Find a PhD Supervisor

Research Opportunities	Supervisors
Decadence and Aestheticism Oscar Wilde; Modernism Literature and place The politics of literary form Literary theory My research covers British and American literature and culture, 1880-1940, with particular expertise in the following: Decadence and writing of the fin de siècle; Literature and place (particularly London and New York); Travel Writing; Modernism; Literary and Critical Theory. I have published on a range of authors, including: Oscar Wilde, Evelyn Waugh, Michael Field, John Dos Passos, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Arthur Symons.	Dr Alex Murray
Gothic / horror, science fiction, fantasy in and across media and literature. Representations of history in media and literature. History of media, particularly in the UK. My research focuses on the history of genres within their industrial, social and cultural contexts, particularly concentrating on fantastic genres such as science fiction and horror on television. I am also interested in the broad field of investigating popular culture and its expressions, and how these relate to cultural change. Key interests are identity, nostalgia, history, and the usefulness of genres which put some distance between the everyday and the narrative, such as science fiction, horror, and historical dramas.	Dr Derek Johnston
Critical discourse analysis Language of crime Language in the media Language and the law Language and literature (stylistics) My research focuses on the critical linguistic analysis of literary and non-literary discourses. I am particularly focused on the ideological operation of institutional discourses, especially media language, legal language and the language of crime and deviance. I have additional research interests in stylistics and literary linguistics, particularly the multimodal and pragmatic analysis of televisual dialogue.	Dr Simon Statham
Nineteenth-century French literature and questions of medicine, gender and/or religion Modern (19th/20th/21st-century) French illness/patient narratives French literature and illness, disease, pain; French Thanatology Literary representations of medical practice, care and experience My research seeks to demonstrate some of the ways in which modern French literature, from the nineteenth century to the present, can contribute to our understanding of illness, disease, pain, medical practice and experience, and death. It is situated at the interface of French Studies and the Medical Humanities and is concerned in particular with the ways in which literary configurations of the pathological body engage with medical, philosophical, religious and aesthetic languages.	Dr Steven Wilson
Digital culture in Brazil/Latin America Representation of urban Brazil (particularly Rio de Janeiro/favelas) Contemporary Brazilian audiovisual production (especially documentary) Urban violence in Brazil Brazilian/Latin American cultural studies Critical data studies Digital ethnography My research explores socially and politically engaged uses of the internet and digital technologies in Brazil. I have worked on blogging by favela residents and webdocumentaries about urban change, and am currently researching data activism about violence, and internet memes. I also research on Brazilian documentary and audiovisual production. My approach is interdisciplinary, combining approaches from literary and cultural studies and the social sciences, and I have broader interests in ethical and methodological issues in internet and interdisciplinary research.	Dr Tori Holmes
Early Modern Spanish poetry /poetics Lyric: theories / practice Golden Age 'comedia' Legacy / reception of the Classics Cervantine Studies Comparative Literature With a background in Classical and Modern Languages, I have long been interested in freeing the semantic possibilities of the prefix ‘re’ in my engagement with the Spanish Renaissance; notably by encouraging a redefinition of early modern Spanish culture through a re-defining of the cultural production at the core of that culture’s own self-image. My research is a catalyst for a broader re-evaluation of poetics, relevant beyond the spatio-temporal co-ordinates of the period; sensitive to the dynamic interactions of distinct horizons of expectations, and to unsettling established interpretations and teleologies.	Professor Isabel Torres
Psychoacoustics of mixing Dr Trevor Agus’s research focuses on the perception of everyday sounds. How do we recognise them? How can we manipulate them in perceptually relevant ways?Current projects involve adapting TV soundtracks for hearing-impaired listeners, which involves delving into the psychoacoustics of mixing.	Dr Trevor Agus
British film history Film censorship Film controversy Audiences Dr Barber’s research focuses on British film censorship, British cinema, and broadcast archives. She has published on British cinema and cinema-going and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC. She is the author of Censoring the 1970s: The BBFC and the Decade that Taste Forgot (2011), The British Film Industry in the 1970s: Capital, Culture and Creativity (2013) and Using Film as a Source (2015). As well as ongoing work on local film censorship, she is working with RTE Archives to explore film debates on television.	Dr Sian Barber
Italian cinema European Screen Industries Film and space New Wave cinema Film distribution Dr Baschiera’s research looks at cinematic spaces and production/distribution practices within European Cinema. His work engages with: filmic representation of urban and domestic space; streaming distribution and gatekeeping; transnational modes of film production; Italian new wave cinema, European horror cinema. Baschiera’s has also researched on film theory in particular in relation with transnational new waves.	Dr Stefano Baschiera
Exploring the shared ground between translation and philosophy Logic Theology Linguistics Literature Ethnography History Science and other areas Dr Blumczynski's research interests revolve around broadly understood translation, both its theory and practice. He likes to challenge the popular cliché according to which meanings get “lost in translation” – in his view, the opposite is true: translation, more often than not, creates a surplus of meaning by opening up horizons of possibilities.Much of his earlier work focussed on linguistic and ideological aspects of translation; recently he has been exploring issues of its axiology, methodology, logic, and ethics.	Dr Piotr Blumczynski
Modern poetry 20th century war writing Modern Irish literature Modernist literature Professor Brearton’s research interests are primarily in British and Irish Poetry of the 20th and 21st centuries, and in the literature and culture of the First World War. Her work explores the influence of Yeats, and other poets of the early 20th century, on contemporary poetry, and highlights the significance of the First World War to the Irish tradition. She has written extensively on Yeats, Heaney, Longley, Mahon, Graves, and MacNeice, as well as on contemporary poets such as Quinn and O’Reilly.	Dr Fran Brearton
Global Shakespeare Early Modern Literature and Culture Shakespeare and Film Mark Thornton Burnett is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is the author of Filming Shakespeare in the Global Marketplace (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007; 2nd ed. 2012) and Shakespeare and World Cinema (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) and co-author of Great Shakespeareans: Welles, Kurosawa, Kozintsev, Zeffirelli (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). Currently he is writing a study of Hamlet and world cinema (Cambridge University Press) and directing the EC/Marie Curie project, ‘Shakespeare and Indian Cinematic Traditions’.	Professor Mark Thornton Burnett
French Sociolinguistics Variation The Structure of Spoken French Temporality in French and Language Policy Professor Carruthers works on the contemporary French Language, specializing in questions of orality (particularly oral narrative and the structure of spoken French), temporality (tense, aspect, connectors, frames) and language variation more broadly (word order, negation, speech and thought presentation).Her work is strongly sociolinguistic and she has experience of corpus creation, analysis of variation and language policy. With research funding from the AHRC and the EU, she leads a team of postdocs and PhDs working in these fields.	Professor Janice Carruthers
Popular Cinema French Thrillers Literary Celebrity Dr Jeannerod’s research is dedicated to French Cinema, European Popular Culture and French Crime Fiction. Its focus is on processes of transmedia and international circulation of fictional narratives, and the development of innovative methods to study them. Alongside Film Theory and comparative studies, this includes Literary and Cultural History, Socio-criticism, Reception Theory, Paratexts, metadata Large corpus studies, data visualization and distant reading.	Dr Dominique Jeannerod
Poetry Creative writing Dr Flynn has published four poetry collections with Jonathan Cape: These Days (2004), Drives (2008), Profit and Loss (2011) and The Radio (2017), for which she has won an Eric Gregory Award, The Forward Prize for Best First Collection, The Rooney Prize for Irish Writing, a Major Individual Artist’s Award from the Arts Council NI, The Lawrence O’Shaughnessy Prize for Irish Literature, the AWB Vincent Literary Award and The Irish Times Poetry Now Award.	Dr Leontia Flynn
Creative Non-Fiction Fiction Young Adult Fiction The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border (Faber & Faber, 2017) was widely discussed in the media and selected as a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. Garrett frequently contributes to the press, the BBC and other broadcasters in Europe and beyond. He has presented many papers to conferences, primarily on cartography and writing about place. He curates a touring exhibition called Mapping Alternative Ulster. He has also published three young adult novels with Simon & Schuster.Garrett’s research has a prominent place in international media discussions around Brexit, nationalism and landscape. It has helped frame those discussions in the wider context of the border’s past and lived present. The Rule of the Land has been abridged by BBC Radio 4 while press coverage has included The Guardian, Der Spiegel, and The New York Times. Reviews from journalists and the public indicate that Garrett’s research has shaped views on Ireland’s border while audience testimonials reveal the transformative effect of the Mapping Alternative Ulster exhibition.	Dr Garrett Carr
Translation Social narrative theory Travelling theory Complexity theory Russian area studies Literature, music, space and other related areas My principal research interests are in social-narrative theory as a mode of inquiry into translations and translated events, with a particular interest in sites of conflict and narrative contestation. My doctoral work on the Beslan hostage disaster investigated online media, translations and narrative configurations of violent conflict.Later projects have extended my interests to include intralingual and intersemiotic translation, and I am currently writing a book on the translated spaces of the Qatar desert and urban landscapes.	Dr Sue-Ann Harding
Literature in English written and published between 1680 and 1830 Particularly: women’s writing, Jonathan Swift, Byron, Irish writing in English, And feminist approaches to literature and culture of this period. Professor Haslett’s research comprises two main areas, both within studies of the ‘long eighteenth century’ (1680-1820): women’s writing in English (specifically representations of female communities and female friendship) and Irish culture and literature.Both areas are vibrant research areas within literary studies in English and offer many opportunities for original research, with hundreds of women writers and writers of Irish origin, and ephemeral texts (including ballads and broadsheet satires) remaining to be recovered for this period.	Professor Moyra Haslett
Cognitive studies of translation and interpreting Translation and interpreting pedagogy Translation and interpreting industries Conference and community interpreting Professionalization of translators and interpreters Dr. Chen-En Ho is dedicated to cognitive studies of translation and interpreting, with a primary focus on investigating — with an eye tracker — the cognitive process of sight translation and influence of training and interpreting experience on interpreting quality. Traditional cognitive analysis of T&I activities has been done by making inferences based on the interpreting outcome. With an eye tracker, moment-to-moment behaviours and strategies adopted by interpreters and translators can be revealed, which would enlighten training and skill development.	Dr Chen-En Ho
Translation, Interpretation and Representation Translation is not a subject that can be conceived in any traditional way. It is a way of interpreting and representing the products and processes of the world around us. Accordingly, Professor Jonston is interested in the application of the insights and anxieties of translation as an intellectual method and writing practice to questions of representation, whether textual, visual, scientific or ideological.	Professor David Johnston
Early modern studies, particularly Shakespeare and Renaissance performance cultures Age, childhood and gender in early modern literature and culture Early modern literature (especially drama) and civil unrest, including protest, riot Dr Lamb’s research focuses on early modern literature, Renaissance performance cultures, and childhood studies. Her book, Performing Childhood in the Early Modern Theatre, offered a new understanding of early modern childhood through its focus on the child performer.Her second book, Reading Children in Early Modern Culture, explores how textual cultures articulate alternative understandings of childhood. She is developing a collaborative project, Shakespeare and Riot, that examines Shakespeare as a battleground for cultural, social and national identity.	Dr Edel Lamb
Contemporary Irish Literature and Culture, specifically Northern Irish fiction and drama since the 1998 Agreement Comparative studies in Post-conflict cultures, specifically in relation to issues of dealing with the past and reconciliation Comparative studies in trauma and memory studies with a focus on the contemporary Irish cultural context Dr Lehner’s research interests are in contemporary Irish and Scottish writing as well as post-conflict literatures and cultures, with a focus on Northern Ireland. Her work explores the relationship between politics, ethics, and aesthetics. It takes inspiration from the field of postcolonial, gender, and trauma studies and political and aesthetic theory, and has both a comparative and interdisciplinary dimension. Dr Lehner has been involved in several projects: She is completing a PaCCS-funded project on ‘LGBTQ Visions of Peace in a Society Emerging from Conflict’, led by Dr Fidelma Ashe (University of Ulster). This project sought to redress the marginalisation of LGBTQ people in conflict transformation processes by providing them discursive and artistic fora to express their stories of political conflict, conflict transformation, and visions of peace. The creative outcomes included a photography exhibition and a theatre performance, which were launched during Belfast's Queer Arts Festival, Outburst, in November 2017, at Belfast Exposed and TheatreofplucK. Dr Lehner is currently working on another PaCCS-funded project on ‘Sounding Conflict: From Resistance to Reconciliation’, led by Professor Fiona Magowan (QUB). The project investigates the effects of sound (including sonic arts, participatory music-making and storytelling in theatre) to explore how sounds project and ameliorate community experiences, memories, and narratives of conflict across cultures and different conflict/post-conflict settings of resistance through to reconciliation.Dr Lehner is working on the role of storytelling, the politics of voice and sound in theatre productions to assess the ways in which they can create contact zones and foster reconciliation among audiences. She is working with four local theatre companies, which are notable for creating a new ‘transformative aesthetics’ to counteract one-sided narratives of the Northern Irish conflict: Tinderbox, Kabosh, TheatreofplucK and the Theatre of Witness programme at the Playhouse in Derry.	Dr Stefanie Lehner
American Poetry, in particular Wallace Stevens, Elizabeth Bishop and the Middle Generation American Fiction Transcendentalism Addiction and Literature Literature and Suicide Professor McGowan’s current research investigates the interrelation between twentieth-century poetry and philosophy, in particular in the works of Wallace Stevens and Elizabeth Bishop. The overlaps between philosophy and American writing also extend into his work on F. Scott Fitzgerald, in particular his short stories in the 1930s.The outworkings of his research include examinations of American routines of addiction, the writing of silence, and of suicide in contemporary literature.	Professor Philip McGowan
Dickens studies 19th-century British writers 19th-century Irish literature and culture 20th-century Irish literature Modern post-colonial fiction & theory 19th-century women's travel writing The literature of landscape Film and fiction TV adaptations of 18th-century/Victorian fiction 20th and 21st-century fiction and poetry Textual criticism Landscape literature The literature of place My primary research area is the life and works of Charles Dickens. I am the Principal Editor of the Dickens Letters Project, and an expert analyst of Dickens's letters, manuscripts, and handwriting. I am highly adept at finding new Dickens letters that have never before come to the attention of scholars. I have written and lectured widely on Dickens, his works and his world. I have curated Dickens exhibitions at major institutions, and have made these the substance of my impact cases for presentation to the Research Excellence Framework (REF) evaluation. Most of my research has used historicist and post-colonial modes of criticism. I am an expert investigator of archival sources, and I have developed new approaches to Dickens's life and work as a result of my findings. I have done significant work in bibliography, the interaction between literature and the visual arts, and in textual criticism. I am working on the authoritative critical edition of Dickens's last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend.	Dr Leon Litvack
Imperial travel writing and the literature of exploration Nineteenth and twentieth-century colonial fiction The African novel in English Dr. Livingstone’s interests are broadly in nineteenth-century literature and culture, postcolonial studies, book history, literature and religion, and the digital humanities. His research addresses the colonial discourse of the Victorian period, with a particular focus on travel writing and the literature of African exploration.He is the author of a reputation study, Livingstone’s “Lives”: A Metabiography of a Victorian Icon (MUP, 2014), and articles in journals such as Literature and Theology, Studies in Travel Writing, and Journal of Victorian Culture.	Dr Justin Livingstone
Writing for screen Writing for theatre Dr Loane writes Television drama for UK and European networks. His recent screenwriting includes Versailles (Canal+) France and Das Boot (Sky) Germany.	Dr Tim Loane
The language of literature (Cognitive) Stylistics (Critical) Discourse Analysis Translation Studies (of audiovisual/literary texts or from a linguistic perspective) Dr Lugea is interested in language use and linguistic creativity, in English, Spanish and beyond. Although she often focuses on the pinnacle of linguistic creativity, literature, and also analyses other rhetorical texts from subtitles to Internet memes, applying models from Cognitive Stylistics, (Critical) Discourse Analysis and Pragmatics. Her research reveals how meaning is created through texts and cognitive processes.	Dr Jane Lugea
Linguistics: formulaic language, multiword-fixed expressions in Irish Memory Studies: ideas of collective and cultural memory in linguistic landscapes Folkloristics: the narrative tradition and verbal arts. Dr Mac Coinnigh’s research examines phraseological units in the Irish language, primarily from a semantic, syntactic and lexical perspective. He has been involved in a major project in areal linguistics Widespread Idioms in Europe and Beyond, in which idiomatic and formulaic structures were mapped across a range of European languages.In recent years his research focus has been in the field of Memory Studies where he has examined the relationship between language and conflict transformation. His current research project examines the links between (collective-cultural) memory, language and identity creation in post-conflict societies.	Dr Marcas Mac Coinnigh
Playwriting for stage and radio Screenwriting Dr Jimmy McAleavey is a playwright for stage and radio and an occasional screenwriter. He is known for his dark humour, bracing ideas and experimentation with form when the subject requires it.	Dr Jimmy McAleavey
G.F. Handel Thomas Moore London theatre history (c.1725-1825) Music in Ireland (c. 1750-1850) 19th-century book trade Dr McCleave has two principal areas of research. The first relates to the history of theatre dance and music in 18th-century London, with a particular emphasis on the reciprocal relations of theatre genres and also the reception of female theatre dancers. The composer G.F. Handel is a figure she explores through these interests.She also works on the writer-musician Thomas Moore, his reception, the dissemination of his work, while developing digital resources from the Gibson-Massie Moore collection at Queen’s.	Dr Sarah McCleave
Contemporary Poetry Modern Irish and British poetry Poetics She supervises students undertaking both critical and creative projects in poetry Dr McConnell’s monograph, Northern Irish Poetry and Theology, examines how theology shapes the status and constitution of subjectivity, language, and poetic form in the work of Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Derek Mahon. She has published articles on Northern Irish poetry after the peace process, and on Heaney’s manuscript drafts.McConnell also publishes poetry. She is interested in the politics of aesthetic form, and in the relationship between violence, artistic practice and literary reception.	Dr Gail McConnell
Dance Studies Choreographic Practices and Processes Practice as Research Affect Studies in performance The Maternal in performance Movement practices and performance Interdisciplinary performance practices Collaborative performance practices Dr McGrath’s research interests include dance and politics, performance and philosophy, collaborative creative processes, and cultural and affect studies. Book publications include her monograph, Dance Theatre in Ireland: revolutionary moves (Palgrave, 2013), and a co-edited collection, Dance Matters in Ireland: contemporary performances and practices (Palgrave, 2018).She co-convenes the Choreography and Corporeality Working Group of the IFTR. She is currently working on a book project on Dance and Affect, and a practice-as-research project on Dance and the Maternal.	Dr Aoife McGrath
Postcolonial literatures and film from Portuguese-speaking Africa Gender Studies Representations of Female Heroism Dr Tavares's main research interests focus upon postcolonial literatures and film from Portuguese-speaking Africa, gender studies and representations of heroism. So far, her research has explored the possibilities arising from thinking nationalism and national identity through gender. She is the author of No Country for Nonconforming Women: Feminine Conceptions of Lusophone Africa (Legenda Books, forthcoming).Dr Tavares is currently conducting research on the processes of construction and representations of female heroism in Mozambique (financed by the Leverhulme Trust).	Dr Maria Tavares
Argentine Literature and Art The Fantastic in Literature/Art/Film Hispanic Surrealism and Avant Garde Movements Religion and Spirituality in Hispanic Art and Literature Questions of Self and Subjectivity in Latin American Literature and Art Ricki’s research explores questions of identity (religious, philosophical, political) in Latin American literature and art. In particular he is interested in artistic responses to the crises of Modernity and the diversification of self-creation that emerged as a result.	Dr Ricki O’Rawe
Digital Instrument Design and Performance Practice Technology Mediated Composition Miguel Ortiz is a Mexican composer, sound artist, and Lecturer of Design and Prototyping at Queen’s University Belfast. His work focuses on the use of sensing technologies for creative applications, specifically Digital Instrument Design and its intersection with Composition and Improvisation. Dr Ortiz has performed using traditional acoustic instruments, laptop improvisations, bio-instruments and hyperinstruments.	Dr Miguel Ortiz
Creative Writing Prose Glenn’s ten novels to date are: Burning Your Own (1988), a Rooney Prize and Betty Trask first novel prize-winner; Fat Lad(1992); Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), The International (1999); Number 5 (2003), That Which Was (2004), The Third Party (2007); The Mill For Grinding Old People Young, the inaugural One City One Book choice for Belfast (2012); The Rest Just Follows (2014); and Gull (2016).He has also published two essay collections, Lapsed Protestant (2006) and Here’s Me Here (2014), and the family memoir, Once upon a Hill: Love in Troubled Times (2009).Short stories and plays have been broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and he has also presented television documentaries on literary and cultural subjects. His feature film Good Vibrations (co-written with Colin Carberry) was released in 2013. In 2009 he was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship.	Professor Glenn Patterson
Twentieth and twenty-first century Irish writing (mainly drama and fiction) British and Irish working-class writing Community Theatre Diaspora and migrant writing Race/ethnicity in contemporary Irish theatre Dr Pierse has focussed on the neglected area of class in Irish Studies. His Writing Ireland’s Working Class (2011) focussed on the writing of working-class life in Dublin. His recent edited collection, A History of Irish Working-Class Writing (2017), has expanded on that research.Pierse is also co-editor of Rethinking the Irish Diaspora: After the Gathering (February 2018), which expands his work on diaspora writers. He is also more generally interested in cultural production in contexts of marginalisation and disenfranchisement.	Dr Michael Pierse
Early Modern Women’s Writing Shakespeare Adaptation Memory Studies Dr Ramona Wray’s research interests include Shakespeare, early modern drama, editing, women’s writing and drama, adaptation, film and memory studies.She has published books on women writers of the seventeenth century and Shakespeare and film and is also the editor of the Arden edition of Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam.She has also co-edited books on Shakespeare and Ireland and Shakespeare and the arts. As first supervisor, she has supervised sixteen doctoral theses in these and related areas.	Dr Ramona Wray
Sound art Socially engaged arts Context-focused Composition and performance Multimodal food experience Professor Rebelo is focused on practice-based approaches in music and the sonic arts which address contemporary contexts and technologies. His research has been funded by the AHRC/ESRC Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research; in this context, two funded projects focus on the relationship between sound, everyday life and conflict transformation. Work under the umbrella of socially engaged arts practice has produced participatory projects in the UK, Portugal, Brazil and Mozambique.Professor Rebelo’s practice includes composition, performance and installation and is developed in a critical and reflective context which aims to address our understanding of listening and interventionist research practices in sound.	Professor Pedro Rebelo
Eighteenth-century literature (1660-1820) Prose fiction: Behn to Austen Laurence Sterne Literature of slavery & abolition, 1660-1840 Contemporary historical fiction Dr Regan has wide-ranging interests in the literature and culture of the ‘long’ eighteenth century (1660-1820), including prose fiction, periodical writing, satire, and slave narratives.He is the author of Making the Novel: Fiction and Society in Britain, 1660-1789 (2006, with Brean Hammond) and editor of Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and France (2013) and of The Culture of the Seven Years' War: Empire, Identity, and the Arts in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (2014, with Frans De Bruyn).	Dr Shaun Regan
Syntax and/or morphology (theoretical, comparative) Cross-linguistic variation and its formal modelling Diachronic linguistics and language change Language acquisition (first or second, particularly the acquisition of grammatical knowledge) Dr Richards’s research is primarily in theoretical and comparative syntax (especially English/ Germanic and Slavonic), with further interests in historical linguistics, language variation and change, and language acquisition.His research specializes in the generative framework of Noam Chomsky’s Minimalist Program, with a particular focus on how the syntactic component of the human language faculty interacts with, and is shaped by, the external systems of speech (phonology) and thought (semantics).	Dr Marc Richards
Politics in music and song (all genres/ national/ international/ contemporary / historical) Cabaret and music theatre Dr. Robb’s research is dedicated to the relationship between politics and music. He has especially looked at the history of political music and song in Germany. He takes an interdisciplinary approach analysing text alongside music in its performance and political /historical context.The genres he looks at range from cabaret, agitprop and theatre song to folk (international), pop, rock and techno. A musician himself, he is currently exploring connections between political song traditions in Ireland and Germany and is seeking to build a European network.	Dr David Robb
Eighteenth-century Periodicals Literature and empire Indian Literature in English The Lake Writers Ireland and Empire Dr Roberts’s work focuses on interconnections between east and west during the long eighteenth century. He is the editor of critical editions of works by Charles Johnston, Robert Southey and Thomas De Quincey. He has published widely on writers of the Lake school, Periodical writers, Orientalist poetry, and contemporary Indian literature in English. He would welcome proposals in any of these area.	Dr Daniel Roberts
Arabic-English translation Translation in the Arab world Media and journalistic translation Citizen media Narrative approaches Non-professional translation Digital culture Activist translation Dr Sadler’s research focuses principally on translated and multi-lingual narratives on social media, with an emphasis on news mediation by citizens and activists in Egypt and the broader Arab world. His work explores the construction of geographically and culturally distant events through fragmented storytelling practices and draws on diverse theoretical interests including: socio-narrative and narratological theory; media theory; critical discourse analysis; post-colonial theory; hermeneutics and critical theory.	Dr Neil Sadler
Francophone-Chinese Studies Intermediality Contemporary literature, including women’s writing Migration / Mobility Studies Sartrean Studies Dr Silvester has research interests in contemporary literature (post-1980) and migration studies, most notably concerning francophone-Chinese writing, film and art. She also has a background in Sartrean Studies and discourse analysis. Part of her research has taken an interdisciplinary angle, combining text and image studies, philosophy and film criticism, applying theories from the Education Sciences to literature, and investigating intermediality.	Dr Rosalind Silvester
Victorian Literature, Culture and Politics (including the 1890s) Literature and Science Literature and Ethics Periodical Culture Nineteenth-Century Fantasy, including Science Fiction and Fairy Tale Dr Sumpter’s monograph The Victorian Press and the Fairy Tale won the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award (2011) and was shortlisted for two further monograph prizes. She is the author of a wide range of articles on Victorian literature, culture and politics (including on Oscar Wilde, William Morris, and Thomas Hardy).Her specialisms include Victorian literature and science (particularly evolutionary science, anthropology and mental science), the nineteenth-century press and the history of reading, and nineteenth-century fairy tale and science fiction.	Dr Caroline Sumpter
Any field that has music /music performance at its focus Particularly interested in research that reaches beyond music and draws on other areas of research Franziska’s research focuses on music performance especially performances that use digital media and emerging technologies. She has expertise in areas such as ethnographic research, improvisation studies, performance studies, sonic arts history, and critical theory.	Dr Franziska Schroeder
British and American culture, literature and history, 1600-1900 American studies Historical biography Cultural theory History of the book and textual culture Professor Verhoeven's general research field can be described as the study of structures of continuity and rupture in the Age of Revolution and Enlightenment in the Atlantic World, 1600-1800. Consistently marrying archival research with cultural theory, and historiography with the history of ideas, his work explores the evolving symbiosis between historical event and historical consciousness, between power and knowledge, agency and identity.	Professor Wil Verhoeven
Mexican literature and culture Cultural production from/about the Mexico-US border Latin American women’s writing The politics and aesthetics of cultural institutions as they relate to Latin America e.g. film festivals, book fairs, publishing houses, galleries Latin American multimedia cultural production Dr Bowskill’s research explores the social and political functions of cultural production (especially art and literature) with reference to Latin America and gender. Current projects include: a study of the politics of Spanish American literary prizes. This research has particular relevance to debates about whether women and other minority groups are under-represented when it comes to the awarding of such prizes. analysing multimedia cultural production by women authors and artists comparing fictional representations of feminicide in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico	Dr Sarah Bowskill
Theatre Drama Performance Shakespeare My research covers three areas: theatre historiography, Shakespeare in performance and 19th-c theatre and drama.	Professor Richard Schoch
Arts-based interventions for public health and social change Simulation-based education for healthcare and social care I engage in transdisciplinary, collaborative research that focuses on two broad areas: simulation-based education for health and social care; arts-based interventions for public health. I work with colleagues from a broad range of subject areas including experimental medicine, medical education, nursing, public health, sociology and social work. The shared focus is on developing new methods from the creative interaction between diverse disciplines with the common goal of understanding and improving healthcare and wellbeing in local, national and international contexts.	Dr Paul Murphy
Visual music, film sound, film music, television music, animation, landscape in cinema, acoustic ecology and cinema, experimental film, experimental animation, expanded cinema, psychogeography and the moving image, digital special effects, Hollywood Cinema Dr. Mollaghan is the author of the monograph The Visual Music Film (2015). Her current research interests focus on animation, the relationship between music, sound and the moving image, and landscape and sound in cinema. She continues to publish in these areas.	Dr Aimee Mollaghan
Documentary Film and Visual Arts Political Filmmaking Cinema Adaptation Modernism I work chiefly on comparative approaches to the study of film, particularly forms of film scholarship and criticism concerned with aesthetic questions attentive to film language and its internal structures of relation. My recent research has focussed on the following areas: documentary and the visual arts; political cinema; film, modernism and adaptation; documentary and the politics of mental illness.	Dr Des O'Rawe
The literature and culture of the Spanish Enlightenment Spanish Book History Larra Dr Sánchez Espinosa’s research focuses on the literature and culture of the Spanish Enlightenment, exploring the cultural exchanges between Spain and Europe during the long 18th Century, with special attention to the Spanish book market during the Siglo de las Luces. Current projects include: • an annotated edition of the correspondence of the ilustrado Nicolás de Azara • a study of the production of the printer and bookseller Gabriel de Sancha in the period (1790-1820) • a study of the English commercial connections of the Italian printer Giambattista Bodoni, designated printer to the King of Spain	Dr Gabriel Sánchez Espinosa
Cultural Labour (precarity, inequality) and the role of the artist Ethics, stakeholder management and organisational decision-making in arts and cultural industries management Arts & CCI management studies (non-profit and social enterprise) Cultural leadership Themes of cultural policy-making with specific reference to festivals, youth arts and role of the artist Cultural Labour (precarity, inequality) and the role of the artist; Ethics, stakeholder management and organisational decision-making in arts and cultural industries management; arts & CCI management studies (non-profit and social enterprise); Cultural leadership; themes of cultural policy-making with specific reference to festivals, youth arts and role of the artist.	Dr Ali FitzGibbon
Late medieval literature and culture Fifteenth century religious and devotional literature and culture Book history and digital textualities Historiographical writing Critical and cultural theory Translation theory Critical digital studies Stephen's interests span medieval studies, contemporary literary and cultural theory and philosophical hermeneutics, as well as memorialising traditions and historiographical writing. He has also had a long-standing interest in digital humanities and visual studies.	Dr Stephen Kelly
Spanish literature of the 19th and early 20th centuries Questions of periodization Modernity, science, futurity and futuristic fiction Women's writing Dr Lawless has published on the nineteenth-century Spanish short story, early Spanish science fiction, authors Rosalía de Castro, Rosa Chacel, Leopoldo Alas, Antonio Ros de Olano, Silverio Lanza and others. She is particularly interested in questions of temporality, and particularly futurity and the imagination of future time. She is co-founder of the International Network for Nineteenth-Century Hispanism and co-organizes the annual meetings, and with Prof. Andrew Ginger co-edited "Spain in the Nineteenth Century: New Essays on Experiences of Culture and Society" (Manchester UP).	Dr Geraldine Lawless
Creative Writing: Poetry I'm the author of a book of poems If All the World and Love Were Young (2019), winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Shine / Strong Award, as well as the EM Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. I'm the author of a pamphlet of poems, Oils, published by the Emma Press in 2014, which was the Poetry Book Society's Winter Pamphlet Choice of that year. My work has been published in leading journals in the UK and Ireland such as Granta, Poetry London and Poetry Ireland Review , as well as a number of American publications, including POETRY and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Poems were featured in The Future Always Makes Me So Thirsty: New Poets from the North of Ireland, edited by Sinéad Morrissey and Stephen Connolly. In addition, poems will feature in Switching Off Darkness: Young Irish Poets, an anthology of poems by Irish writers in Greek translation, to be published by Vakxikon Publications in 2019. I was the winner of the UK National Poetry Competition, and an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors. I've contributed to documentaries for BBC Radio Four, including We Will Arise and Go Now, and Driving Bill Drummond.	Dr Stephen Sexton
Bach studies with all its branches My research is centred on music of J. S. Bach approaching from source studies (both manuscripts and prints), that is, finding new evidence in the sources to offer new interpretation of his music. Source studies offer a wide range of topics including the issues of compositional and revision process, performance practice, notational practice esp. quaver beaming, pedagogy, source transmission, and reception history.	Professor Yo Tomita
Practice-based applications in the area of broadcast production Factual/Documentary TV Radio Podcast Music Composition for screen and audio Sound Design Proposals that use broadcast media to enquire into new ideas or thinking My research is practice-based and focusses on a. embodied creativity - creating emotional impact through broadcast media and creativity b. Storytelling through broadcast media and how examining the elements of visual, narrative, music and sound are composed to tell and create powerful stories through broadcast media. I am interested in how broadcast media forms can be used to create meaningful change, impact and enquiry by investigating new thinking, ideas through broadcast media. Areas of study and research - Story, Narrative, Image, Music Composition, Sound, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Embodiment, Embodied Creativity, Emotional and Mental Health.	Mr Frank Delaney
Nineteenth-century Irish writing (especially fiction and poetry) Gothic literature Law and literature Dr Sturgeon's research focuses on nineteenth-century Irish writing and culture, with particular interests in the Gothic and Irish Romanticism. Recent work has explored the environmental humanities (with reference to twentieth-century Irish Gothic writing); Irish traditional music and collectors; and connections between nineteeth-century Ireland and Eastern Europe.	Dr Sinead Sturgeon
Early modern Irish and Scottish Gaelic language and literature Language and identity in Ireland and Scotland Language politics Onomastics Dialectology My principal research interests lie in the areas of linguistics (particularly onomastics and historical linguistics); Irish and Scottish Gaelic literary texts; language politics; Irish and Scottish identity and relations in the medieval and modern periods.	Professor Micheal O Mainnin
Voice and Sound Studies Experimental Music Sound and Media Art Zeynep Bulut’s research sits at the intersection of voice and sound studies, experimental music, sound and media art. Her book project, Building a Voice: Sound, Surface, Skin, theorizes the emergence, embodiment, and mediation of voice as skin. Her articles have appeared in various volumes and journals including The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art (Eds. Jane Grant, John Matthias, and David Prior, forthcoming), Perspectives of New Music, Postmodern Culture, and Music and Politics. Her broader research interests include epistemologies and technologies of hearing and speech, affect and new materialisms, digital media and culture, deaf culture, music and medicine, and voice and speech disorders in the history of science and medicine. Alongside her scholarly work, she has also exhibited sound works, and composed and performed vocal pieces for concert, video and theatre. Recently she has released her debut single, Eclipse, produced by Erdem Helvacioglu (Diffuse Records 2019). Her composer profile has been featured by British Music Collection. She is sound review editor of Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and project lead for the collaborative research initiative, Map a Voice.	Dr Zeynep Bulut
Phonetics and phonology Clinical phonetics and linguistics General linguistics Dr Rahilly works mainly in phonetics and phonology, with a particular focus on clinical aspects of speech and language. She has recently supervised doctoral projects in literacy acquisition, language in autism and children's engagement with spoken language as a means for educational achievement in multilingual classroom settings.	Professor Joan Rahilly
Samuel Beckett's oeuvre Theatre and gender studies My primary area of research is the drama of Samuel Beckett; I have particular interest in embodiment and gender in the texts, the place of Beckett within specific cultural contexts and the relation between Beckett and festivals, as well as historiographical approaches to Beckett's theatre in general. The other strand of my research lies in queer and feminist theory and performance practices.	Dr Trish McTighe
Animation US Screen Industries Film Marketing American Cinema Dr Haswell's research looks at the development of animation technology and aesthetics in relation to the digital revolution. Her work engages with industrial contexts and trends in mainstream American animation, including studio branding, marketing and merchandise, and film sequels. Dr Haswell's work also engages with themes of representation and the role of women.	Dr Helen Haswell
Journalism and documentary Radio & podcasting Sound, sound design and sound studies Animation Narrative hybrids (docu-fiction, verbatim theatre, etc.) Mediated memory Irish language and media The Middle East (society, media, politics) LGBT identity and representation I'm interested in narrative and story as constructed in both factual and fictional forms, and in blends of these. Specific areas of interest include: voice (both verbal and non-verbal) and vocal power in media; media studies (including journalism and documentary); memory and nostalgia; folklore and mythology; colonialism/post-colonialism and subaltern studies; LGBT studies; multilingualism and the Irish language; and the Middle East. I’m drawn to how knowledge about these areas of interest can be deepened through the creation of media: audio, video, textual, animated and hybrid forms. media, documentary, journalism, voice, vocal power, language, multilingualism, Gaeilge, Irish language, memory, sound, animation, hybridity, hybrid forms, Middle East, LGBT, radio, podcasting, The Middle East	Dr Don Duncan
History of medicine and society in the eighteenth-century Latin American context with links broadly on a trans-Atlantic basis Medicine and society in the eighteenth century Spanish American context and trans-Atlantic links with Europe. History of Medicine; Colonial Latin America; Eighteenth Century	Dr Fiona Clark
Acoustic composition I am an acoustic composer with over 60 works in the public domain, published by Peters Edition. My particular interest is in experimental layouts across instrumental compositions, in viable harmonic discourses and in the re-sizing of one musical entity onto different temporal scales. Recent works have thus explored a ‘Russian Doll’ design, with multiple movements magnifying a shared material that reveals more detail in longer iterations. My work to date is entirely for acoustic forces. Acoustic Composition	Professor Piers Hellawell
Composition Notated music Composition Electronic music Computer Assisted composition My research activity is composition. I am interested in post-spectral and post-serial composition methods (including algorithmic methods, eg in OpenMusic.). Primarily notated music, but also electronic music. Have also carried out work that investigates integration of elements from non-classical and non-western music. Music, Composition, Spectralism, Serialism, Computer-Assisted Composition	Dr Simon Mawhinney
Representation of terrorism Cultural memory Nostalgia European and world cinema Gender studies Dr Caoduro's research focuses on mediated memories of terrorism and political violence, nostalgia and vintage in cinema, and costume and fashion in films. She has also published on contemporary European cinema (especially German and Italian), female identities in conflict and is the co-editor of Mediated Terrorism in the 21st Century (2021) and Documenting Fashion (2023). terrorism; nostalgia; fashion; gender; European cinema	Dr Elena Caoduro
Poetry and creative writing I am interested in contemporary poetics: poetry, prose, and their areas of overlap and intersection. I completed a poetry PhD at the Seamus Heaney Centre in November 2022: the critical component is titled 'Strangely Alive': Elizabeth Bishop and the 'Art of Story Writing'. The thesis examines Elizabeth Bishop’s technique of overlapping the lyric with narrative in her autobiographical prose writing of childhood. The creative component is titled 'We Play Here'. The book was developed as part of a wider thesis exploring the imbrication of verse and narrative. We Play Here is a collection of four poem sequences set in Protestant working class North Belfast in the summer of 1988 against a background of political turbulence. Four female friends navigate an eerie, elemental landscape of normalised violence, poverty and neglect. narrative poetry; Granta; working class; the Troubles; Northern Ireland; poem story; Elizabeth Bishop; childhood	Dawn Watson
Medieval Irish language and literature I undertake supervision in any area of medieval Irish language and literature, particularly, textual editing, lexicography, and narrative analysis. celtic, medieval, Ireland, literature, language, lexicography	Gregory Toner
Creative Writing Scriptwriting for stage or screen My research focuses on scriptwriting for stage and screen. script, scriptwriting, theatre, film adaptation	Michael West
Impressionism Gender Aesthetics 19thc textual and visual studies My research is broadly based on 19thc France and Belgium, with many publications in this area. Most recently (2022), I've published an edited volume with Bloomsbury Domestic Space in France and Belgium, as well as two special issues on 19thc Belgian Interiors and on Intimacy with the 19thc journal, Dix-Neuf (2019; 2022). I'm an expert on French Impressionism and I'm currently working on a monograph on Berthe Morisot, contracted with Routledge called Morisot’s Modernism and Impressionist Art, for which I was awarded the 2021 Society of French Studies Research Prize Fellowship. I have supervised many PhDs on art and literature and have an increasing number of PhD students working on gender and Impressionist art. impressionism, artists' writings, aesthetics	Claire Moran

Arts, English and Languages

Find a PhD Supervisor

Contact Us

Quick Links