadfield.
• World Picture is edited by Brian Price, Meghan Sutherland and John David Rhodes. It is devoted to philosophical and theoretical inquiry, with a strong emphasis on the visual, the cinematic, the televisual, and contemporary art. It appears twice annually and is online and open access.
• The Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory - The Year's Work in Critical & Cultural Theory provides a narrative bibliography of work in the field of critical and cultural theory, recording significant debates and issues of interest in a broad field of research in the humanities and social sciences. As the field of critical and cultural studies expands, so the range and scope of the volume grow, and volumes now include chapters on Queer theories and cultures and Film Studies. Future volumes will continue this development, particularly in the field of cultural theory and new areas developing in the USA and Australia.

The School of English hosts the following research centres: 

• Centre for Modernist Studies; activities include conferences and colloquia, bringing together expertise in literature, history, art history, music, film and media studies, modern languages and philosophy.
• Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence which promotes research and teaching in the fields of lesbian and gay studies, bisexuality, transgender, and queer theory.
• Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies
• Centre for Early Modern Studies
• Centre for Literature and Philosophy
• Centre for Modernist Studies
• Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence
• Centre for Visual Fields

Faculty in the School of English encompass a wide span of research strengths and interests that range across most periods of English literature and contemporary critical theory. Particular areas of expertise include Renaissance writing, culture and ideology, the novel from the 18th century to the present, romantic Victorian and modern poetry, and all aspects of modernism and postmodernism.

There is a strong commitment to the interdisciplinary study of literature in its historical and discursive context in relation to philosophy, history of art and the history of ideas, to post-colonial and feminist criticism, to gay and lesbian criticism and to recent developments in psychoanalytic, Marxist, post-structuralist and 'new historicist' criticism.