English
20th Century and Contemporary Studies
- Caribbean literature and popular culture
- Postcolonial literatures and cultures
- Postcolonial theory
- Diasporic and transcultural writing
- Black British and British Asian writing
- Crime writing and representations of crime
- Representations of community
- American poetry 1850 to the present
- British poetry 1850 to the present
- Contemporary poetry - mainstream and/or experimental
- Any aspect of poetic form, metre, or genre
- Any aspect of autobiography in English, post-1800
- “Ethnic” American writing
- Canadian literature
- North American indigenous writing
- North American queer writing
- Contemporary reading communities
- Contemporary North American language poetry
- Performance art and the theatre
- Literature and/of/as protest or crisis
- North American border fiction and border studies
- British Black and British Asian literary cultures
- Creative-critical and critical-creative writing
- Regional writing and publishing
- Rural racism
- The postcolonial countryside
- Travel writing
- American novels and short stories of the 20th/21st century
- Representations of adolescence in written and visual culture
- J. D. Salinger and his contemporaries, including John Cheever, Shirley Jackson, Richard Yates, Carson McCullers, William Styron
- Representations of HIV/AIDS in written and visual culture
- American modernist poetry
- Graphic novels
- Postwar American writing
- American film 1945-2000
- 1950s and 1960s American culture
- American and European modernism
- American intellectual history
- Transatlantic literature and culture
- The avant-garde
- American visual culture
- Literary adaptations
- Disability and modern/contemporary culture
- American ethnicity and race
- American pragmatism
- History of American psychology and psychoanalysis
- Genre
- The 'state of the nation' novel
- Jewish-American fiction
- Fictions of New York City
- Lost Generation writers
- Transatlantic literary and cultural relations
- American regional writing
- Contemporary women's writing
- Contemporary British fiction
- Queer fiction
- Masculinity
- The 1980s
- Joe Orton
- Literature and war
- 20th-century narrative fiction
- Art and aesthetics
- Literature and psychoanalysis
- Popular music
- 20th-century British Catholic writing - e.g., Greene, Spark, Waugh, etc
- 20th-century non-fiction
- Modernism
- Modern literature and aesthetics/theology
- Theory of biography
- Modern scholarly editing
- Writing from and about the First and Second World Wars
- Holocaust writing
- Mid-20th-century novel
- Non-canonical authors, the ‘middlebrow’, and detective fiction
- English varieties and variation in English around the world
- Language variation and change
- Quantitative sociolinguistics
- Creative writing
- Colonial, postcolonial, and cross-cultural writing
Applied Linguistics and TESOL
Research areas
- Second language teacher education
- Second language learner autonomy/teacher autonomy
- Classroom-based assessment in TESOL
- Programme evaluation in TESOL
Potential topics/projects
- Promoting second language learner autonomy in and beyond the classroom in TESOL contexts
- Teacher learning in novice/early-years TESOL professionals
- Investigations of experienced TESOL teachers’ pedagogical knowledge
- Investigations of formative assessment practices in TESOL contexts
- Investigations of teacher learning through Lesson Study in TESOL contexts
- Teacher-led programme evaluation in TESOL context
Research areas
- Language testing and assessment
- Educational assessment
Potential topics/projects
- Construct definition and operationalization
- Designing test specifications
- Task design, prototyping and piloting
- Content analysis for EAP or specific purposes testing
- Investigating task difficulty
- Designing rating scales for performance assessment
- Interface issues in computer based testing
- Validation
- Pragmatic notions of validity and the philosophy of educational assessment
- Ethics and standards in language testing practice
- Test use, political mandates and philosophy
Research areas and potential topics/projects
- Silence in second language (L2) or general education contexts
- Psychological aspects of instructed language learning, particularly in relation to anxiety and emotion in the L2 classroom
- Social anxiety and foreign language anxiety in L2 and higher education
- Teacher emotions and emotional labour in language teaching
- L2 teacher motivation
- Language learner engagement
- Group dynamics in language classrooms
- Higher education in Japan
Research areas
- Materials development in language teaching
- Exploring expertise in materials design
- Evaluating materials
- Exploring the development of a new coursebook series
- Discourse analysis of spoken language
- Lesson study and teacher professional development
- Methodology in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
- Intercultural communication
Potential topics/projects
- Materials development in language teaching (e.g. Exploring expertise in materials design; evaluating materials; exploring the development of a new coursebook series)
- Discourse analysis of spoken language (e.g. how teachers co-construct pedagogical knowledge through talk)
- Lesson study and teacher professional development
- Methodology in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (particularly developing speaking and listening skills)
- Intercultural communication (e.g. developing intercultural pragmatic competence)
Research areas
- Workplace discourse
- Phonology and pronunciation teaching
- Intercultural business communication
- Computer Assisted Language Learning
- English as an International Language
Potential topics/projects
- Issues of participation and performance in international (business) interactions
- Pronunciation and intelligibility in English as a Lingua Franca contexts
- The use of technologies to enhance (distance) language learning
Research areas
- Corpus linguistics: e.g. corpus design and compilation, annotation, collocation, keywords analysis, other methodological aspects
- English grammar, lexis and lexicogrammar
- Variation and change in current or recent English: particularly grammatical and lexical change in recent centuries and decades
- Register analysis, including spoken, written and new media language
Potential topics/projects
- Corpus linguistics (methodology, application and analysis)
- English grammar and lexicogrammar
- Language change in English
- Using corpora for language learning/teaching
- Spoken, written and new media language
- Regional and social variation in English, including British and American English, World Englishes, and regional English varieties
Research areas
- Language learning
- English grammar
- Grammar teaching and learning
- Academic writing
- Teacher grammar awareness
Potential topics/projects
- Online and face-to-face engagement with language
- Complex dynamic processes in language teaching and learning (e.g. in collaborative group work)
- Language awareness approaches to language teaching
- Teachers’ language awareness
- Teaching/learning of tense and aspect
English Language and Linguistics
- Old English language and literature
- Pre-Christian religion and conversion in the Germanic-speaking world
- English place names
- Onomastics
- English varieties and variation in English around the world
- Language variation and change (lexical, morpho-syntactic and discourse-pragmatic)
- Quantitative sociolinguistics
Gender and Sexuality
- Gender and sexuality in medieval literature
- Old English and Old Norse literature
- Reception of the middle Ages in literature and film
- Caribbean literature and popular culture
- Postcolonial literatures and cultures
- Postcolonial theory
- Diasporic and transcultural writing
- Black British and British Asian writing
- Crime writing and representations of crime
- Representations of community
- British Black and British Asian Literary cultures
- Travel writing
- British Muslim writing
- Kurdish literature in English
- Rural racism
- Regional writing and publishing, especially Manchester and the midlands
- Postcolonial feminism
- American novels and short stories of the 20th/21st century
- Representations of adolescence in written and visual culture
- J. D. Salinger and his contemporaries, including John Cheever, Shirley Jackson, Richard Yates, Carson McCullers, William Styron
- Representations of HIV/AIDS in written and visual culture
- American modernist poetry
- Graphic novels
- Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their circle
- Writing of the 1790s
- Religious dissent in the 18th and 19th centuries, including but not limited to Unitarianism
- Life writing, biography, and autobiography in the 18th and 19th centuries
- Contemporary women's writing
- Contemporary British fiction
- Queer fiction
- Masculinity
- The 1980s
- Writing from and about the First and Second World Wars
- Holocaust writing
- Mid 20th-century novel
- Non-canonical authors, the ‘middlebrow’, and detective fiction
History of the Book
- Mid- to Late Victorian Literature
- Literature and Science
- Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Writing
- 19th Century Journalism and Print Culture
- Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and their Circle
- Writing of the 1790s
- Religious Dissent in the 18th and 19th Centuries, including but not limited to Unitarianism
- Life-Writing, Biography, and Autobiography in the 18th and 19th Centuries
- Editing and Textual Studies
- Renaissance and Early Modern Palaeographical Studies
- The early novel
- The history of reading
- Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century life writing
- Early modern oral and manuscript cultures
- Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century news and pamphleteering
- Pepys, Defoe, Swift
- John Donne
- Editing Texts
- Renaissance Medicine and Illness Writing
- Print Publication
- History of Reading
Life Writing
- American poetry 1850 to the present
- British poetry 1850 to the present
- Contemporary poetry - mainstream and/or experimental
- Any aspect of poetic form, metre, or genre
- Any aspect of autobiography in English, post-1800
- Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and their circle
- Writing of the 1790s
- Religious dissent in the 18th and 19th centuries, including but not limited to Unitarianism
- Life writing, biography, and autobiography in the 18th and 19th centuries
- The early novel
- History of reading
- 17th- and early 18th-century life writing
- Oral and manuscript cultures
- News and pamphleteering
- Behn, Defoe, and Swift
- Romantic and Victorian literature, especially biographical or autobiographical writing in the period c. 1790-1900
- Biographical projects
- Drugs in literature, especially 19th Century
- Romantic and Victorian writers
- Literary culture of the 1830s
- 19th-century domesticity
- 19th-century literature and portraiture
- The Brontes
- 20th-century British Catholic writing - e.g., Greene, Spark, Waugh, etc
- 20th-century non-fiction
- Modernism
- Modern literature and aesthetics/theology
- Theory of biography
- Modern scholarly editing
- Writing from and about the First and Second World Wars
- Holocaust writing
- Mid-20th-century novel
- Non-canonical authors, the ‘middlebrow’, and detective fiction
Literature and Adolescence
- Caribbean literature and popular culture
- Black British writing
- Comparative postcolonial literature and theory
- Readerships and publishing history
- American novels and short stories of the 20th/21st century
- Representations of adolescence in written and visual culture
- J. D. Salinger and his contemporaries, including John Cheever, Shirley Jackson, Richard Yates, Carson McCullers, William Styron
- Representations of HIV/AIDS in written and visual culture
- American modernist poetry
- Graphic novels
- Renaissance and early modern literature, especially drama and poetry
- Universities and Inns of Court
- Neo-Latin literature
- Early modern translation
- Reception of the classical tradition in early modern England
Literature and War
- Literature and War
- 20th Century Narrative Fiction
- British Romantic Poetry and Prose
- Wordsworth and Byron
- Romanticism and War
- Art and Aesthetics
- Literature and Psychoanalysis
- Writing from and about the First and Second World Wars
- Holocaust Writing
- Mid 20th-Century Novel
- Non-Canonical Authors, the ‘Middlebrow’, and Detective Fiction
Literature, Art and Film
- Gender and sexuality in medieval literature
- Old English and Old Norse literature
- Reception of the middle ages in literature and film
- Medieval and Renaissance wisdom literature
- Medieval and Renaissance iconology
- Medieval and Renaissance literature and political theology/canon Law
- Medieval and Renaissance romance
- Langland, Chaucer, and the Gawain-Poet
- Influence of monasticism and the religious orders on literature, 1200-1500
- Medieval mysticism and the influence of Neo-Platonism in particular
- 19th- and 20th-century medievalism, especially James Joyce
- Post-war American writing
- American film 1945-2000
- 1950s and 1960s American culture
- American and European modernism
- American intellectual history
- Transatlantic literature and culture
- The avant-garde
- American visual culture
- Literary adaptations
- Disability and modern/contemporary culture
- American ethnicity and race
- American pragmatism
- History of American psychology and psychoanalysis
- Shakespeare and silent film
- Film adaptation of Renaissance and early modern plays
- Romantic and Victorian literature, especially biographical or autobiographical writing in the period c. 1790-1900
- Biographical projects
- Drugs in literature, especially 19th Century
- Romantic and Victorian writers
- Literary culture of the 1830s
- 19th-century domesticity
- 19th-century literature and portraiture
- The Brontes
- 18th- and 19th-century literature and visual culture
- Art and war
- Art and aesthetics
Literature, Medicine and Science
- Medicine and Literature in the Mid 19th to Early 20th Century
- 19th Century Science and Literature
- History of Surgery
- Gender and Medicine
- Mid- to Late Victorian Literature
- Literature and Science
- Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Writing
- 19th Century Journalism and Print Culture
- Post-War American Writing
- American Film 1945-2000
- 1950s and 1960s American Culture
- American and European Modernism
- American Intellectual History
- Transatlantic Literature and Culture
- The Avant-Garde
- American Visual Culture
- Literary Adaptations
- Disability and Modern/Contemporary Culture
- American Ethnicity and Race
- American Pragmatism
- History of American Psychology and Psychoanalysis
- The early novel
- The history of reading
- Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century life writing
- Early modern oral and manuscript cultures
- Seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century news and pamphleteering
- The Royal Society in the seventeenth century
- Renaissance medicine and illness writing
- Literature, War, and Medicine in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Old English and Late Medieval Studies
- Gender and sexuality in medieval literature
- Old English and Old Norse literature
- Reception of the middle ages in literature and film
- Medieval and Renaissance wisdom literature
- Medieval and Renaissance iconology
- Medieval and Renaissance literature and political theology/canon law
- Medieval and Renaissance romance
- Langland, Chaucer, and the Gawain-Poet
- Influence of monasticism and the religious orders on literature 1200-1500
- Medieval mysticism and the influence of Neo-Platonism
- 19th-and 20th-century medievalism, especially James Joyce
- Medieval and early modern comic forms
- Chaucer and his reputation and reception
- Textual editing and translation
- The roles of violence in medieval culture
- Medieval popular culture
- Adolescence, youth and education
- Popular religion and anticlericalism
- Cultural links between England and northern Europe
- The supernatural in medieval and early modern culture
- Old English language and literature
- Pre-Christian religion and conversion in the Germanic-speaking world
- English place-names
- Onomastics
Renaissance and Early Modern Studies
- Richard Hooker
- John Milton
- Matteo Boiardo
- Scandinavian drama
- Modern travel writing
- Modern Islamic world
- Medieval and Renaissance wisdom literature
- Medieval and Renaissance iconology
- Medieval and Renaissance literature and political theology/canon law
- Medieval and Renaissance romance
- Langland, Chaucer, and the Gawain-Poet
- Influence of monasticism and the religious orders on literature 1200-1500
- Medieval mysticism and the influence of Neo-Platonism
- 19th- and 20th-century medievalism, especially James Joyce
- John Milton
- Andrew Marvell
- Literature and politics
- Republicanism
- Print culture
- Libertinism
- Reception of the classical tradition in early modern England
- Renaissance and early modern literature, especially drama and poetry
- Schools, universities, and Inns of Court
- Neo-Latin literature
- Early modern translation
- Editing and textual studies
- Comparative literature (English, French, Greek, Italian)
- Rhetoric and pedagogy
- The early novel
- The history of reading
- 17th- and early 18th-century life writing
- Oral and manuscript cultures
- News and pamphleteering
- Pepys, Defoe, Swift
- John Donne
- Editing texts
- Renaissance medicine and illness writing
- Print publication
- History of reading
Romantic and Victorian Studies
- Medicine and literature in the mid 19th to early 20th century
- 19th-century science and literature
- History of surgery
- Gender and medicine
- Mid- to late-Victorian literature
- Literature and science
- Pre-Raphaelite and aesthetic writing
- 19th century journalism and print Culture
- Charles Lamb, Charles Lloyd, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their circle
- Writing of the 1790s
- Religious dissent in the 18th and 19th centuries, including but not limited to Unitarianism
- Life writing, biography, and autobiography in the 18th and 19th centuries
- Romantic and Victorian literature, especially biographical work of Charles and Mary Lamb, Charles Lloyd, William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and their circle
- Writing of the 1790s
- Religious dissent in the 18th and 19th centuries, including but not limited to Unitarianism
- Women writers of religious dissent, including Anna Laetitia Barbauld, Mary Hays, Harriet Martineau, Amelia Opie, Elizabeth Gaskell
- Life writing, biography, and autobiography in the 18th and 19th centuries to biographical writing in the period c. 1790-1900
- Biographical projects
- Drugs in literature, especially 19th-century
- Romantic and Victorian writers
- Literary culture of the 1830s
- 19th-century domesticity
- British Romantic poetry and prose
- Wordsworth and Byron
- Romanticism and war
- Art and aesthetics
- Literature and psychoanalysis
- Popular music
- Charles Dickens
- Mid-Victorian fiction
- Death culture, mourning, and commemoration
- Material culture