Research
The Department welcomes enquiries from potential postgraduate students interesting in pursuing a research degree (M.Litt. or Ph.D.) in any area of Germanic Studies. Research proposals will be carefully discussed with the applicant, since the Department is concerned to ensure that appropriate expert supervision, library support and other resources are available. At the same time, innovative, cross-disciplinary or other unusual research proposals are welcome; we also welcome applications for part-time research study as an important route of access into postgraduate education. Current research expertise includes:
- eighteenth-century literature and the history of ideas
- the Romantic period
- literature and institutions of the German-speaking countries in the nineteenth century
- modernism, including the Wiener Moderne
- twentieth-century literature and the history of ideas and culture
- contemporary literature, including drama and theatre
- interdisciplinary work on literature and medicine, literature and architecture
- cultural expressions of migrant and multicultural experience
- German ideas of 'Europa'
- Swiss literature
- literature and ecology
- theory of the novel
- literary and cultural theory as applied to Germanic Studies
- Cultural theory including Bakhtin, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Deleuze, Foucault
- theory and debates relating to comparative literature and literary translation
- German, international and intercultural business practices
- culture and medical discourse
Recent research students have worked on topics from the early medieval to the contemporary, in German literature, linguistics, language history, cultural and area studies and intellectual history. The range of topics amongst our current postgraduate students is similar.