Our Research

Research in English at Oxford covers a wide range of work in literature and language over all periods to the present. While focusing especially on mainstream literary and textual research, it also takes in broadcast media, film and drama, language and linguistics, history of the book, women’s studies and American studies. We have approximately 100 research-active staff, who include university lecturers, readers and professors in the English Faculty, members of other university departments or divisions, research fellows, college lecturers, and independent scholars closely involved with the university.

The heart of the Faculty’s collaborative research activity is in the programme of research seminars held on a weekly or fortnightly basis, which act as a focus for particular interest groups and an opportunity for staff and research students to give papers on their work and get feedback, and to meet specialists from other universities and institutions, in the UK and abroad.

Journals edited or co-edited by Oxford staff include:
Anglo-Saxon England (Godden); Areté (Raine); The English Review (B O’Donoghue); Essays in Criticism (Perry and Ricks); Language in Society (Romaine, Associate Editor); Notes and Queries (Black and B.O’Donoghue); Review of English Studies (Co-edited by Bradshaw, Womersley and Stern); Shakespeare (Stern, Associate Editor); Shakespeare Yearbook (Stern, Associate Editor); The Tennyson Research Bulletin (Douglas-Fairhurst); Shakespeare Bulletin (Stern, Editorial Board member); Shakespeare Survey (Palfrey, Editorial Board Member).

You can find more about specific programmes of research by using the links on the right.