The defining strength of research carried out in Modern Languages at Liverpool is the multidisciplinary nature of projects with a global reach and informed by an ethos that challenges rigid disciplinary boundaries and consolidated practices. We are able to offer supervision by teams that span various language areas and diverse methodological approaches, ensuring that ground-breaking doctoral research receives the support it requires.

Overview

A PhD in Modern Languages allows candidates to draw on Departmental research strengths across the eight different language areas and multiple disciplinary intersections. Language-based expertise is supported by specialists researching literature, history, visual cultures, gender studies, sociolinguistics, and translation and interpreting. With staff involved in major research programmes such as ‘Translating Cultures’, and projects such as ‘Transnationalizing Modern Languages’, the Department has pioneered studies that incorporate post- and de-colonial perspectives to theory and practice, integrating these into pedagogical approaches to language study.

The range of specialisms in Modern Languages and Cultures is enhanced by collaborations across departments and schools, such as the Department of English and that of Communications and Media, whilst maintaining the multilingual and multicultural perspectives as a necessary interpretive key to an understanding of the contemporary world. We also offer opportunities to collaborate with non-academic partners, locally, nationally and internationally, supported by the many research projects across five continents that scholars in the department lead.