English Literature

This English Literature PhD programme from
the University of Bristol brings the core values of our discipline – textual scholarship, critical and theoretical analysis, and contextual knowledge – to the dynamic and changing field of English literary studies.

The  English Literature English Literature  PhD programme from the University of Bristol University of Bristol are proud of our expertise in medieval and early-modern literature, in Romantic and Victorian literature, in modernism, and in contemporary writing in English.

The department is notable for its breadth of research in English poetry across the periods, and our range of specialist interests includes literary theory, the history of book, literature and science, literature and medicine, literature and the environment, digital humanities, women’s writing and gender studies, queer writing, postcolonial literature, Black British writing, 20th-century American literature, the Gothic tradition, and Welsh and Anglo-Welsh writing.

Career opportunities:

A large number of graduates from the English Literature programme offered by the University of Bristol 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.

Courses include

• a research project undertaken across four years (full-time, minimum period of study three years), culminating in an 80,000-word thesis. As well as having the option to audit taught units where appropriate, there may be the potential for PhD students to teach units themselves from their second year of study onwards.