Research

Staff in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures carry out internationally-recognised research in a wide range of specialist areas, from the medieval to the modern period. Research in the School is informed by a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches and focuses on a number of different media. Areas of particular strength include the following:

• Medieval and Early Modern literature and culture
• 19th- and 20th-century literature and culture
• Visual culture (film, photography and art)
• Literary and musical culture
• Performance arts
• Gender and sexuality studies
• Critical and cultural theory
• History (cultural, political and intellectual)
• Cognitive metaphor theory
• Translation studies

Details of recent staff publications can be found here.

Although work is anchored in the School's six constituent departments (Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian and Hispanic Studies), many staff are engaged in collaborative and interdisciplinary projects under the auspices of the following University research centres: the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies and the newly founded Centre for the Study of the Classical Tradition. In addition, every research active member of staff contributes to at least one of the School's Research Groups, designed to foment and encourage intellectual dialogue and interaction around common themes and topoi.

The School has a lively research culture and is proud of its links with the wider national and international research environment. In addition to hosting a regular seminar series featuring both visiting and internal speakers and culminating in the annual Leslie Brooks Lecture, the School has a long tradition of hosting major international conferences. A more recent development has been its involvement in the Legacies of Darwin and Modelling themes co-ordinated by Durham's Institute of Advanced Study, including a series of interdisciplinary dialogues on metaphor featuring Professor Zoltán Kövecses of Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

The School is also home to the Durham Modern Languages Series, a highly respected academic publishing house which has, over the last twenty-five years, published over fifty monographs and critical editions in the areas of Arabic, French, Russian, German, Hispanic and Slavonic literature, language and culture. From 2009 the series is to be published by Manchester University Press.