The University of Sheffield
Department of Biblical Studies

Student research

Our students are a key part of the Department's research community and they undertake a range of research activities throughout their time with us.

Postgraduate research

The Department is home to a large postgraduate community. Our MA programmes provide a stepping-stone for graduates preparing for research degrees, while our MPhil and PhD programme currently supports more than thirty students, each focused on their own individual field of doctoral research.

Our postgraduate students have the opportunity to participate in reading groups geared toward their research interests.

The Department has extensive contacts with biblical scholars around the UK and internationally, and assists students in networking with and locating others with common interests.

Our research students' theses are focused on their individual research interests and cover an extremely broad range of topics.  

Recent PhD theses:

  • Pauline Slave Texts: A Comparative Analysis on Modern Biblical Scholarship With Antebellum Commentaries
  • "Woe to you Scribes and Pharises": An analysis on Matthew 23
  • The oral/literate model; a valid approach for New Testament Studies
  • Paul and the Jewish Law: From Convenantal Nomism to Mysticism
  • The idea of a prophet like Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy
  • John's Prologue and this 'I' which is not One: Individual Identity, Word, Flesh and Film in the Postmodern Milieu
  • The Motif of Foreign Nations in the Twelve Minor Prophets
  • Seeing and seen: Film in Feminist Theology in Dialogue
  • The reception of Qoheleth in a Selection of Rabbini, Patristic and Nonconformist Texts
  • Other Endings of Mark as responses to Mark: An Ideological-Critical Investigation into the longer and the shorter ending of Mark's gospel
  • Power, Authority and Legitimacy: A Socio-Rhetorical Analysis of Paul's Apostleship
  • The Samaritan Mission in Acts
  • Narrative Structures in the book of Genesis
  • The Song of Songs and the construction of desire in the Hebrew Bible
  • Jesus and His Traditions: History, Memory and Recovering the Past
  • The early Christian Social Identity and Symbolic Community: An evaluation on how Jews and Gentiles feature in the Deutero-Pauline Letters of the New Testament
  • The place of the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 and its ideological significance for the Acts of the Apostles
  • Military terminology in the Comquest Narratives

Undergraduate research

Undergraduate students undertake a research project during their final year, working under the supervision of a staff member to produce a 10,000-word dissertation (or 5,000 words for dual honours students).

Undergraduate dissertations provide a valued contribution to the Department's overall research, and it is not unusual for the research topics to be pursued or developed further at postgraduate level at a later date.

Recent undergraduate dissertation topics:

• The Bible, war and rape
• Judas: friend or foe?
• The Philistine pantheon
• British National Party and biblical interpretation
• The angel Raphael in the book of Tobit
• 1 Timothy 2.11-15 and the role of Shona women in Zimbabwe
• Narnia and John the Baptist
• Messianism and Doctor Who
• Water symbolism in Matthew’s Gospel
• Brass band music and the Passion
• Bob Dylan as biblical interpreter
• The historical Jesus and family
• Revelation 13 and the Roman Empire
• Paul’s attitude towards women