Find out more about self-funded PhD projects in areas where we already have supervisors active and engaged in the research topic in our School of Humanities and Social Sciences.
We seek PhD projects concerned with the effects of context on linguistic representation.
Context could mean the surrounding text or discourse in which a linguistic expression occurs, or it could mean the wider extralinguistic situation in which the language is being used.
Representation includes the form and/or meaning of linguistic expressions, including morphosyntactic, phonological or phonetic form. For example, you might be interested in how context affects intonation, or meaning, or the choice between different syntactic structures.
The supervisory team has expertise in syntax, morphology, phonetics and phonology, and in a range of languages including English and the Romance languages.
To discuss your interests, please email Melanie Bell at [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Prof Eugene Giddens
Dr Matthew Day
Prof Sarah Brown
Dr Cassie Gorman
We seek PhD projects concerned with editing the poetry, prose, or drama of the early modern period (roughly 1550-1700). We have experience in leading projects across Elizabethan, Jacobean, Caroline, and Restoration print and manuscript culture, and would welcome proposals particularly in the drama 1580-1642, women’s writing 1640-1700, translations, and travel.
The supervisory team has participated in several large editorial projects: on plays (The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson; The Oxford James Shirley); manuscript documents (Malone Society); travel narratives (Oxford Hakluyt); and translations (MHRA Tudor Translations).
We welcome proposals for old-spelling or modernised critical editions, with full apparatus including commentary, textual notes, and introductions.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Dr Jonathan Davis
Prof John Gardner
Prof Rohan McWilliam
Dr Will Tullett
We as a team supervise PhDs on almost any aspect of Historical and Literary cultures covering the span from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.
The team has a great deal of supervisory experience and on a range of topics to include even musical, theatrical and technical cultures. Past PhDs have been on Edmund Burke; Lord Byron, William Blake; nineteenth and twentieth century theatre; Frances Burney; the Sea Gothic; Dickens; Detective fiction; Percy Shelley; Fantasy fiction; Vegetarian activists; Percy Grainger; Frederick Delius; Robert Southey; working class politics; and the Russian Revolution. We are a flexible team!
You can contact the team at:
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects concerned with how people vary in their use of language, or how the same person's language use varies in different situations. Such variation might involve differences in the words and phrases used in spoken or written text as well as variation in the phonetic or phonological form of spoken language.
The causes of variation could be stylistic or dialectal, or related to a range of sociolinguistic factors such as age, education, languages spoken etc. For example, you might be interested in how people's choice of linguistic structure varies with education level, or how vocabulary changes with age, or how the first language of bilinguals changes with increasing exposure to a second language.
The supervisory team has expertise in syntax, morphology, phonetics and phonology, and in a range of languages including English and the Romance languages.
To discuss your interests, please email Melanie Bell at [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects concerned with the link between identity and language. In particular, we are interested in projects that explore language ideologies, multilingual communities and intercultural communication.
Members of our team have led projects on attitudes towards second language accents, the perception of identity through languages, ethnolinguistic vitality in migrant communities, linguistic landscapes, intercultural pragmatics and interactional use of language using a variety of different theoretical and methodological frameworks.
You can contact the team at:
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects exploring topics related to issues of literary adaptations and afterlives. We have experience of researching and supervising a wide range of projects in this field; indicative topics include: biblical and/or classical adaptation, twenty-first century adaptations of modernist texts, and the cinematic adaptation of nineteenth-century novels.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected] or [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects investigating text technologies from the rise of the hand press to the present. We are keen to encourage experimental practice-as-research approaches, and other forms of textual scholarship, including analytical and enumerative bibliography.
Practice-as-research may include the creation of a digital edition or curated exhibit of visual texts, digital creative outputs, letterpress/typeset creative or editorial outputs, movable codices, and other forms of experimentation with text technologies old and new.
We have longstanding research expertise in paper, typesetting practice and compositor analysis, punctuation, paratext such as running titles, and digital publishing. We host three printing presses and nearly 200 cases of type and computer suites with the latest publishing software.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Dr Elizabeth Ludlow
Prof John Gardner
Prof Sarah Brown
Prof Rohan McWilliam
We seek PhD projects exploring topics related to the literature and culture of the long nineteenth-century. We welcome proposals that take historical, political and/or narratological and theoretical approaches to writing of the period. We also welcome topics that cut across genres and forms.
We have experience of researching and supervising a wide range of projects across this period, including in areas relating to: women's writing; life-writing; spirituality and religion; text and illustration; and pamphlets and periodicals. We also run an active and lively Nineteenth Century Studies Unit.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Pedagogical linguistics refers to the intersection of linguistics and education. This includes both the use of theoretical and descriptive linguistics in education but also the effects of education on language (see Hudson 2020 in Pedagogical Linguistics).
Applications are welcome for any project that falls within this broad area of study, but especially projects relating to the inclusion of linguistics in language teaching including heritage language education (see Sheehan et al. 2021 in Modern Languages Open).
Depending on focus, successful applicants may also wish to join the successful Linguistics in Modern Foreign Languages project and/or the Anglia Ruskin Research Centre for Intercultural and Multilingual Studies (ARRCIMS).
Candidates will have a background in linguistics and/or education with a strong interest in the intersection between the two and ideally some experience of teaching. Depending on the nature of the project, additional supervision may be sought from colleagues in Education.
To discuss your interests, please email Melanie Bell at [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We are interested in supervising projects that deal with any aspects of poetry, to include songs, between the eighteenth and twenty-first centuries.
Our particular interests are in connections between literature and experimentation, and how that relates to individuals existing within cities, technology and disparate societal cultures. We would enjoy supervising projects that bring together any of these elements.
Previous topics supervised by members of the team include vegetarian politics; Byron; William Blake; radical poetry; Percy Shelley; James Thomson; T. S. Eliot; and Hope Mirrlees.
You can contact the team at:
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We as a team supervise PhDs on any prose covering the span from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. This can include novels, essays, letters, technical manuals or marginalia.
The team has a great deal of supervisory experience and on a range of topics to include even musical, theatrical and technical cultures. Past PhDs have been on Edmund Burke; Lord Byron, William Blake; nineteenth and twentieth century theatre; Frances Burney; the Sea Gothic; Dickens; Detective fiction; Percy Shelley; Fantasy fiction; Vegetarian activists; Percy Grainger; Frederick Delius; Robert Southey; working class politics; and railways. We are a flexible team!
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected] and/or [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
The increasing availability of big data and ease of rapid large-scale data collection online are in the process of revolutionising methodologies in the study of morphosyntax. For example, data can be collected online using aural/read acceptability judgement tasks, production experiments and/or artificial language experiments (see Sheehan et al. 2018 in Glossa, 2019 in Frontiers in Psychology).
We welcome any project which involves a substantial empirical component and quantitative analysis, addressing a topic relating to the syntax of any language. Projects focusing on English or Romance languages are particularly welcome, given the research expertise of the supervision team.
Candidates will have a strong background in linguistics, with a particular interest in morphosyntax and a willingness to develop skills in quantitative analysis.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We are interested in supervising projects that deal with any aspects of Samuel Beckett’s work, to include poetry, drama, prose and letters.
Both John Gardner and Sue Wilson have published on drama and are active researchers of Beckett’s works. Previous topics supervised by members of the team include vegetarian politics, Byron, William Blake, radical poetry, Percy Shelley, James Thomson, T. S. Eliot, Moral Re-Armament Theatre, Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike in 1968; and Laibach and the Neue Slowenische Kunst.
You can contact the team at:
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Prof Eugene Giddens
Prof Sarah Brown
Dr Cassie Gorman
Dr Tiffani Angus
Dr Jeannette Baxter
We seek PhD projects exploring topics related to speculative fiction - science fiction, fantasy, and other adjacent genres such as slipstream and the New Weird.
We have experience of researching and supervising a wide range of projects in this field; indicative topics include: the intersection between classical/canonical writings and SF; post-apocalyptic fiction; surrealist writings; the works of J. G. Ballard; political science fiction; time travel; children's fantasy literature.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects concerned with the link between identity and language. In particular, we are interested in projects that explore language ideologies, multilingual communities and intercultural communication.
We seek PhD projects exploring topics related to twentieth century literature and culture. We welcome proposals that take historical, political and/or narratological and theoretical approaches to writing of the period. We also welcome topics that cut across genres and forms.
We have experience of researching and supervising a wide range of projects across this period, including in areas relating to: modernism and the avant-garde; war writing (WWI and WWII); literature and politics; women's writing; life-writing; literature of exile and migration; and science fiction.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects exploring topics related to twenty-first century literature and culture. We welcome proposals that take historical, political and/or narratological and theoretical approaches to writing of the period. We also welcome topics that cut across genres and forms.
We have experience of researching and supervising a wide range of projects across this period, including in areas relating to: women's writing, life-writing, queer theory, feminism, refugee writing, literatures of migration and exile, political science fiction.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
Over 20% of pupils in English state nurseries and schools speak a heritage language (Schools Census 2020). The study of heritage languages is now well established in the USA and Germany, but the field is underdeveloped in the UK, somewhat surprisingly given the UK’s great linguistic diversity.
Developing this field is important because it is now well documented that heritage grammars tend to be minimally different from L1 monolingual/bilingual grammars and this needs to be taken into consideration in the teaching and assessment of these varieties.
Projects are welcome which contribute to the documentation of the linguistic properties of a UK heritage language. This will ideally be a language that’s spoken widely in the East of England (Urdu, Polish, Bengali, Panjabi or Portuguese).
Projects on heritage Portuguese are particularly welcome in light of Prof Sheehan’s ongoing project, Argument Expression in UK Heritage Portuguese’, joint funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme Trust.
The ideal candidate will have a strong background in linguistics, with a particular interest in bilingualism and competence in a UK heritage language.
Working in the Anglia Ruskin Research Centre for Intercultural and Multilingual Studies, and with local schools, you will collect and analyse linguistic data informed by linguistic theory and previous work on bilingualism/language contact.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected]
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects concerned with aspects of visual narrative in art and/or film, including projects that link such narratives to literature. We especially welcome proposals that address narratological theories and methodologies.
We have experience in leading projects on visual narrative and on feminist narratologies. Nina Lübbren has published books and essays on visual narrative in nineteenth-century painting and has expertise in film history. Tory Young has published articles on feminist and queer narratology and organised the 2013 Cambridge conference on 'The Future of Feminist Narratology'.
To discuss your interests, please get in touch with Nina Lübbren at [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
We seek PhD projects exploring topics related to women's life writing from the eighteenth century to the present day.
We have experience of researching and supervising a wide range of projects in this field; indicative topics include: biographical and autobiographical practice and production, the relationship between letters and narrative, spiritual autobiography, the study of personal essays, and feminist life writing.
To discuss your interests, please email [email protected] or [email protected]
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you have an enquiry about applying for a research degree, please email [email protected]
For administrative enquiries about our research courses please email [email protected]
Responsibility for the administration of research degrees is held by the Doctoral School.
If you have an idea for a project that does not align with one of the pre-defined projects above, please contact us at [email protected]