Information on postgraduate research for PhD applicants
Several of our staff co-supervise doctoral students. PhD students may be supervised by faculty in the Schools of English or Education, depending on their area of ELT research, and are part of the wider Doctoral School at Sussex. Applications for both MA and PhD study (1+3 years) are welcome.
You can read more about some current doctoral students.
Research interests
Many of our staff are research-active and we run regular research seminars and a bulletin of activities Language Pedagogy Principles Practice. Please browse the individual staff profiles for further details.
Andrew Blair
Teacher education and development; second language acquisition; English as an international language and World Englishes; phonology and pronunciation; research methods in language education.
Jennifer Book
Teacher training; materials development; young learners; English for academic purposes; technology in language teaching and learning.
Yolanda Cerdá
Sociolinguistics: language and media, language and gender, discourse, EL teacher training, English for academic purposes, teaching and learning, cross-cultural / intercultural communication, languages and cultures, academic development.
Alison Chisholm
English for academic purposes; English language and study skills support for international students in Higher Education; teacher training.
Rachel Cole
Diagnostic assessment methods to identify student needs; internationalisation of Higher Education; study skills for international students; literature in language pedagogy.
Andrea Dalton
Contemporary German literature, especially the work of W. G. Sebald, intertextuality, photography and ideology. Literature that includes detailed narrative case histories, particularly the works of Oliver Sacks and A. R. Luria.
Brigitte Diplock
Language acquisition and origins; European cultures and politics, literature, film, theatre and history.
María-Eugenia Greco
Latin-American literature; bilingualism; foreign language teaching methodology.
James Greenough
Second language acquisition and theories of learning; teacher training and development; lexical approaches to language pedagogy; English for academic purposes; technology in language teaching and learning.
Luis de Juan
Theory of literature; contemporary Spanish novel; film adaptation of literature.
Aaron Kahn
Golden Age Spanish literature, history and culture, particularly the expression of political thought in various genres of literature.
Yves Le Juen
Doctoral: Remedial Educational Psycholinguistics; Applied Linguistics of French and English; C18 Franco-Irish diplomatic and clerical relations; Language, gender and sexuality.
Ambra Moroncini
Italian Renaissance Literature and Art during the Reformation: the interrelationship of poetry, culture and religion in Renaissance Italy, with particular regard to Michelangelo's and Vittoria Colonna's poetry.
Benedict O'Donohoe
Existentialism, especially the work of Jean-Paul Sartre, but also that of Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus.
Jeremy Page
Testing and assessment; uses of literature in language teaching; teacher training; intercultural teaching and learning; curriculum development; ELT management.
Roberta Piazza
Discourse studies and pragmatics, linguistic stylistics and sociolinguistics especially news analysis, dramatic and cinematic discourse, academic discourse, personal narrative.
Silvia Taylor
The use of Web 2.0 for teaching and learning languages. The Intercultural Competence Model in modern languages. Bilingualism and acculturation in children. History of European Art in the 19th & 20th century.
Simon Williams
Teaching English for academic purposes; testing and assessment; approaches to listening skills development; phonology.
Jules Winchester
Sociolinguistics; intercultural communication, teaching and learning; language and identity; linguistic politeness; English for academic purposes.
Ray de Witt
Teacher training; English for specific purposes; testing and assessment; IELTS materials development.