English Literature

Research groups

We see postgraduate study as a vital component of our research culture, with students bringing their own ideas and initiatives to fruition and engaging in research conversations with their fellow students and academic staff.

Postgraduates take part in organising conferences and study days, play leading roles in departmental and faculty-based online journals (the Bristol Journal of English Studies, and Harts and Minds), and are active in research clusters and reading groups. The successful completion of an innovative research project, with the guidance of demanding and stimulating supervisors, remains at the heart of postgraduate study. We aim to deliver that outcome, but we also want your experience to be enriched by wider academic contacts and by focused, helpful professional development.

All of the department's researchers have interests that coincide with (but are not limited to) four major areas:

• Poetry and Poetics
• Pre-modern Literature and Cultures of the Book (material and digital)
• Literature, Science and Medicine
• Race and Gender in Global Contexts

In addition, the Department has a significant presence in major research centres: the Centre for Medieval Studies, which organises research seminars and conferences and maintains international research links through the Worldwide Universities Network; the Bristol Poetry Institute, which draws on the department's established strength in this field; and the interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Colonial and Postcolonial Societies.

The departmental research seminar, which meets throughout the academic session, is the principal forum for academic staff and graduate students to present and discuss their recent research. At each session there is a mix of speakers from outside Bristol, graduate students and members of staff. Two annual lectures - the Churchill Lecture and the Tucker-Cruse Lecture - also bring distinguished scholars from outside the University; many other events are organised within the Faculty of Arts through BIRTHA (Bristol Institute for the Arts and Humanities), and across the University by the IAS (Institute for Advanced Studies), a major forum for interdisciplinary research.

A notable recent development in the Faculty of Arts has been the formation of research clusters in fields as diverse as the sea, the history of the book, colonialism and postcolonialism, medical humanities and digital humanities. These research clusters bring together scholars from different disciplines to share their research, devise innovative research projects and give interdisciplinarity a real basis in academic practice.

Careers

A large number of graduates from this programme develop careers in higher education or work on high-level research projects in the field of English literature; some graduates take up careers in freelance writing and editing.