The Graduate School of Arts and Humanities embraces and nurtures all the research strengths of the academic staff across the Faculty. From the historic, literary and linguistic to practical expertise in performance, archaeology and film, you'll find depth of knowledge on a wide variety of subjects. As our academic staff continue to determine and to challenge the research agenda on a national and international scale, you can be assured that choosing Bristol for your postgraduate research career will give you access to a wealth of influential, respected and well-known experts.
Read on to find out more about some of the innovative work and research projects happening across the faculty:
This research centre facilitates comparative discussion and collaborative research on colonialism and post-colonialism, crossing established disciplinary boundaries and conventional boundaries of time and space. Interests encompass the ancient and the contemporary, the Anglophone, Francophone and Lusophone worlds and beyond, anthropology, drama, film studies, geography, history, sociology and literature. Based in Bristol, the Centre represents an intellectual community stretching beyond the University with particularly close external links with the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, the UWE and local filmmakers Icon Films. In 2007 the Centre co-hosted the 'British World' conference - the latest in a major international, interdisciplinary series on diasporas within the British Empire. The Centre also co-ordinated an AHRC Collaborative Research Training Provision programme award from 2006-08, involving annual week-long training seminars, workshops as well as an annual postgraduate conference.
The theme of 'Medieval Cultures' concerns all aspects of the literature, art, history, and thought of western European civilization between c.500 and c.1500. 'Culture' denotes not only higher-end artistic productions - the theatre, opera, art exhibitions etc. - but the whole complex of ways in which a society, functions, thinks about itself, and expresses its identity. 'Cultures', the theme's signature term, is an elastic and open-ended word which invites discussion and collaboration among experts in different academic domains - literature, history, art, architecture, social history, folklore, religion and many others. The medievalist community at Bristol (over 20 medieval scholars representing the majority of subjects in the Faculty of Arts: Archaeology and Anthropology; Classics and Ancient History; Drama; English; French; German; Hispanic, Portuguese and Latin American Studies; Historical Studies; History of Art; Italian; and Theology and Religious Studies) is widely recognised as having effected truly interdisciplinary ways of working in integrated ways, engaging in vigorous cross-disciplinary dialogues which permeate many aspects of research and postgraduate teaching. Bristol is also well placed to take a leadership role in the wider world of medieval studies through the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) which fosters international research and collaboration. Research projects, Multilingualism in the Middle Ages and Medieval Visual Cultures, both led by Bristol medievalists, will further cement Bristol's reputation as a dominant regional, national and international focus for medieval studies, and centre of excellence in the field.
Current research in the Philosophy Department includes projects on: Evolution, Co-operation and Rationality addressing the philosophical implications of recent work in evolutionary biology on the topics of co-operation, social behaviour and the conflict between individual and group interests; Metaphysics of Science - conducting research into the most general conceptual and metaphysical foundations of science, in particular as concerns, dispositions, laws, causes, and natural kinds; Consciousness in Interaction: The Role of the Natural and Social Environment in Shaping Consciousness; Experimental Philosophy "X-phi” - applying the methods of experimental psychology to the study of intuitions; Theories of Territory: Resource Rights, Global Justice, and Self-Determination; Science, Knowledge, and Reality - a theme which concerns foundational questions in the philosophies of the sciences and the relationship between science and the humanities. The Department prides itself on its teaching and research specialism in philosophy and history of science. It ranks amongst the top European institutions in this particular area of research, having a large concentration of philosophers of science offering expertise in nearly every area of the philosophy and history of the specific sciences, including physics, biology, mathematics, psychology, economics, sociology and politics. In addition, the department conducts active philosophical research, in a many other areas including epistemology, philosophy of mind and language, aesthetics, and social and political philosophy.
The Philosophy Department hosts a BLOG where you can download talks and lectures, including Daniel Dennett giving a public lecture on the role of human intelligence.
The Department has strong and varied faculty expertise across five main areas: European Prehistory - covering Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe and Britain. Specialisms include Late Neolithic-Copper Age transitions, funerary archaeology, monumentality, Neolithic materialities and prehistoric landscapes. Recent research projects include the Avebury Longstones Project, the South Cadbury Environs Project, and the Kinship and Residence 3rd Mill. BC Project; Mediterranean Worlds - from Bronze Age and Iron Age archaeology to Egyptian archaeology, contemporary perceptions of heritage in Anatolia and social anthropology in North Africa; Social Anthropology - including the anthropology of religion, kinship, political anthropology, environmental anthropology and tourism and heritage studies; Materiality and historical archaeology - ranging from studies of the Long Kesh/Maze site in Northern Ireland, to the material dimensions of Atlantic history and British colonialism and the archaeology of 20th century leisure landscapes; Human origins where the Department has a strong and expanding international reputation for research into human origins in Africa, Asia and Europe. This research includes investigations of human evolution, the development of modern human behaviour, and quaternary environmental archaeology and scientific dating techniques. The Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth 2009 annual conference was hosted by the Department with internationally renowned speakers invited.to deliver approximately 300 papers.
Research into literary themes is conducted across a number of the departments in the Faculty most notably those of English, Classics and Modern Languages.
