The School of English offers doctoral supervision across a wide range of literary, performative and linguistic subjects leading to the award of a PhD or an MPhil. We have notable strengths in:
- early modern literature and culture
- modernism
- 20th-century and contemporary English and American writing
- critical and cultural theory
- film, text and image
- colonial and postcolonial writing
- drama and performance
- English language and linguistics
- critical and creative writing
- sexuality and sexual dissidence.
The University Library is rich in research collections, for example the Woolf Papers, the Kipling Papers and the Mass Observation Archive. The Sussex Research Hive is the Library’s designated area for researchers, open to all doctoral students and research staff. It provides private study areas, bookable meeting rooms and space for informal discussion and collaborative work.
In addition to the University facilities, the School offers designated study space for doctoral students, the Trask Library, and a bookable meeting room. It also has a comfortable social space, equipped for projections and for holding seminars or colloquia, as well as for meeting informally over coffee.
Recently, our doctoral students have run two major conferences, In-sight: Visualising Theory and Polyhistoricon: The Uses and Abuses of History in Early Modern Europe, and have established Excursions, an online journal and forum that encourages discussion across the arts and sciences.
We offer a substantial number of studentships for UK/EU students supported by the AHRC and by the University. In addition, the School of English offers a number of doctoral bursaries for overseas students. Further information can be found on the University's funding database.
For more information about our postgraduate research degrees, refer to our 2013 Postgraduate Prospectus and Funding for postgraduate study.