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Study for a PhD in English

Study for a PhD in Film

Graduate School Office

Postgraduate research in English and Film

We are an internationally recognised centre for research and we have a strong culture of excellence in learning and teaching provision. Our English department is ranked first in the UK for world leading research and the 2014 REF placed us 4th in the UK for research power.

Harry Ford

Thesis title: Indigenous Shakespeare and Botanic Creation
Supervisors: Dr Felicity Henderson, Prof Karen Edwards
Funding: Self-funded

Exeter University has a supervisory team that offer professional support and encouragement. The working enivronment does not consist of tomb-like silence of libraries but of colourful, attractive spaces where sharing of ideas and discussion are encouraged. Similarly, academic staff are always glad to discuss topics of interest and to point you to different resources and avenues of research. The librarians at Exeter are really helpful too as they often know their archival materials inside out and might suggest really useful opportunities for further reading. Lastly, conferences at Exeter are well-managed and really bring out the strengths of the institution as a welcoming and stimulating haven of learning.

Gemma Edney

Thesis title: Sounding Girl, Girl(y) Sounds: Music and Girlhood in Contemporary French Cinema
Supervisors: Dr Fiona Handyside, Dr Helen Hanson
Funding: Self-Funded + final year grant from the Richard Stapley Educational Trust

I completed my BA and MA at Exeter, and so already had a good sense of the department of English and Film, and the interdisciplinary links between Film and languages, which is particularly important for my research. I already had a good working relationship with my supervisor, as well, and when researching different institutions, could not find a better supervisory team anywhere. Research into European (and particularly French) cinema at Exeter is going from strength to strength, and it is a great environment to keep up with the latest developments in the field. Exeter is a great place to study, and the absolute best place for me to pursue my particular interests.

Mia Dormer

Thesis title: A Hidden Life - Science in Historic Detective Fiction
Supervisors: Professor Andy Brown
Funding: Self Funded

I chose Humanities at Exeter because it has a superb support system for post graduates. Humanities provide excellent opportunities to maximise your experience as a PhD student. The Humanities college encourages students to enhance their research. Through the college I've been able to gain the LTHE and teach my chosen subject via Widening Participation.

I’ve found the experience to be rewarding and beneficial. My studies have been underpinned by the Humanities supportive ethos. My research activities have been encouraged and through them, I’ve gained fresh insight into my thesis and made invaluable friends. I couldn’t have made a better choice for my studies.

Sophia David

Thesis title:
Supervisors:
Funding:

'Quote'

Zoe Bulaitis

Thesis title: From Liberal to Neoliberal Education: Understanding the Value of the Humanities in England
Supervisors: Prof Regenia Gagnier, Dr Siân Harris
Funding: self-funded

I chose Exeter because of the positive experience that I had of working alongside world-leading academics during my undergraduate and MA program. As a result I knew that I would be able to rely on a strong network of supportive colleagues throughout my doctoral studies. The confidence in my supervisory team led to my decision to continue researching at the University of Exeter and it has proven to be a rewarding professional decision.

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
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

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.

Graduate School Office - the College of Humanities has a dedicated Graduate School Office that supports our postgraduate research students during their study with us. The Office promotes intellectual and social contact between research students in all our disciplines to foster a vibrant research community within the College.

Funding opportunities available to students on our research degree programmes in English and Film:*

Award	Value	Application deadline	Description
Mathematical Research PhD Studentships - EPSRC DTP Funded	3.5 year studentship: UK/EU tuition fees and an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate. Current rate of £15,285 per year.	Mon 25th Jan 2021	EPSRC Funded studentships available for September 2021 entry. The studentship will provide funding of fees and a stipend which is currently £15,285 per annum for 2020-21.
Social and Behavioural Life and Environmental Science Research PhD Studentships - EPSRC DTP Funded	3.5 year studentship: UK/EU tuition fees and an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate. Current rate of £15,285 per year.	Mon 25th Jan 2021	EPSRC Funded studentships available for September 2021 entry. The studentship will provide funding of fees and a stipend which is currently £15,285 per annum for 2020-21.
South West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership AHRC PhD Studentship	UK tuition fees for eligible students and a maintenance grant of £15,285 (2020/21)	Mon 25th Jan 2021	UK tuition fees for eligible students and a maintenance grant of £15,285 (2020/21)
2021/22 PhD Global Excellence Studentship - College of Humanities	International tuition fees and an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate of £15,009 per year (2019/20 rate)	Mon 1st Mar 2021	Exeter’s College of Humanities is offering one fully-funded PhD Global Excellence Studentship (open to International candidates only) for study commencing in September 2021, across any of its areas of research expertise.
University of Exeter Global Commitment Scholarship 2020/21	£2,000 reduction in the first year tuition fee	There is no application for this award. You will be automatically considered.	A tuition fee discount for students starting a postgraduate taught Masters or research degree with us in 2020/21
Shame and Medicine, Art History & Visual Culture - PhD (Wellcome Trust Funded)	UK/EU tuition fees and an annual maintenance allowance (£19,919 for year 1)	Tue 4th May 2021	Fully funded PhD studentship in Art History and Visual Culture as part of the Wellcome Trust funded Shame and Medicine Project based at the University of Exeter in the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health.
Sanctuary Scholarship	Full tuition fee waiver plus annual living cost grant	Fri 21st May 2021	The Sanctuary Scholarship scheme enables individuals seeking asylum and refugees who are not able access student finance to study at the University of Exeter.
Sports Scholarship Scheme	up to £3,000 plus additional support services worth £3,500	Mon 31st May 2021	Sports scholarships are awarded to students of outstanding sporting ability who show evidence of achievement at international level in their chosen sport.
University of Exeter Alumni Scholarship 2021/22	10% reduction in the first year tuition fee	There is no application for this award. You will be automatically considered.	A tuition fee discount for University of Exeter alumni who start a postgraduate degree with us in 2021/22
University of Exeter Class of 2021 Progression Scholarship	10% reduction in the first year tuition fee	There is no application for this award. You will be automatically considered.	A tuition fee discount for current University of Exeter students completing a degree in 2021 and progressing directly to a standalone postgraduate programme with us in 2021/22
Fulbright Scholarships: Postgraduate Student Awards - 2021/22 competition	Full tuition fee waiver for one year of Masters / PhD & living stipend	Deadline passed (Tue 13th Oct 2020)	Our UK Partnership award with Fulbright is available for Masters or Doctoral students who are USA or dual USA:UK citizens wishing to study at the University. The award takes the form of a tuition fee waiver for the first year of graduate study (either Masters or PhD) and a living stipend. We also accept scholars in receipt of Fulbright 'Open Awards' (also referred to as the All Disciplines Award).
University of Exeter Alumni Scholarship with the Global Commitment uplift 2020/21	20% reduction in the first year tuition fee	There is no application for this award. You will be automatically considered.	A tuition fee discount for all University of Exeter alumni who start a postgraduate degree with us in 2020/21
University of Exeter Class of 2020 Progression Award with the Global Commitment uplift	20% reduction in the first year tuition fee	There is no application for this award. You will be automatically considered.	A tuition fee discount for current University of Exeter students completing a full degree in 2020 and progressing directly to a standalone postgraduate programme with us in 2020/21
UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Environmental Intelligence: Data Science & AI for Sustainable Futures	UK/EU tuition fees together with a yearly stipend at UKRI rates (£15,285 for 2020/21)	Deadline passed (Mon 18th Jan 2021)	UKRI Funded studentships available for Autumn 2021 entry. The studentship will provide funding of Home/EU tuition fees and a stipend of £15,285 per annum for 2020-21.

_{*Please note that if you have submitted an application to one of our MPhil/PhD programmes you will not automatically be considered for funding. You must submit a separate funding application, including all required supporting documents, via the link provided in each award to be considered for that award.}

The College of Humanities works closely with the University’s Career Zone to help you gain the skills, experience and expertise employers are looking for. There are a wide range of opportunities to enhance your employability, along with the support you need to make important career decisions.

We have our own Employability Officer who works to develop close links with employers and arranges careers events.

Employers

Brandon Hill Communications
Datamatics Global Services Limited
Harper Collins
Ministry of Education
National Trust
Palgrave Macmillan
Penguin
RBS
Royal Literary Fund
SISU Capital
Studio Micali
The Big Picture Company
The Express Tribune
University of Exeter

Occupations

Assistant Producer
Associate Lecturer
College Lecturer
Community Workshop Organiser
Contract Manager
Editorial Assistant
Freelance Writer
Freelance Video Editor and Motion Graphics Designer
Head of Film and Media Studies
Information Assistant
Investment Director
Journalist
Language Consultant
Lecturer
Ministry Assistant
Pharmacy Manager
PR Account Executive
Researcher
Social Media Content Executive
Teacher
Translator
Writer

*Employment destination information sourced from the DLHE surveys 2013/14 and 2012/13

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