RESEARCH PROFILE
- Research income: AHRC/Leverhume/British Academy combined: £300,000.
- Current number of academic staff: 23.
- Current number of research students: 38.
- Recent publications:
- Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture.
- Eighteenth-Century Letters and British Culture.
- Double Agents: Women and Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England.
- Dr Livingstone, I Presume: Missionaries, Journalists, Explorers and Empire.
- Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor.
- Current research projects:
- Women of Reason from Enlightenment to Romanticism.
- Narrative in Relation to the Experience of Illness.
- Textual and Visual Culture in Anglo-Saxon England.
- The Victorian Past. (A major Leverhulme project).
- Irish Revivalism.
- Partner organisations:
- Shakespeare's Globe,
- Royal Academy of Dramatic Art,
- Imperial War Museum,
- Guy's Hospital,
- National Portrait Gallery,
- British Library,
- British Museum.
- Joint PhDs available: Exciting opportunities to gain a joint PhD with either the National University of Singapore or Hong Kong University or Humboldt.
KEY FACTS
Student destinations
Our research students have continued in academia, or have developed their skills in teaching, journalism, cultural arts and management, or the legal and financial sectors.
Head of group/division
Professor Josephine McDonagh
Duration
Expected to be MPhil two years FT, three years PT. PhD three years FT, four-six years PT.
Location
Strand Campus.
Year of entry 2013
Offered by
School of Arts and Humanities
Department of English
Closing date
None. Students interested in applying to funding should be aware that deadlines for this differ and may be earlier, therefore applicants should view the Graduate Funding Pages at
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/study/pg/funding/sources/index.aspx for more information.
No set number.
Fees
CONTACTS
Contact information
Postgraduate Officer, Centre for Arts & Sciences Admissions (CASA)
tel: +44 (0) 20 7848 2736
fax: +44 (0) 20 7848 7200
Email
Website
RESEARCH DESCRIPTION
Although one of the oldest English departments in the country, with long established and still flourishing strengths in the study of Anglo-Saxon and medieval literatures, English at King's today is characterised by an exceptionally wide range of research activities reflected at all levels of its teaching programme. These include contemporary literary theory, the study of theatrical performance (including Shakespeare), literature and medicine, literature in relation to questions of gender and sexuality, Irish studies, writing and the visual arts, post-colonialism, literature and cultural production and the theory and practice of biography. All members of staff are actively involved in research: most have gained an international reputation for the quality of their scholarship and are frequently called on to contribute their specialist knowledge to newspapers and other media. A sizeable and growing graduate body in the department means that we have a diverse and thriving seminar culture with lively critical interchange of graduate students and staff. We place great emphasis on pastoral care for students and are generally perceived as a friendly and personally concerned department.
Joint PhD programmeExciting opportunities are now available to undertake a joint PhD programme either with the National University of Singapore (areas of mutual interest include postcolonialism; performance and drama; 18th-19th century studies) or Hong Kong University in post-1800 English Literary Studies or Humboldt.
Staff interests associated with the research programme and its research groups
Interests:
tbc
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2379
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Ethics, politics, philosophies and critical theories of theatre and performance, performance, architecture and location in the urban realm.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2183
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Shakespeare and the literature of the early modern period, especially editing and textual criticism, language, feminist criticism, Shakespeare on film. I have edited 'The Taming of the Shrew' and 'Hamlet' and am a General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare series. I have published on many areas within Shakespeare studies but have particular interests in language (specifically metaphor and metonymy) , feminist criticism (including women's writing about Shakespeare from 1660 onwards) and Shakespeare on film.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 1034
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020 7848 2257
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Modernism; colonial and postcolonialism; Virginia Woolf; the city.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2174
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Clinician & academic. Research encompasses clinical medicine, ethics, law, medical history, and the role of narrative thinking in medical practice.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 1348
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My research centres on twentieth-century US social history and popular culture, particularly film and literature. I am interested in the formation of personal identity as it relates to wider cultural trends, and my scholarship is informed by spatial theory and cultural geography as well as feminist and queer theory.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2286
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18th-century literature and culture; feminism, gender and cultural studies; life-writing.
Tel:
020 7848 2247
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Anglo-Saxon and medieval studies; gender/sexuality studies, religious literary culture.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2181
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Victorian literature and culture; the novel form; history of science and technology in the 19th Century; transatlantic encounters; Victorian literature about Italy.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2176
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Eighteenth-century and Romantic cultural history; feminism; edting; contemporary poetry.
Tel:
020 7848 2173
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Interests:
Shakespeare; early modern literature and culture, especially Jacobean drama; editing; the idea of late style in art, literature and music.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2177
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Interests:
Shakespeare; Early Modern English literature and culture; intersection of literature and linguistics; Renaissance appropriations of the Medieval; poetics.
Tel:
020 7848 2031
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Interests:
Australian literature, Victorian literature and drama, history of reading, Australian film (with a focus on representations of Indigenous Australians)
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 7394
Fax:
020 7848 2052
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tbc
Tel:
020 7848 1254
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19th-century literature and culture; literature and economics; gender and sexuality; migration and the literature of place.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 1153
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Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2285
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Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2453
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020 7848 2980
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Theatre history and theory; performance history; biophilosophy and bioculture; medical humanities; translation; dramaturgy.
Tel:
020 7848 1773
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Modernist literature & film; late modernist politics; modernist life writing; literary reconstruction; contemporary fiction.
Tel:
020 7848 1723
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Interests:
Interdisciplinary art forms, including theatre, performance art, live art, film, photography, and conceptual art.
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Victorian literature and culture; media history; periodicals and serialisation; queer studies; urbanisation.
Tel:
020 7848 2856
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Interests:
Ford Madox Ford, James, Conrad, Pound, Lawrence, Eliot, Woolf, Joyce, Rhys; impressionism; modern biography and autobiography.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2342
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Interests:
Romanticism; Wordsworth and Coleridge; literature and medicine (especially 1700-1830); the history of of British psychoanalysis; narrative theory.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 1541
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Interests:
Linguistic colonialisation; violence and atrocity; travel and exile; the politics of translation and the role of interpreters in colonial contexts.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 1776
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Modern Irish writing and culture, cultural theory, postcolonial theory.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2172
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Sixteenth-century English literature, history and politics, Thomas Sackville, lord Buckhurst and first earl of Dorset; classical and biblical traditions in English literature (all periods); prison writing.
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020 7848 2175
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Medieval literature and visual culture (especially in the context of their intersection); religious writings; pain, pleasure and punishment in the Middle Ages; hagiography; monsters and margins; animals and animal-human relations; discourses of friendship; theory and medieval studies; gender, sexuality and queer studies.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2072
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Postcolonial literature and theory; post-1945 and contemporary fiction; immigration and gender studies; the history of the book.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 1684
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Middle English literature; medievalisms; intersections of literature, history, religion and the visual arts.
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2182
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My main areas of research interests are Shakespeare and its Afterlife, in Text and Performance. Shakespeare and Text As an editor and a textual scholar, I focus primarily on English printed drama to the Restoration (including Shakespeare). I have prepared editions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries and I am currently editing John Ford's ''Tis Pity She's a Whore' for the Arden Early Modern Drama series. My recent book on 'Shakespeare and the Rise of the Editor' (Cambridge University Press, 2007) provides the first sustained history of the evolution of Shakespeare's texts in print prior to the rise of the official editorial tradition, marked by the publication of Nicholas Rowe's edition of Shakespeare's 'Complete Works' in 1709. I welcome applications from prospective students who wish to prepare critical editions of early modern literary works or to explore the interrelation between theatrical and print cultures in early modern London. I also welcome applications from students planning to work on Renaissance paratexts, a growing area of interest in early modern textual studies and the topic of one of my current project, a new edition of The Dramatic Paratext in English printed drama to the Restoration (Cambridge University Press, 2009), which I am currently preparing with Professor Thomas L. Berger (St. Lawrence University, Canton NY). Shakespeare and Performance I am interested in adaptations of Shakespeare's works for different media and in different languages. I have written extensively on Shakespearean adaptations ranging from the Restoration to the present. I also edited and contributed to a collection of essays on 'World-Wide Shakespeares' (Routledge, 2005) and I am particularly interested in the role played by local / global Shakespeares within different communities (artists, scholars, students). I would be happy to consider applications from students who wish to carry out postgraduate work at M.Phil or PhD level on any aspect of the afterlife of Shakespeare in different periods (from the Restoration to the present), in different media (theatre, cinema, prose fiction, etc.), and in different languages (provided that the prospective applicant is fluent in at least another relevant language besides English).
Tel:
+44 (0)20 7848 2558
Fax:
020 7848 2257
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Interests:
tbc
Tel:
020 7848 1375
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Contemporary performance; interventionist art; Live Art; theatre and the political; participation and spectatorship.
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ACADEMIC ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
General entry advice
First class honours degree in English; or an MA in English with an overall grade of 65 per cent or above; or overseas equivalents. Those applying for one of the joint degrees are encouraged to contact an academic at King's to develop research links with the partner institution.
APPLYING TO KING'S
To apply for graduate study at King's you will need to complete our graduate online application form. Applying online makes applying easier and quicker for you, and means we can receive your application faster and more securely.
King's does not normally accept paper copies of the graduate application form as applications must be made online. However, if you are unable to access the online graduate application form, please contact the relevant admissions/School Office at King's for advice.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE
Admission to our research programmes will initially be for the MPhil but we expect students to transfer to the PhD after an appropriate period, by agreement with their supervisor and the Departmental Postgraduate and Research Committee.
PERSONAL STATEMENT & SUPPORTING INFORMATION
Applicants are required to submit an essay of not more than 5,000 words, preferably on a topic related to their chosen research topic. Applicants who completed their MA or BA more than 10 years ago will normally be expected to submit a new piece of work.
FUNDING
AHRC, Graduate School and School of Arts & Humanities studentships and bursaries, self-funded.
Student profiles
English Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with HKU/NUS/Humboldt
The vibrant research community at King’s was the main reason why I chose to continue studying here after my master’s. My project is archive-based and could have been quite solitary, so it’s great to have a wide choice of seminars and reading groups to attend where you can meet other people to share ideas and learn from their research. The opportunity to present to other students in the English department’s doctoral seminar has really helped me to refine the key ideas and goals of my project, while the department’s student-convened seminar series has introduced me to projects taking place across every time period and literary genre.
My own research project looks at life-writing by visual artists, focusing on British painter Keith Vaughan; having the Courtauld next door, the National Gallery only a short walk away, and all of London’s major galleries close by means that I can truly immerse myself in my chosen field. I am also co-managing the visual arts blog for Stet, the department’s online postgraduate journal, giving me further opportunities to develop and write about my love for art and meet like-minded students.
I chose my supervisors because of their expertise and their shared interest in the relationships between literature, identity, and visual culture. My supervisors have been invaluable, advising me on everything from my research methodology to relevant criticism and further reading. I received an alumni bursary from the Graduate School to help with the cost of my studies, so I look forward to contributing to the department next year by training to teach undergraduate classes.
I am confident that my research experience at King’s, along with the opportunities I have to present my work at seminars and conferences, will give me everything I need to continue my academic career beyond my doctorate.
English Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with HKU/NUS/HumboldtI applied to study at King’s after seeing an advertisement for a PhD-Net co-ordinated by the College with the University of Stuttgart and the Sorbonne in Paris. This seemed a fantastic opportunity to be part of an international research community.
Being in London has also provided me with unparalleled access to archive collections and world-leading libraries. My research project focuses on an extensive collection for the modernist magazine ADAM International Review, housed within the
King’s College Archives. Resources such as this make King’s an exciting place at which to undertake postgraduate research. It was whilst working in the archives, for instance, that I was fortunate enough to uncover previously unpublished short stories and aphorisms by the modernist writer Katherine Mansfield (
read the news story here).
My research is
funded by the Graduate School (King’s Continuation Scholarship) and the Leverhulme Trust (Study Abroad Studentship). Funding from King’s has enabled me to present papers at international conferences, establish a translation project with the French Department, and organise a Postgraduate Training Day at King’s with the British Association of Modernist Studies (BAMS). Such support helps to ensure that King’s continues to grow as a centre for excellence in modernist literary scholarship.
English Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with HKU/NUS/Humboldt
I decided to come to King’s so that I could work with my preferred supervisor, and so that I could live and study in London. One happy though unexpected outcome of this decision has been the way in which a relatively narrow single-author study has now become opened up to various different avenues of analysis – a direct result, I feel, of both great supervision and the richness of the research culture in the English department.
We have an excellent community of doctoral students and London is full of opportunities for taking part in reading groups, conferences, and scholarly networks. The atmosphere is energetic and friendly, and the resources here – in particular the British Library – are especially good.
I am funded by a Continuity Scholarship, which has allowed me to focus exclusively on my doctoral dissertation, and I have also been able to avail of small scholarships from organisations like the British Association of Irish Studies to help pay for attendance at conferences and research trips.
I am glad I chose to take this career decision and feel that my research project and academic experiences are oriented towards future employment in the field; graduate students are able to undertake teacher training, to tutor undergraduate classes, to compile courses for the Summer School, and to take part in departmental events like The Abstract (our ‘work in progress’ program), skills lunches, skills training, graduate conferences, and reading groups. There is, I feel, a good balance between structure and creativity.
English Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with HKU/NUS/Humboldt
I originally came to King’s in 2009 for an inter-disciplinary MA in Eighteenth-Century Studies. I thought the course was dynamic and individual, especially given that it taught in conjunction with the British Museum. I decided to stay on at King’s for my PhD in the English department.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but King’s is the perfect place for my research, which looks at the intellectual legacy of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Part of that legacy involves the important role played by Coleridge in the beginnings of English literature as a subject which was first taught at King’s in 1831, and pioneered by one of Coleridge’s disciples, F.D. Maurice.
As with all post-graduate research in the humanities, the course depends heavily on the efforts of the student. The department keeps quite a close eye on all of its researchers, and the relationship with your supervisors is a very important part of that. It is a sign of the department’s commitment to its researchers that it assigns them two supervisors: the primary is for specific academic guidance, the secondary for more general concerns surrounding research.
More generally, King’s location is one of its single greatest advantages: it is a privilege to work in the centre of London, and be near to so many cultural hotspots. I have received some financial assistance from the Graduate School: a King’s Alumni Bursary for all three years of PhD (which discounted the fees), and a King’s Continuation Scholarship for my final year (which provides an annual stipend). It was difficult having little money for most of the course, so I certainly felt a weight had been lifted off my mind when I received the KCS.
I have a few ambitions after I graduate. I am keeping the academic door open as an option, but I would also like to work in film. Having a PhD from King’s will add to my credibility as a scholar and also as an independent individual.
English Research MPhil/PhD, option of joint PhD with HKU/NUS/Humboldt
The postgraduate research community at King’s is very lively and supportive, offering a variety of workshops and a long list of people who support the students. As a PhD student, I’m working on a very specific project of my own design, focusing on photography of Shakespeare in performance. Although King’s has no photography or theatre studies departments, the English department is (perhaps resultantly) richly interdisciplinary, and also maintains strong links with certain London institutions who can support my work – the British Library, Globe Theatre, National Theatre and Victoria and Albert Museum, to name a few.
Doing a PhD can be isolating, but it doesn’t have to be, especially given that there are research seminars on every conceivable topic, as well as opportunities to discuss your work and that of your peers at the Graduate Research Seminar (for first year PhD students) and ‘The Abstract’ (for all English department students).
I took the MA in Early Modern Literature at King’s in 2010/11, so I had the opportunity to discuss the PhD with my supervisor during the application process, and he was incredibly helpful and supportive.
I was awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which essentially allows me to put my studies first, rather than juggling them with paid work. I have also had the opportunity to supplement my studies with working for the educational outreach charity The Brilliant Club, and writing theatre reviews for the website OneStopArts.