Subject overview

Programmes

• PhD in English
• MPhil in English

The English faculty encompasses research strengths and interests that span 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 inter-disciplinary 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. 

Recent and current thesis titles 

Gossip: gender and genre from Pepys to Woolf 

Law and form: Joyce, Beckett and philosophy 

More intimate than violence: rape, representation and the civic bond 

Shakespeare and cyberspace 

Temporality in modernist literature 

The body in sickness in England 1558-1640 

Thomas Hardy’s relations with contemporary readers 

TS Eliot, mass culture and the music hall 

Virginia Woolf’s essays: a woman writer’s production of literary history 

Waking nightmares: a critical study of Ian McEwan’s novels 

Entry requirements

MPhil in English

UK entrance requirements

A Masters degree in a literary subject or another discipline relevant to your chosen area of research.

Overseas entrance requirements

If you are an international student and wish to find out if you have the necessary qualifications for this degree, please refer to Overseas qualifications.

English language requirements

IELTS 7.0, with not less than 6.5 in each section. Internet TOEFL with 95 overall, with at least 22 in Listening, 23 in Reading, 23 in Speaking and 24 in Writing.

For more information, refer to English language requirements.

PhD in English

UK entrance requirements

A Masters degree in a literary subject or another discipline relevant to your chosen area of research.

Overseas entrance requirements

If you are an international student and wish to find out if you have the necessary qualifications for this degree, please refer to Overseas qualifications.

English language requirements

IELTS 7.0, with not less than 6.5 in each section. Internet TOEFL with 95 overall, with at least 22 in Listening, 23 in Reading, 23 in Speaking and 24 in Writing.

For more information, refer to English language requirements.

Related subjects

• American studies
• Creative and critical writing
• Drama

Fees and funding

Fees

MPhil in English

Home UK/EU students: £3,900¹
Channel Island and Isle of Man students: £3,900²
Overseas students: £13,000³

¹ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
² The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
³ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.

PhD in English

Home UK/EU students: £3,900¹
Channel Island and Isle of Man students: £3,900²
Overseas students: £13,000³

¹ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
² The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.
³ The fee shown is for the academic year 2013.

Funding

The funding sources listed below are for the subject area you are viewing and may not apply to all degrees listed within it. Please check the description of the individual funding source to make sure it is relevant to your chosen degree.

Faculty interests

Faculty research interests are described briefly below and on the right. For more detailed information, visit the School of English. The following list includes all the English faculty, and other contributors to English MA degrees. 

The journals Renaissance Studies, Textual Practice, The Oxford Literary Review and The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory are edited within the School of English. 

Dr Sara Jane Bailes Contemporary experimental theatre, live art and visual practices, ideology and performance. 

Dr David Barnett Post-war European drama and theatre, post-Brechtian political theatre. 

Professor Peter Boxall Modern and contemporary fiction and drama. 

Dr Sara Crangle Co-Director of the Centre for Modernist Studies. 20th-century literature. 

Professor Brian Cummings 16th- and 17th-century literature and history. 

Dr Sue Currell American literature and culture 1890-1940, 20th-century mass culture. 

Dr Alistair Davies Modernism and post-modernism, 20th-century English and American literature. 

Dr Denise DeCaires Narain Postcolonialist writing; feminist cultural theory; contemporary women’s writing in English, especially poetry. 

Dr Matthew Dimmock 16th- and 17th-century literature and history, national identity, Islam. 

Professor Andrew Hadfield Renaissance literature and politics, Britishness, Shakespeare, Spenser, and national identity. 

Dr Doug Haynes European and American modernism, postmodernism. 

Dr Margaret Healy Renaissance literature and culture, the political stage, Shakespeare, Dekker, medicine and literature. 

Professor Tom Healy Head of School. 16th-and 17th-century writing and cultural history. 

Dr Vicky Lebeau The convergence of psychoanalysis, literature and cinema; and feminist theory. 

Dr William McEvoy British playwriting and directing; theatre, writing and ethics. 

Dr Daniel Kane 20th-century American literature, the avant-garde, poetry since the 1960s. 

Dr Maria Lauret American feminist fiction and theory; race and ethnicity. 

Professor Stephanie Newell West African literature and popular culture, postcolonial theory. 

Dr Rachel O’Connell Late 19th- and early 20th-century British literature; gender, queer, and disability studies. 

Dr Catherine Packham 18th-century literature and philosophy; political economy and moral philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment. 

Dr Jason Price Popular theatre histories and practices; politics and performance. 

Dr Vincent Quinn Lesbian and gay studies, the history of sexuality, 18th-century studies, Irish studies, and the history and theory of biography. 

Dr John David Rhodes Italian cinema, modernist and avant-garde cinemas of Europe and the US, queer art cinema. 

Professor Nicholas Royle Modern literature and literary theory, especially deconstruction and psychoanalysis; the uncanny. 

Martin Ryle 19th- and 20th-century fiction; the politics of ‘culture’, with especial reference to education; and topographical and travel writing. 

Dr Minoli Salgado Postcolonial literature and theory, memory and migrant identity, the short story, Rushdie, and Ondaatje. 

Professor Lindsay Smith 19th-century literature and painting; photography in Victorian culture. 

Dr Keston Sutherland Contemporary and 20th-century English and American poetry; Marxism and Frankfurt School critical theory. 

Professor Jenny Bourne Taylor 19th-century literature and culture; literature and science; illegitimacy and the family. 

Dr Pamela Thurschwell Co-Director of the Centre for Modernist Studies. Psychoanalysis, 19th- and 20th-century interest in the supernatural. 

Professor Norman Vance 19th-century literature, religion and society; Anglo-Irish literature. 

Professor Marcus Wood Satire in the romantic period, the representation of slavery, and colonial and postcolonial literature and theory. 

Careers and perspectives

Our graduates have gone on to careers in teaching and education, publishing, website production and marketing, journalism and writing, the charity sector, and NGOs. A significant number of our graduates go on to careers in academia. 

Amy's student perspective

‘Working in the Research Department at Shakespeare's Globe throughout my time as a PhD student at University of Sussex was the experience of a lifetime. I was able to research aspects of Shakespeare's plays performed at the Globe, whilst simultaneously formulating my ideas about the plays for my thesis.

'Whether working on a question from an actor or director, or attending a lecture series, or even just researching Elizabethan theatrical documents, the work I was able to do at Shakespeare's Globe influenced my thinking and reaction to Shakespeare's canon. At Shakespeare's Globe, the focus is understandably more on the performative elements in the plays, and this encouraged me to consider (implicit) stage directions, props, costumes, and performance choices more than ever before in my research for my PhD.

‘In the same way, my work at University of Sussex always influenced the dramaturgy and other research I was asked to do at Shakespeare's Globe. A large part of any PhD is finding and compiling information about the subject, and the research skills that I developed and honed at Sussex allowed me to work efficiently and creatively at Shakespeare's Globe. The opportunity to work in a creative, performative, live theatre, and an academically-rigorous university at the same time provided a well-rounded and exciting experience that I will never forget.’

Amy Kenny
PhD in English

School and contacts