Browser does not support script.
Go to…
About
PhD
Research & Expertise
Connections & Outreach
Colleagues, postdoctoral fellows and postgraduate research students in the Department of English produce world-leading and impactful research on literary culture and creative practice from the medieval to the contemporary.
We celebrate the historical and geographical scope of our research and our engagement with the cultural organisations around us. Research is organised around six strands, each of which brings research staff and postgraduate research students together to organise conferences, seminars, and research projects:
Discover works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and more from academics in English.
Professor Lucy Munro was the first person to pinpoint the exact location of a property owned by William Shakespeare in London. Her archival research revealed the position, size and layout of his flat on a street in Blackfriars, near to his workplace at a theatre.
This discovery sheds new light on how Shakespeare may have spent his later years – not in Stratford-upon-Avon as many people thought, but working in the city.
In his research on the cormorant bird, Professor Gordon McMullan paints the picture of an animal who has been unjustly treated over centuries. In work by Shakespeare and Milton, the cormorant is set up as a greedy bird, taking more than its fair share. But why has this happened?
Professor McMullan's work shows how attitudes to the cormorant mirror human prejudices about race, the role of literature in reinforcing dangerous stereotypes, and why we need to reconsider our assumptions about animals.
Discover our wide-ranging expertise, from medieval literature to innovative writing forms.
Our research centres bring together expertise to work on cutting-edge projects.
Learn more about current and past research projects from the Department of English.