Program Overview
The PhD in Modern Languages at the University of Liverpool offers multidisciplinary research opportunities in eight languages, spanning disciplines such as literature, history, and sociolinguistics. With supervision by diverse teams and access to global partnerships, students can pursue innovative and language-based research. The program emphasizes postcolonial and gender studies perspectives, integrating them into pedagogical approaches to language study. Students benefit from excellent research facilities, support from the Liverpool Doctoral College, and opportunities to collaborate with academic and non-academic partners worldwide.
Program Outline
Degree Overview:
A PhD in Modern Languages at the University of Liverpool allows candidates to draw on Departmental research strengths across 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. 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. The program also offers 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.
Other:
- 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.
- The Department is 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.
- The program is dedicated to multidisciplinary, multilingual and multicultural research.
- The program provides supervisory expertise across eight languages in a wide range of intersecting disciplines, from postcolonialism and gender studies, to sociolinguistics, visual cultures, memory studies and beyond.
- The program supports innovative approaches and has extensive experience of working with academic and non-academic partners across the globe.
- The University of Liverpool has excellent research facilities within the Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences.
- For postgraduate researchers, these include designated shared office space and access to a vast repository of journals in the areas of Comparative and World Literature (including e-journals), through the Sydney Jones Library.
- As a postgraduate researcher at the University of Liverpool, you will become part of the Liverpool Doctoral College.
- Research groups:
- Image, Sound and Performance and Conflict
- Memory and Heritage
- Place, Space and Belonging
- Media Histories: From Manuscript to Digital
- We welcome proposals that are multidisciplinary, multilingual and inspired by language-based approaches to research that facilitate the emergence of diverse conceptualisations of knowledge.
- Central to our research is a sensitivity to language and culture, both historically and in the contemporary world – and a commitment to addressing the urgent questions to which language and culture relate.
The fees below reflect one year of study during the 2024/25 academic year PhD Duration UK students International Students Full time 2-4 years £4,786 Faculty of Health and Life Sciences £29,750 (Band A)^ Faculty of Science and Engineering £29,750 (Band A)^ or £23,400 (Band B) Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences £23,400 (Band B) Part time 4-6 years £2,393 Faculty of Health and Life Sciences £14,900 (Band A)^ Faculty of Science and Engineering £14,900 (Band A)^ or £11,700 (Band B) Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences £11,700 (Band B) The fees stated in the table above exclude potential research support fees also known as ‘bench fees’. You will be notified of any fee which may apply in your offer letter.
- Please note that if you are undertaking a PhD within the Faculty of Science and Engineering the fee you pay, Band A or Band B, will reflect the nature of your research project. Some research projects incur a higher fee than others e.g. if you are required to undertake laboratory work. You will be informed of the fee for your programme in your offer letter. ^ Self-funded, full-time international students studying a PhD programme classified as Band A will receive a £2,000 reduction in their fees for the first year only.
