Skip to main content

Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

The Department of Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies

About us

The Department of Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies is a vibrant, student-centred, and friendly Department that brings together the disciplines of Modern Languages and Cultures, Art History and Visual Culture, and the Language Centre. In the 2021 REF 83% or our research was deemed to be world leading or internationally excellent and we were ranked joint first for our impact, which was 100% world-leading or internationally excellent. We routinely score highly in the NSS, where students praise our stimulating teaching and friendly environment.

Our research and teaching covers literary and visual cultures from the Middle Ages to the present with a particular emphasis on interdisciplinarity and comparative studies. Our range of interests is global, incorporating research and teaching for example on Lusophone cultures, Latin America, and francophone cultures. Across the Department as a whole there is expertise in nations and migration, gender and sexuality, green matters, classical reception, memory studies and publishing and creative industries. Within Visual Studies you can study both the history of art and more recent visual practices – extending the analysis of visual forms from the historical right through to areas of modern and contemporary visual production, consumption, and thinking. We are also proud of the range of languages we cover – you can take Chinese, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish as part of your degree programme, and can now study all of these from beginners’ level.

In addition the Language Centre offers a huge variety of courses from Ukrainian to Latin, from Korean to British Sign Language. Our postgraduate programmes range from courses on curation to advanced translation and comparative literature, and are expanding to include courses on intercultural communication. Our graduates are enquiring, imaginative, critical thinkers. Whatever pathways you choose through your degree programme, you will be welcomed as part of a supportive and engaged community of researchers and learners.

Our Leadership Team

Latest department news