German

MPhil: a standalone, one-year (full-time) research degree. Students will undertake their own research project, concluding in the submission of a 25,000-word dissertation. Students may have the option to audit units from our taught master's programmes if they are relevant to their research.

PhD: a research project undertaken across three to four years (full-time), culminating in an 80,000-word thesis. As well as having the option to audit taught units, there may be the potential for PhD students to develop some undergraduate teaching experience after their first year.

The MPhil and PhD can also be studied part-time, and via distance learning.

MPhil: An upper second-class degree or international equivalent. Please note, acceptance will also depend on evidence of your readiness to pursue a research degree.

PhD: A master's qualification, or be working towards a master's qualification, or international equivalent. Applicants without a master's qualification may be considered on an exceptional basis, provided they hold a first-class undergraduate degree (or international equivalent). Applicants with a non-traditional background may be considered provided they can demonstrate substantial equivalent and relevant experience that has prepared them to undertake their proposed course of study.

See international equivalent qualifications on the International Office website.

The German Department has particular research specialisms in the following areas, actively engaging in and supporting interdisciplinary and comparative research across:

• German-language culture from the 18th to the 21st century (including literary studies, film studies, and theatre and performance studies)
• Comparative literatures and cultures
• Transnational German Studies
• German-language exile literature
• Anglo-German and German-American cultural and literary relations
• Historical Linguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Linguistic variation, language change, and vernacularisation
• Memory Studies
• The history and memory of the GDR
• The cultural memory of the GDR and fascism

Staff are also active in interdisciplinary research at school and faculty level, and currently co-lead two of the three Research Centres in the School of Modern Languages. We also collaborate regularly with other disciplines as co-supervisors: currently for research theses in Comparative Literatures & Cultures, Education, English, History, and Music.

Colleagues in the German Department are also regularly involved international research projects and collaborations, and the department is proud to have hosted AHRC-funded networks on the interdisciplinarity of linguistics and history, and on the memory of the GDR, as well as major gatherings such as the annual Association for German Studies conference. The Department of German is also very proud to be the birthplace of the Historical Sociolinguistics Network (HiSoN), founded in 2005, and hosted the 20th anniversary conference of the network in 2025.

Colleagues in the department also actively shape the discipline through involvement in, and leadership of, major national and international scholarly associations, with current or recent representation on the committees of:

• Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland
• English Goethe Society
• Forum for Germanic Language Studies
• Internationale Alfred-Döblin-Gesellschaft
• Modern Languages Association of America (German 20th and 21st Century)
• North American Research Network in Historical Sociolinguistics

Staff also act as co-editors for some the most significant journals and book series for German Studies in the UK, including the journals German Life and Letters and Modern Languages Open, and the book series Transnational Modern Languages (Liverpool University Press); Transnational Approaches to Culture (De Gruyter); and Studies in Modern German & Austrian Literature (Peter Lang).