Study

We offer postgraduate learning opportunities – you can undertake a Victorian Studies MA (within English) or a Victorian Studies PhD or MPhil (within English or History, depending on your research area).

Thriving community

The Centre has a thriving graduate community, hosting a wide variety of events and providing a forum for intellectual exchange and socialising. As well as the annual spring seminar series, which attracts distinguished speakers from all nineteenth-century disciplines, we also have an annual autumn lecture – tied to a major event in the field. We also host a serial reading group, exploring classic Victorian novels in the original instalments. Recently the group finished Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.

High-profile conferences

The Centre also organises high-profile conferences. Graduate students are particularly welcome at such events, and benefit from considerably reduced conference rates.

In 2019, the Centre hosted George Eliot 2019 – an international bicentenary conference – in collaboration with the George Eliot Fellowship and an organising committee from a range of institutions. Throughout 2012, the Victorian Studies Centre collaborated with the Dickens Journals Online Project (University of Buckingham) for several Dickens bicentenary events. In January 2011, the inaugural meeting for the newly-formed Midlands Interdisciplinary Victorian Studies Seminar (MIVSS) was hosted in Leicester. In September 2008, the Centre hosted the prestigious annual conference of the UK’s largest association for this period, the British Association for Victorian Studies.

Research forums

We are home to various reading groups and research forums that Masters and research students are heartily encouraged to attend.