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Postgraduate research in English and Film
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We are an internationally recognised centre for research and we have a strong culture of excellence in learning and teaching provision. English at Exeter is ranked first in the UK for world leading research and the 2014 REF placed us 4th in the UK for research power.
We have a rich and diverse graduate culture at both Masters and Doctoral level, backed up by strong supervisory and teaching expertise, top researchers and extensive research resources in a number of areas.
Students at Exeter work in a lively, productive and enriching environment which encourages and supports them as they strive to achieve their intellectual ambitions.
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 English and Film staff pages for details on individual staff research interests and publications.
Find out about Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal, our publication platform for postgraduate research and taught students working in all areas of English, Creative Writing and Film.
Our current PhD students
We're proud of the research carried out by our PhD students. There are currently around 80 PhD students in Film and English, 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 | Lead supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Freddie Jobbins | Portrayals of Autism Spectrum Conditions in Modern English Literature | Dr Emily Bernhard Jackson |
| Sarah-Jayne Ainsworth | Willing women: testamentary texts and the creation of female identity in the early modern southwest | Dr Johanna Harris |
| Muhamet Alijaj | Accepting the Unknown to be Know and Be Known: Paranormal Non-Fiction in | Dr Joseph Crawford |
| Helen Angear | Thomas Hardy and Heritage | Professor Angelique Richardson |
| Aygul Bakanova | Women in Central Asian Cinema | Dr Helen Hanson |
| Stephanie Boland | Off the beaten track: rural landscapes in conflict in modernist writing of the south west | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Zoe Bulaitis | The role of the academic in popular culture: the impact of fiction and film upon humanities scholarship in Britain | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Peter Bunten | The Life-Writings of Henry Williamson. | Professor Tim Kendall |
| Elisa Cepedal | The Cinema of Resistance: Realist Construction in European Film! | Dr James Lyons |
| James Chambers | The Strange Home project: towards a distinctive, 'authentic' contribution to Scottish cinema grounded in community folklore. | Dr Joe Kember |
| Bysshe Coffey | Distraction: The Drama of Sounds in the Poetry, Drama and Translation of Percy Shelley. | Dr Corinna Wagner |
| Sophia David | Ecoliterature. | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Ellena Deeley | Dr Paul Young | |
| Hasnul Djohar | Cultural Translators in Contemporary Muslim-American Fiction. | Dr Sinéad Moynihan |
| Mia Dormer | A study of the Evolution of Detective Fiction in Relation to Forensic Science/Medicine | Professor Andy Brown |
| James Downs | Ministers of the 'Black Art': the uses of photography by the clergy in Britain, 1839-1909 | Professor John Plunkett |
| Helena Drysdale | State of Emergency: A journey across Greece in the footsteps of George Bowen, traveller, statesman and Philhellene. | Dr Daisy Hay |
| Philippa Earle | Monism and Hybridity in Milton's Literary Forms | Professor Karen Edwards |
| Gemma Edney | The Sounds of Silence: Voicing Girlhood in Contemporary French Cinema | Dr Fiona Handyside |
| Tom Fallows | "Survival of the Dead": Manufacturing Independence in the American Film Industry. An Exploration of the Political Economy of Laurel Entertainment, 1974-1988. | Dr James Lyons |
| Acatia Finbow | An exploration of the value and place of re-performance documentation in the contemporary art gallery archive. | Professor Gabriella Giannachi |
| Harry Ford | Indigenous Shakespeare and Botanic Creation. | Dr Felicity Henderson |
| Stephen Gallagher | A pious pursuit of paradise: The patronage of secular and religious monuments by Seljukid Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad I (1220-1237). | Professor Emma Loosley |
| Emma Geen | ||
| Pierrealain Giraud | The work of Darius Khondji: Cinematographic authorship in contemporary cinema. | Professor William Higbee |
| David Goodchild | Adapting Lovecraft | Dr Helen Hanson |
| Dominique Gracia | From Art to Life (and Back Again): The Triumph of Medusa over British Aestheticism | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Molly Granatino | 19th Century British literature, the psychology of space in the Victorian novel, George Eliot. | Dr Paul Young |
| James Green | Nerves, Networks, and Delay: Physiology and the Sensation Novel | Dr Corinna Wagner |
| Christopher Grosvenor | Cinema on the Frontline: A History of Military Cinema Exhibition during WWI and WWII. | Dr Joe Kember |
| Lauren Hayhurst | The Nameless: A creative and critical investigation into Muslim women and the issue of 'honour' in Britain. | Dr Sam North |
| Jacqueline Hopson | Exploring representations of the Psychiatrist in Modern English and American Fiction | Professor Laura Salisbury |
| Christina Lake | A Study of Eugenics in Utopian Fiction | Professor Angelique Richardson |
| Alice Levick | Narrative representations of American urban space from 1920-1960. | Professor Jo Gill |
| Na Li | Translating Women in Republican China (1911-1949) | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Kate Limond | Mocked with Art: Narrating Subjectivity in the fiction of A. S. Byatt. | Dr Ellen McWilliams |
| Cristina Locatelli | Exeter-Tate Digital Humanities Project | Professor Gabriella Giannachi |
| Sally Long | Professor Andy Brown | |
| Barbara Marshall | Literary dialogue in the New Europe. | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Rebecca Marshall | Presenting The Self: Michel de Montaigne and Essay Film. | Dr Fiona Handyside |
| Kristy Martin | The of women in erotic literature both as writer and object. Is it possible to own language whilst unable to 'own' the phallus | Dr Jana Funke |
| Errol Mattera | The Challenge of Identity and Representation in Cinema: A case study of South Africa | Professor William Higbee |
| Pauline McGonagle | Investigating the Work of Ruth Prawer Jhabvala | Dr Florian Stadtler |
| Gillian Moore | The representation of the Material Culture of Big Game Hunting in the Age of Empire. | Professor John Plunkett |
| Michaela Morning | Exploration of the notions of surrealism in Czech cinema. | Professor William Higbee |
| Cristina Mosconi | Creating a Future for the Past of Bristol: A geo-located audio tour for the medieval period of the city. | Professor Fabrizio Nevola |
| Rachel Murray | ||
| Imola Nagy-Seres | 'Feeling with you': Rethinking Empathy in the Later Novels of Ian McEwan | Dr Kirsty Martin |
| Daniel Passes | Beyond the Pastoral: Producing Rural Cinema in Contemporary Britain. | Dr Fiona Handyside |
| Joan Passey | The West Barbary Barbarian: Identifying a Cornish Gothic in Nineteenth Century Britain | Professor Nick Groom |
| Joshua Powell | Perception, Affect and Cognition in Samuel Beckett's Late Period | Professor Laura Salisbury |
| Mark Rawlins | The 'Wessex novel' after Hardy (1895-1914): How writers used Hardy's Wessex to explore environmental issues. | Professor Angelique Richardson |
| Sofia Romualdo De Carvalho | Playing with heritage: a historical and practical investigation of gamification in the heritage museum | Professor Gabriella Giannachi |
| Denise Ross | Sacred wells: Understanding survivors of cultural change | Professor Philip Schwyzer |
| Rocky Ruggiero | Santo Spirito | Professor Fabrizio Nevola |
| Barbara Santi | Representing local Cornish cultural identity: Community collaboration, archives and emerging documentary practices | Professor Nick Groom |
| Jack Sargent | Anglo-American Gay Nostalgia: Desiring and Writing the Queer Past in Gay Literature Post-1990 | Dr Kate Hext |
| Tamara Sharp | Novel: The High Lonesome. Critical essay: Who made the eyes but I?: relocating the sublime in a post-secular world. | Dr Jane Feaver |
| Paul Slade | Italia Riconquistata: Italy's role in Milton's Poetic and Intellectual Development from the Early Poems to Paradise Lost | Professor Karen Edwards |
| Anna Sowa | The Role of the Producer in Collaborative Documentary Filmmaking | Professor William Higbee |
| Sabine Starmanns | Deconstructing Middle Age: Sexuality, Representation and the Midlife Woman in | Dr Helen Hanson |
| Alison Stone | Contemporary British poetry and objectivism | Professor Andy Brown |
| Leonie Thomas | Wireless Women: Listening In to Forgotten Female Voices at the BBC, 1922-1955 | Dr Vike Martina Plock |
| Ana Tomcic | Uncanny Subjects – Social Violence, Psychoanalytic Justifications and Modernist Literary Subversions | Professor Laura Salisbury |
| Esther Van Raamsdonk | The Influence of the Anglo-Dutch Relations in the Seventeenth Century on the Works of Andrew Marvell and John Milton | Professor Nicholas McDowell |
| Philip Wallinder | John Trevisa and the gospel of Nicodemus. | Professor Eddie Jones |
| Charlotte White | Ronald Duncan's Rural Devon: Place and Identity in the West Country | Professor Nick Groom |
| David Whitehouse | Allegory in Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' | Professor Regenia Gagnier |
| Lorna Wilkinson | The Trickster in Twentieth-Century British Literature | Dr Kirsty Martin |
| Paul Willis | Sir Joshua Reynolds: Sketchbooks to Genius | Professor Melissa Percival |
| Robert Yeates | The Brown Fog of a Winter Dawn: The Zombie Double of the Modern Metropolis | Dr Paul Williams |
| Aygul Bakanova | Women in Central Asian Cinema | Dr Helen Hanson |
| James Chambers | The Strange Home project: towards a distinctive, 'authentic' contribution to Scottish cinema grounded in community folklore. | Dr Joe Kember |
| Pierrealain Giraud | The work of Darius Khondji: Cinematographic authorship in contemporary cinema. | Professor William Higbee |
| Rebecca Marshall | Presenting The Self: Michel de Montaigne and Essay Film. | Dr Fiona Handyside |
| Michaela Morning | Exploration of the notions of surrealism in Czech cinema. | Professor William Higbee |
Our current PhD students
| Student | Research title | Lead supervisor |
|---|---|---|
| Rosemary Day | Unsettled Forests: Investigating the Eco Gothic in Contemporary Literature | Dr Rob Magnuson Smith |
| Rebecca Johnston | Marginalised American Poets from the First World War | Professor Tim Kendall |
| Melodie Manners | Authenticity and Creative Economy: How do business text employ 'authenticity' and why is 'authenticity' used as a device. | Dr Jason Baskin |
| Adrian Markle | Hanging Them Up - Depictions of Retirement in Contemporary American Boxing Novels; and the novel Bruise | Dr Rob Magnuson Smith |
| Anna Milson | Interactive Documentary as a Tool for Understanding Inevitable Archaeological Change on the Coast | Professor Marion Gibson |
| Judy Rye | Ted Hughes' Early Drama | Professor Jo Gill |
| Barbara Santi | Representing local Cornish cultural identity: Community collaboration, archives and emerging documentary practices | Professor Joe Kember |
| Nicholas Smith | The role of the Highlands and Scottish Identity in James Hogg's Highland Tours, Three Perils of Woman and other works. | Dr James Kelly |
| Angela Nicolle Sturdevant | Guardianship of Sacred Spaces in Scotland and Wales: How ancient and Christian landscapes interrelate. | Professor Joanne Parker |
| Dorottya Tamas | Powers of the Supernatural in Sylvia Plath’s Poetry: From Salem to Ariel | Professor Jo Gill |
| Walker Zupp | The Happy Tragedy of Hiroshi Nakadai | Dr Rob Magnuson Smith |
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 English and Film 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 English and Film.
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 English and Film 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 |
|---|---|
|
Teacher |
Royal Literary Fund |