German Studies at the University of Warwick, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, invites applications to the University’s annual funding competition for doctoral students, for entry in autumn 2017. We will happily consider applications from well-qualified native speakers of German with strong English skills. Please note, PhD theses can be written in German. Interdisciplinary PhD projects are welcome, but need to have a strong Literature, Film Studies, Cultural Studies or Critical Theory component. The deadline for expressions of interest to the department is Friday 18 November 2016.
Outstanding candidates may be eligible to compete for:
- CADRE scholarships, for home/EU PhD applicants in the Arts (up to 13 available);
- Chancellor’s International scholarships, for non-EU PhD applicants (25 available);
- Wolfson scholarships for students embarking on PhD studies in History, Literature and Languages (3-4 available).
The School of Modern Languages and Cultures will select 10 candidates in total to nominate for these awards.
The School of Modern Languages and Cultures at Warwick offers our graduate students a buoyant research culture, with 40 students currently enrolled for PhDs in the School, alongside 10 Master’s students and 11 postdoctoral research fellows. Postgraduate researchers play a vital role in the research community, alongside postdoctoral researchers and academic staff of national and international renown. Details about current PhD students and their work can be found here: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/people/postgraduate/. In the last UK-wide Research Assessment (2014), The School’s research outputs were ranked 5th in the UK. The Times-Sunday Times Good University Guide 2016 ranked Warwick German Studies in the top 3 departments in the UK, and Modern Languages at Warwick is ranked 30st in the world (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2016). The University of Warwick itself has been declared University of the Year 2015 by the Times and Sunday Times newspapers.
German Studies at Warwick is renowned for its strong cultural studies profile, considering cultural production in the context of historical, social, and political developments. Research interests in the department range across the whole of the modern period, from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment to the present day, with notable areas of expertise in constructions of nation, gender and ethnicity, German Romanticism, the culture of the Weimar period, psychoanalysis, trauma theory, German-Jewish culture, antisemitism, cultures of memory, representations of illness, ageing and death, post-war poetry, diasporic cultures (film and literature), migration, travel writing, post-war cinema, Orientalism, Islam and East-West cultural differences within German traditions, as well as the role played by German speaking thinkers and practitioners in the development of the critical canon of cultural theory and film theory. For staff research interests please see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/staff-interests/#german and http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/german/. Details of research in Modern Languages and Cultures more generally are accessed via http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/.
APPLICATION FOR PhD STUDY AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Applications for a place on our PhD programme are open until September 2017; applications for one of our scholarships close, however, considerably earlier. The application proceeds in two stages:
1) Applicants with excellent results in their BA and MA/Magister degree wishing to be supported for a scholarship should contact us informally as soon as possible for advice on the application process and to establish if we can offer supervision in your specific area of interest. Initially, we only need
(a) a brief outline of your project (ca. 1-3 p. – this can be a draft and only serves the purpose to give us a better sense of your plans),
(b) Information about your BA and (projected) MA results, and
(c) where applicable, information about your publications and any relevant work experience.
Please contact Dr. Helmut Schmitz, Director of Graduate Studies, PGGerman@warwick.ac.uk, informally as soon as possible, by FRIDAY 18 NOVEMBER 2016 at the latest.
2) If we decide to support your application, we will ask you to submit an application to the appropriate scholarship scheme. Please familiarise yourself with the parameters of these awards at: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/academicoffice/gsp/scholarship/typesoffunding/.
The University’s official application deadline for this year’s competition is Wednesday 18th January 2017; references are due shortly thereafter. Without prior communication with us before the 18 November 2016 deadline, we will however not be able to support your application.