Research in English
English at Queen’s comprises Literature, Language and Linguistics and Creative Writing and offers strength and diversity across the breadth of the discipline from Anglo-Saxon to the present day. Our research combines traditional disciplinary strengths and an expansive range of geographical perspectives (e.g. Irish, British, American and Global or World literatures) with innovative methodologies and a distinctive interdisciplinary and collaborative focus. This has resulted in a range of exciting research projects, outputs and impact activities which have attracted a growing number of postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
English at Queen’s is one of the foremost centres for research innovation in Ireland
and the UK. A QS World Universities Top 100 English Department (2014-2020 inclusive)
and a Top 20 UK department for Impact and Research Intensity as measured by
the 2014 Research Excellence Framework.
We are especially proud of the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s, a focal point for creativity in the UK and Ireland and recognised as an international centre of research excellence in the fields of poetry, prose fiction and non-fiction and screenwriting.
The Seamus Heaney Centre is home to award-winning poets like Leontia Flynn, Nick Laird and Stephen Sexton, novelists and non-fiction writers like Garrett Carr and Glenn Patterson who have helped to refine Irish and Northern Irish literature in the twenty-first century and screenwriters and playwrights like Aislinn Clarke, Tim Loane, Jimmy McAleavey, and Michael West whose works have premiered on international television networks, in film festivals and on the stage in Belfast and Dublin. Recent prize-winners include Stephen Sexton who won the Forward Prize for the best first collection (2019) and an EM Forster Award, from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2020) and Aislinn Clarke received the 2019 Academy Gold Fellowship for Women sponsored by Swarovski for her screenwriting and film directing work.
RESEARCH PROJECTS IN ENGLISH
An exciting range of research projects in English draw on existing disciplinary strengths, while pursuing new and exciting interdisciplinary connections in areas such as the environmental, digital and medical humanities, and literature and science. Research income in the current REF period exceeds £4 million ad successful projects have been funded by AHRC, British Academy, APEX/Royal Society, Horizon 2020/Marie Curie, and Leverhulme Trust.
RESEARCH IMPACT
English is proud of long-standing traditions of public engagement and outreach which are evidenced in numerous joint initiatives, events, conferences and research partnerships. We are committed to developing the real world impact of our research in an exciting range of projects that engage non-academic audiences in the ways they think about the meanings and uses of English.
