Please note that the deadline for applications for AHRC and Faculty of Arts and Humanities postgraduate funding has now passed. However, applications for all our postgraduate programmes are still being considered.
Postgraduate Opportunities
The School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics is a stimulating and supportive environment in which to pursue postgraduate work at both MA and PhD level.
Home to high quality research, in RAE 2008, 30% of staff's research activities were ranked 4* (research assessed as world-leading) and 25% were 3* (internationally excellent). This makes us 7th equal out of 87 English departments in the UK.
The School was also judged to provide `an excellent quality of education´ in the most recent Teaching Quality Assessment.
Four Programmes
The School's research and teaching activities are organised into four main areas or 'Programmes': English Language and Linguistics; English Language and Literature; English Literature; and English and Theatre.
In English Language and Linguistics, research is undertaken in a wide range of topics including the history of English; the history of Linguistics; first and second language acquisition; Applied Linguistics; and language and society.
English Language and Literature encompasses a similarly broad range of theoretical and methodological approaches to research at the interface of literary and linguistic study, including historical stylistics; narrativity; cognitive poetics; and corpus stylistics.
The English Literature Programme provides research expertise in all of the major areas of English literary study, from canonical authors such as Shakespeare, Hardy and Tennyson, to non-traditional genres, such as pamphlets, periodicals and Cold War literature. We also offer Creative Writing.
The English and Theatre Programme combines approaches to literary study with research expertise in the theory and practice of theatrical performance, where specialisms include devised performance; applied and alternative theatres; theatre historiographies; and British political drama of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Each of our programmes has its distinctive identity, but our structure allows for, and encourages, collaboration and interchange of ideas; we are also able to offer joint supervision of research students whose projects cross the conventional boundaries of the discipline.
Research Activity
In the last five years, members of the School have produced over 200 books, critical editions, essays and articles. For over fifteen years we have been involved with large publicly funded research projects: these include the Hartlib Archive, the AHRC-funded projects `SciPer´ (looking at the connections between science and 19th-century periodicals), `The Origins of Early Modern Literature´, and `The British Library Theatre Archive´. Current initiatives include AHRC-funded projects on `Archives of Exile´ and `Early Modern Manuscript Poetry´. Many of these projects liaise with the University's Humanities Research Institute. Also based in the School are the interdisciplinary Centre for 19th-Century Studies and the Sir William Empson Institute for the Study of Language in Literature.
Research Resources
Research resources are excellent. As well as subscribing to the major online periodical and full-text electronic archives, the University Library houses some outstanding collections of its own, ranging from the early modern period to the present day. The University also has strong relationship with the British Library, the UK's premier research library, and there is a regular, free minibus from the University to the British Library's depository at Boston Spa. The School's relationship with Sheffield's civic institutions – The Crucible Theatre, Millenium Galleries, and City Archives – also provides exciting research opportunities.
Living in Sheffield
Sheffield is an extremely safe and attractive city in which to live. It has all the facilities - clubs, bars, restaurants, shopping - that you would expect of a major city. The birthplace of bands such as Pulp and the Arctic Monkeys, its contemporary music scene is renowned, and it is the site of the largest theatre complex outside London. An astonishingly green city, full of parks, Sheffield is also on the edge of the Peak District National Park and within easy striking distance of some of Britain's most beautiful country houses, such as Hardwick Hall and Chatsworth House (Jane Austen's model for Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice). The University itself is situated in the leafy south-western suburbs of the city, described by the poet John Betjeman as 'the prettiest… in England'.
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