The Department of English in Cornwall is home to a thriving intellectual community, and we welcome proposals from prospective research students. All members of staff are active researchers, with interests encompassing literature in English from the early Renaissance to the contemporary. This variety is reflected in the topics currently being studied by research students, which range from folklore to Modernist fiction, from psychoanalysis to eighteenth-century women’s fiction.
Research students are encouraged to participate in the Department’s regular research seminar series, which involve staff, postgraduates and visiting speakers. Research students are also entitled to use dedicated workspace within the Department and the Departmental library.
There is a special emphasis on the relationship between literature and place, in which our academic staff have developed a distinct and respected research profile. We are the home of the Exeter Centre for Literature, Identity, Place and Sustainability (ECLIPSE). The Centre facilitates interdisciplinary research into literary representations and constructions of identity and place, characterising this relationship in broad and imaginative terms, by dealing with literatures (ie writings, oral history and folklore) and other discourses of myth, memory, and history, and how these relate to particular environments, whether natural or built.
The PhD programme provides the opportunity for you to participate in our highly successful teaching assistantship scheme. The scheme offers incoming PhD students the opportunity to participate in a training programme leading to a recognised qualification in higher education teaching.
