English literature PhD

The University of Brighton offers an active, supportive and stimulating environment for English literature PhD study in a range of literary fields, intersecting with history and cultural studies through our research Centre for Memory, Narrative and History and with performance studies through our specialist Performance and Communities Research and Enterprise Group.

Successful applicants to the research programme will join a thriving postgraduate community in both literature and the wider School of Humanities and Social Science, with cohorts in specialisms that include modern and contemporary poetry, prose and drama; gender and sexuality; and drama of the Elizabethan age. Current and recent doctoral research includes projects on creative practice, queer performance, contemporary representations of technology, international Bohemia, the lesbian gaze in seventeenth-century Britain, independent black publishers and British travel writing on Montenegro.

As one of our English Literature PhD doctoral students, you will work with dedicated supervisors who will help you through the planning and delivery of your research thesis and will offer guidance on all areas of professional development, including conference delivery, publication and job application.

The University of Brighton has opportunities for doctoral funding through the Doctoral College Award and the AHRC-funded techné studentships. The Techne scheme is a doctoral training programme that offers successful students a fee waiver or a fee waiver and stipend and typically has a January deadline.

Apply to 'humanities' in the applicant portal

Apply with us for funding through the AHRC Techne Doctoral Training Partnership

Key information

As a Literature PhD student at Brighton, you will benefit from:

a supervisory team comprising two or three members of academic staff. A doctoral researcher may choose to work with members of staff in the Literature team (whose specialisms range from Early Modern literature to twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature) or else work on an interdisciplinary project with supervisors drawn from both literature and one of the cognate disciplines in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences or wider university (including creative writing, autoethnography, linguistics, history, philosophy, psychology, design, art and screen studies).
desk space and access to a computer in a space specifically designed for research students. There are a range of facilities on the Falmer site include various catering options.
access to a range of electronic resources via the university’s online library, as well as to the physical book and journal collections in the Falmer Library and other campus libraries in Moulsecoomb and in central Brighton.

Academic environment

Our literature research has a home in the School of Humanities and Social Science, where scholars engage across many disciplines and interests. Students may be aligned with or find colleagues in the university's Centres of Research and Enterprise Excellence (COREs), including:

The team in English literature are also at the heart of the Performance and Communities Research and Enterprise Group.

These centres and groups offer postgraduate students a chance to hear talks by staff and guest lecturers, to network and to present their own work-in-progress.

The Brighton Doctoral College offers a training programme for postgraduate researchers, covering research methods and transferable (including employability) skills, including conference delivery, writing for publication and job application. Literature staff can also advise students on conference organisation, research trips and teaching work (with many of our current doctoral researchers being involved in teaching on our undergraduate courses).

We welcome approaches for English Literature PhD study at the University of Brighton. Current strengths for which our provision is particularly suited include:

Early Modern literature (Elizabethan/Jacobean)
twentieth-century literature
twenty-first-century / contemporary literature
women’s writing and feminist theory
postcolonial literature
British, American and European literatures
creative writing and autoethnography

Students are able to work on a range of interdisciplinary subjects, combining literary study with one or more of the university's wide range of disciplines, including: creative practice, graphics design and illustration, education, cultural studies, philosophy, sustainability, sociology, history, film, language, linguistics, media and screen studies.

For information about whether your proposed topic can be supervised at the University of Brighton, and for any other queries about studying an MPhil/PhD in Literature, contact Dr Liam Connell, Postgraduate Research Student Coordinator, School of Humanities. L.J.Connell@brighton.ac.uk

Some of our supervisors

Dr Kate Aughterson

My current PhD students are working in both creative and critical areas on sventeenth-century drama, including ideas about hauntology and performing gender and sexuality. Through close integration with our Resarch and Enterprise Group on Theatre and Communities, we are attracting a good local community of like-minded researchers.

Current projects are:

Jane White ‘Queering Women in Restoration London: Aphra Behn’
Ellan Parry ‘Performance, Gender, Queers Studies’
Sarah Grange ‘Improvising Moll - staging dialogues between queer pasts and presents’
Cara Gathern ‘Discourses of Rape through Lucrece in Seventeenth Century Texts’
Katrina Rideout 'Reawakening the Witch: can utilising liminality in creative writing shift persepctives towards the environment?'
Alan Meggs 'Reclaiming cabaret: A haunted autoethnography of real, researched and imagined stories from cabarets past and present'
Rasha Mousa 'The Image of a Cyborg in Female Playwrighting: Iraq'
Gill Balfour, 'The Ageing Woman and the Menopause: Literary Representations'
Gill Ide 'Rachel Ferguson, Creativity and Middlebrow Prejudices'

Dr Cathy Bergin

Bergin has supervised MA theses in the field of African American literature and culture, Caribbean literature, Welsh cultural memory, white settler colonial imaginaries and Holocaust Representation.

She is has supervised six PhD theses to completion in Memorialisation in the Postmodern-Neoliberal Conjuncture; Women's literature in Belize: Memory, Identity and the Legacy of slavery; Male Performance Wear and authenticity in Country Music 1947-1992; Models of authentic inner voice as social critique in the post-war novel; The Pink Triangle: The politics of forgetting and remembering the homosexual victims of Nazi persecution and British representations of the Armenian Genocide, 1915-23. She is currently supervising PhDs in folk horror and counterinsurgency in Northern Ireland, American Women’s study abroad in Europe, rethinking “blackness” as a racial identity and intergenerational familial storytelling in Northern Ireland. She is interested in supporting research in the following areas: African American writing; enslavement and representation; black radical history; Caribbean Culture and Identity; Marxist literary history; post-colonialism; Irish studies; Holocaust memorialisation; novel studies; transnational solidarities.

Dr Liam Connell

I currently supervise PhDs on twentieth and twenty-first century literature. I would be happy to talk to students about PhD projects in literary and cultural studies on contemporary fiction or visual culture. I have specific interests in the economic humanities around work, especially precarious and reproductive labour, and on the concept of politics, specifically the political nature and potential of literature.

Specific areas within literary and cultural studies might include:

the cultures of work
social reproduction
globalization and culture
border studies
representations of migration
contemporary fiction
postcolonialism
contemporary visual culture

My current supervision includes the following PhD projects:

Gavin Salvesen-Sawh, 'Harold Pinter (1930-2008): Cracks in the façade. An examination of mental disintegration in selected plays and poetry by Pinter, to explore the relationship between the themes of power and agency and his later political activism.'https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/gavin-salvesen-sawh Edward Wells, Unreadability in Narrative Fiction: A Critical Perspective and Fictional Practice

Nigel Foxcroft

Nigel supervises PhD students in three main fields: modernist/postmodernist, postcolonial and contemporary fiction; Russian literature and film; and the history of Anglo-Hungarian cultural contacts. He is very happy to be contacted by prospective students, especially those who can see themselves contributing to the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories.

Specific areas of literary analysis might include:

Modernist, Postmodern, Postcolonial, and Contemporary Fiction

The influence of cultural, anthropological, and shamanic forces on human psychology: the psychogeographic impact of Aztec and Zapotec civilizations on Malcolm Lowry
The Mexican Day of the Dead: anthropological, cosmic, and shamanic perspectives
Alienation, survival, and regeneration in Toni Morrison
Verbal and non-verbal identity in J. M. Coetzee
The representation of cultural identities and memory

The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Culture

The influence of socio-political alienation on human psychology in the works of A. P. Chekhov, M. Yu. Lermontov, and A. S. Pushkin

History of Anglo-Hungarian Cultural Contacts

British visitors to Hungary and Hungarian travellers to the British Isles in the early modern period onwards
British attitudes and perceptions of Hungary (and vice-versa) and their reflection in the genre of travel writing

PhD Students Supervised:

Nabila Ahsan, The Representation of Young Adult Women in Angela Carter’s Work

Elisa Gray, Decadence and the Grotesque Body: The Effects of Decadent Literature on Female Identity in the Late 1800's

Piamaria von Konow, A Study of the Shamanically-Inspired Imaginary: A Cross-Cultural Study of Shamanic/Shamanistic Imagery

Mayukh Saha, The Representation of Transnationalism and Diasporic Cognition in Selected Literature of West Bengal and Bangladesh

Joy Xin, Observing the City via Novel and Film

Ana Zivkovic-Snowley, Constructions of Montenegro in the Works of British Authors from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

Dr Andrew Hammond

Dr Hammond would welcome PhD applications in post-1945 British literature, postcolonial literature and European literature, as well as in the literary treatment of such topics as decolonisation, European identity, left-wing ideology, borders and the Cold War.

Dr Olu Jenzen

Dr Jenzen has supervised several doctoral students to completion across topics such as Queer visual activism; Queer filmmaking and learning disability; and Social media and LGBTQ+ mental health support. Currently she supervises projects on Feminist social media activism; LGBTQ+ kinship practices; Gender creative parenting; Gender diverse youth and citizen equality; Climate justice discourse in the media; Gypsy, Romany, Traveller trans and gender-diverse youth in the UK & participatory heritage as a vehicle for empowerment; and Heritage, participation and technology. She welcomes applications for projects interested in digital media and visual activism, activism and issues of gender and sexuality, and youth empowerment.

Dr Vicky Margree

She is particularly interested in supervising research projects in the areas of feminist philosophy, reproductive politics, Victorian and Edwardian fiction, Gothic and supernatural fiction, utopianism and Afrofuturism, and women's writing and the short story.

Dr Jessica Moriarty

One of my key passions is working with PhD students on creative practice, autoethnography and creative writing pedagogy. I have supported doctoral students working on transdisciplinary projects and work that seeks to challenge conventional academic discourse. At the moment, I am honoured to be working with students who are looking at queering the colonial, creativity and Bronte, Santiago de Cuba as moving archive, diverse narratives from Brexit, feminist romance, autoethnographic arts-based work, stories from care, autoethno-drag, identity and hybridity in fiction, and queer bodies in performance.

Dr Aris Mousoutzanis

My supervisory interests include the study of popular media genres (science fiction, horror); the relations between media, memory and trauma; and media and politics (specifically imperialism, (post)colonialism and globalisation. Interdisciplinary projects on media, literature and culture are most welcome.

A more detailed indicative list of supervisory interests includes the following areas:

the study of popular media genres (science fiction, horror/Gothic, utopia/dystopia, (post-)apocalyptic fiction).
the relations between screen media, trauma theory and memory studies - with a more recent interest in nostalgia studies.
the historical and discursive relations between screen media and imperialism, globalisation and (post)colonialism.

Students with an interest in an interdisciplinary approach that extends across English studies and Film and Television studies are most welcome. I have also researched, taught and published on the late Victorian period ('fin de siecle') and postmodern theory, literature and culture.

Dr Vedrana Velickovic

I would be happy to talk to students about PhD projects in contemporary literature, cultural and queer studies.

Specific areas might include:

Black British Literature and Culture
BrexLit
European Literature
Postcolonialism
Postcommunism
Literary and media representations of migration and specifically 'Eastern European' migration
LGBTQ+ Literature

My current supervision includes the following PhD projects:

(COMPLETED) Kadija George, Raising the voice and visibility of independent Black publishers (TECHNE-funded) http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/techne/for-students/techne-students/techne-students/techne-students-2016/george

Najma Yusufi, "Leave To Remain” (novel) and Hybridity in British Asian writing post-Brexit, https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/najma-yusufi

Amanda Holiday, 'Poetry, Race and Art' (TECHNE-funded), https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/persons/amanda-holiday

Veneta Neale, 'This is our History: Diasporic Feminist Black British History'.

Hanna Komar (TECHNE-funded), 'Supporting Belarusian women to share experiences of gender-based violence and patriarchy using poetry: an autoethnographic approach'

Dr Aakanksha Virkar

Aakanksha is happy to supervise postgraduate work on late Victorian and modern literature. She has specific interests in literary modernism and would particularly welcome projects exploring literature and the arts (music and visual culture).

Specific areas within literary studies (1850-1950) might include

Victorian/modern transitions
philosophy, aesthetics and politics in modern literature
poetry and poetics
literature, music and visual culture
aestheticism, decadence and desire

Dr John Wrighton

English literature; American literature; the novel; poetry; philosophy of ethics; critical theory

I am accepting graduate students interested in any aspect of modern and contemporary literature. Feel free to e-mail me for more information about the PhD program.

For further supervisory staff including cross-disciplinary options, please visit research staff on our research website.

Making an application

You will apply to the University of Brighton through our online application portal. When you do, you will require a research proposal, references, a personal statement and a record of your education.

You will be asked whether you have discussed your research proposal and your suitability for doctoral study with a member of the University of Brighton staff. We recommend that all applications are made with the collaboration of at least one potential supervisor. Approaches to potential supervisors can be made directly through the details available online. If you are unsure, please do contact the Doctoral College for advice.

Please visit our How to apply for a PhD page for detailed information.

Fees and funding

Funding

Undertaking research study will require university fees as well as support for your research activities and plans for subsistence during full or part-time study.

Funding sources include self-funding, funding by an employer or industrial partners; there are competitive funding opportunities available in most disciplines through, for example, our own university studentships or national (UK) research councils. International students may have options from either their home-based research funding organisations or may be eligible for some UK funds.

Learn more about the funding opportunities available to you.

Tuition fees academic year 2023–24

Standard fees are listed below, but may vary depending on subject area. Some subject areas may charge bench fees/consumables; this will be decided as part of any offer made. Fees for UK and international/EU students on full-time and part-time courses are likely to incur a small inflation rise each year of a research programme.

MPhil/PhD
	Full-time	Part-time
UK	£4,712	£2,356
International (including EU)	£15,300	N/A
International students registered in the School of Humanities and Social Science or in the School of Business and Law	from £13,900	N/A

PhD by Publication
Full-time	Part-time
N/A	£2,356

Contact Brighton Doctoral College

To contact the Doctoral College at the University of Brighton we request an email in the first instance. Please visit our contact the Brighton Doctoral College page.

For supervisory contact, please see individual profile pages.