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English

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Research in the Department of English embraces a wide range of periods, topics and approaches. Our research extends from the early modern to the contemporary, includes all the main literary genres, and is characterised by a strongly interdisciplinary approach and ethos. The department hosts two long established research groups – the Postcolonial Literatures Research Group and the Book History and Bibliography Research Group – and there are emerging research groupings in creative writing, literature and music, life-writing, and the writing of the romantic period. We currently have six full-time and about 15 part-time PhD students in the department, working on topics as diverse as spirituality in children’s literature, gardens in Rumer Godden’s fiction, John Le Carré, representations of the First World War,  Charlotte Smith, Virginia Woolf, Louis Macneice and broadcasting, and popular fiction of the Afghan Frontier, 1839–1939. We warmly welcome applications from prospective research students.

Key facts

  • The Department of English was ranked 32 out of 87 submissions to the UK’s 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE), an improvement of 22 places on the 2001 RAE.
  • 65 per cent of the English department’s 2008 RAE submission was graded as either ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’.
  • PhD students are supported by at least two supervisors and a strong programme of training in research skills; they participate in a lively research culture, with regular seminar programmes, conferences and workshops in Milton Keynes, London and other Open University national/regional centres.
  • The department has competed successfully for research funding, for large-scale projects like The Postcolonial History of the Book, the Reading Experience Database, 1450–1945, Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870–1950, and for many individual research projects.
  • The department hosts two international literary journals (Wasafiri and The Katherine Mansfield Journal), and department members serve on the editorial boards of many more literary and interdisciplinary journals.
  • The department contributes to interdisciplinary research, both in the work of individual researchers, and through its links with the Open University’s Ferguson Centre.

Facilities

The Open University houses two ongoing digital archives based on the department's research projects:

  • The Reading Experience Database (RED)
  • Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870–1950.

Further information

If you have an enquiry specific to this research area please contact:

Name:
Postgraduate Admissions Tutor
Email:
arts-english-enquiries@open.ac.uk
Phone:
+44 (0)1908 652092

For general enquiries please contact the Research Degrees Team via the link under ‘Your questions’ on the right of the page.