Postgraduate research in Modern Languages and Cultures
Our research, and research supervision, ranges across a wide variety of disciplines including European Literature and Culture, Film, Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Gender Studies, and Translation, and reaches across time from the medieval to the contemporary.
Researchers in Modern Languages and Cultures are actively engaged in projects across a broad range of subjects, including linguistics and translation studies, film, visual arts, and literary culture.
Our research-active academic staff, supported by a team of language teachers which includes native-speaker teachers, are highly successful in winning prestigious research awards from funding bodies including the AHRC, British Academy, EU, Leverhulme, and Marie-Curie.
Our wide range of expertise offers postgraduates the possibility of preparing for research degrees in one or more areas. We attach particular importance to the quality of research supervision and training in research methodology and to the integration of our postgraduates into the Department’s academic and research community. Scholars of international repute are frequent visitors.
Explore our research centres and research projects to find out more about our current research topics.
Visit our Modern Languages staff profiles for details on individual staff research interests and publications.
Our current PGRs
We're proud of the research carried out by our PhD students. There are currently around 15 PhD students in the Department, many of whom maintain an online personal profile detailing their research activities. Follow the links below to find out more about them and their research projects.
| Student | Research title | First supervisor | Second supervisor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abdulkareem Adnan | The Translator as a mediator of Languages and Cultures: Comparative analysis of translators of the Qur’an | Michelle Bolduc | Mustafa Baig |
| Rawan Al Qassas | The effect of the translator’s ID in translating historical literature: case study Walter Scott’s Talisman 1825 | Tina Philips | Eliana Maesteri |
| Michelle Boluc | Tina Philips | ||
| Slwa Maidh Alhammad | Death of the author and Birth of Adapter in a literary work | Michelle Bolduc | Tina Philips |
| Abeer Mohammed A Alkahtani | Strategies of Subtitling English Literary-based films into Arabic between Domestication and Foreignization: A case study of Three Versions of Jane Eyre | Michelle Bolduc | Tina Philips |
| Rossano Astremo | The adolescent crisis in contemporary Italian fiction | Luciano Parisi | Eliana Maestri |
| Coline Blaizeau | The Metafictive Marvellous in Perceforest | Thomas Hinton | Michelle Bolduc |
| Jiahao Fei | The Evolution of Postcolonial Writing in Hong Kong Literature | Zhiguang (Sam) Yin | Regenia Gagnier |
| Sarah Elizabeth Gear | What do Translations Say About Us? A Comparison Between the Translations of Nationalist and Liberal Writers from Putin's Russia | Muireann Maguire | Catherine Mcateer |
| Nicholas Hall | Searching for the ‘unofficial Russian’: Sincerity in the encounters between British travellers and Soviet citizens, 1928-39 | Emily Lygo | David Thackerey |
| Christina Karakepeli | A Translation History of Dostoevsky in Greece: from 1886 to the present day | Muireann Maguire | Catherine Mcateer |
| Katy Humberstone | From Mines to Signs: Negotiating identity through the lens of the Cornish-Mexican Linguistic Landscape | Francesco Goglia | Supervisor from Southampton University |
| Irem Kasar | Bilinguality, Co-Translation/Self-Translation and Hybridity in the Prose of Elif Safak and Samuel Beckett | David Jones | Natalie Pollard |
| Ying Huang | China’s Cultural Diplomacy in Arab Countries (1955-1966) | Zhiguang Yin | István Kristó-Nagy’ |
| Hui-Hua Lu | Alice’s Adventures in Taiwan: Through the translation of Wonderland and What Alice Found There | Ting Guo | Eliana Maestri |
| Yang Lu | Literature Adaptions in China: From Online literature to TV Drama | Danielle Hipkins | Ting Guo |
| Anna Maslenova | Anglo-Russian Cultural Interactions in 1890-1930: The Microhistories of Translators and their networks | Muireen Maguire | Catherine Mcateer |
| Edward Mills | Imagining and enacting education in the French texts of post-Conquest England | Thomas Hinton | Susana Afonso |
| Sean Morris | Self-translation of Mathematical Texts in Seventeenth-century France: The Cases of Pascal, Mersenne and Hérigone | Michelle Bolduc | Chloe Paver |
| Seulki Oh | Study on Translation in International Relations by Analysing News that Quotes Foreign Media: The Korean Peninsula Issues | Regenia Gagnier | Michelle Bolduc |
| Mevlide Peyker Özler | Queering the Family and Modes of Belonging in Contemporary Italian Women’s Writing | Danielle Hipkins | João Florêncio |
| Benjamin Shears | Novel Discoveries and Enlightened Characters: Subjective Experience in Voltaire's 'Contes philosophiques' and the Novels of Samuel Richardson | Melissa Percival | Henry Power; Helena Taylor |
| Yandi Wang | Art in Translation: contemporary Chinese art in Chinese and English publications: A case study of the paintings of Xiao Gang Zhang (张晓刚), 1984 to 2014 | Ting Guo | João Florêncio |
| Svetlana Yefimenko | The Iliad and War and Peace as Existential Prophecies | Murieann Maguire | João Florêncio |
| Ying Zhang | Reception of Chinese Xianxia TV Dramas in the English-Speaking World | Ting Guo | Richard Mansell |
Supervisors
All students have a primary and a secondary supervisor who provide regular, high quality advice, support and direction in their academic endeavours. You will work closely with your supervisors over three to four years (full time PhD) or six to seven (part-time PhD) to develop, investigate and write-up a project at the cutting edge of theological research.
Visit our staff profiles for more information about individual research interests or use the search box on the right of this page to find a supervisor.
Mentor
Each student will also be assigned a mentor who will take on a pastoral role and mediate on any problems that arise during the period of study. Your mentor will keep in regular contact and will provide background stability and support.
View list of funding opportunities available to students on our research degree programmes in Modern Languages and Cultures.
We are committed to making your PhD a rewarding experience that will develop your skills and expertise. Undertaking a postgraduate degree with us also provides you with access to the wide range of support offered by our Career Zone. In addition, postgraduate research students can access our Postgraduate Researchers' Programme, which covers a range of topics to help you to succeed during your research degree and to act as a springboard for your research career.
Graduate destinations
Below are some examples of initial jobs undertaken by Modern Languages postgraduates who studied with us in recent years.
Please note that due to data protection, the job titles and organisations are listed independently and do not necessarily correspond.
| Job title | Organisation |
|---|---|
| Associate lecturer Associate lecturer in French Associate Lecturer in French in Education and Scholarships Associate Research Fellow Content Designer Freelance Proofreader and Translator French teacher French teacher Grammar School Teacher Independent Quality Evaluator Italian Teacher Lecturer in French Studies Post Doctorial Researcher Recruitment and marketing assistant Reporter & Producer Self-Employed Translator Spanish Lecturer Teacher and Honorary Research Associate Teacher/Researcher University of Exeter Visiting Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies Work Placement Coordinator |
Alliance Française Devon Antenna International Baylis Court School BPA Quality Hoheretechnische Kennet School Language Advanced Middlesex University National Public Radio, USA Uni of Exeter University of Poitiers University of Portsmouth |