Postgraduate Studies

Historical Thesaurus of the OED Scholarships

Up to four awards of full fees for one year for students beginning research in any of the subject areas covered by the Department of English Language.  Further information available here.  There is no special application procedure for the scholarships; anyone accepted by the department will be considered automatically.

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Welcome to our Postgraduate Pages! We provide a range of courses and individual supervision, offering expert knowledge on both historical and modern English Language and English Linguistics. Whether you’re interested in English Historical Linguistics or Onomastics, Sociolinguistics or Phonetics, Text Linguistics, or Intercultural Language Education, the English Language Department provides a supportive and stimulating environment for postgraduate research.

Click on 'Postgraduate Degrees' on the left-hand menu for further information on the taught Masters programme (MLitt in English Language and English Linguistics), or our research degrees (MPhil by research/PhD programmes).

Scottish Doctoral Training Centre

English Language is delighted to announce membership of a new ESRC funded Doctoral Training Centre (DTC). This is a collaborative centre for world-class postgraduate research and training in the Social Sciences.

The DTC includes 24 'pathways' to a PhD and English Language is a member of three pathways: Social and Applied Investigations in Linguistics, Language Sciences and Health and Wellbeing, shared with the University of Aberdeen and the University of Edinburgh.

The Centre offers PhD Studentships of 3 years (PhD) or 4-years (Masters preparation + PhD). These highly competitive studentships will provide high level theoretical and practical training in all relevant areas. Requests for further information on these should be directed to the English Language Postgraduate Convener, Jennifer Smith jennifer.smith@glasgow.ac.uk. The closing date for applications is 8th April 2011.

High profile research projects

The department has a number of groundbreaking research projects recently completed or ongoing. Current projects include ‘The Historical Thesaurus of English’, ‘The Middle English Grammar Project’, ‘Is TV a contributory factor in accent change in adolescents?’, ‘The Scottish Corpus of Text and Speech (SCOTS)’, and ‘Stylistics, Text Analysis and Cognitive Science: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Nature of Reading' (STACS). Choose 'Research' from the left-hand menu for more information.

Online corpora

We have a number of large scale digital historical and modern corpora in the Department which are available for research projects. These include the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (SCOTS), the Corpus of Middle English Dialects, and a 500,000 word fully digitized corpus of English from the North East of Scotland (Caregiver and Child in the Acquisition of Variation). These provide an invaluable resource for the study of English across the centuries.

Cross-disciplinary research

The English Language Department is a member of the School of English and Scottish Language and Literature (SESLL) and has close connections with Psychology, as well as with the Glasgow Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, providing a unique opportunity for cross disciplinary research.

The STELLA project (Software for Teaching English and Scottish Language and Literature) provides help and computing advice on using and creating corpora and on any other aspect of computing in your research. Email STELLA@arts.gla.ac.uk or telephone (0141 330) 4980.

Current postgraduate students

Our current postgraduate cohort, from both home and overseas, reflects the diverse range of research available at Glasgow. Ongoing research in English Language and English Linguistics includes work on: monsters in Old English, the reception of medieval Mystery Plays, medical discourse, call centre interaction, cognition and narrative, naming and society, Glasgow Asian adolescents, and much more. The left-hand menu has links to a full list of current and past students and topics. Click 'Meet Some Students' to read first-hand what our postgraduates have to say about their course, the Department and also the great city of Glasgow itself!

How to apply

We realise that applying for postgraduate research can be rather daunting. Our department provides a friendly and supportive environment for prospective students, particularly for those who might be coming from overseas. You can write in the first instance to our postgraduate convener, Dr. Jennifer Smith, who will reply to your queries directly and personally. Her email address is jennifer.smith@englang.arts.gla.ac.uk.

Step-by-step details of how to apply, as well as information on funding opportunities, can be found by following the links on the menu.

NB: If you are interested in undertaking research in the area of English Language Teaching, you should also see http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/educationalstudies/postgraduatestudies/medenglishlanguageteaching/