We work collaboratively along particular themes and periods, while we are also involved in a number of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research centres and institutes. A number of visiting academics and other external partners contribute to the research environment of the Department, sometimes as Fellows of the Institute of Advanced Study.
Our department regularly hosts international conferences, workshops, and public lecture series. Typically, in any one year we organise or co-organise around 80 different events.
Recent conferences have ranged from Humour and Satire in British Romanticism to Consent: Histories, Representations, and Frameworks for the Future to Thatcher and Thatcherism. We organise research seminars for all staff and postgraduates to engage with visiting speakers, as well as a variety of regular reading groups. Our Late Summer Lectures Series brings the best of postgraduate research to a public audience each year.
Our department hosts one of the longest-running online postgraduate journals in literary studies, Postgraduate English, which is edited by two PhD students each year.
A vibrant week of events (20–23 October 2025) will take place across Durham, exploring Black history, reparative justice, and decolonial thought. Organised as part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science, the programme brings together scholars, students, and community members for walking tours, film screenings, and keynote lectures that highlight critical conversations around race, memory, and historical responsibility.
Twenty of our researchers will take important roles in assessing UK universities’ research quality.
Discover the Faculty of Arts and Humanities' new Transformative Humanities framework which brings together distinctive approaches to humanities research and education within the academy and across a wide range of partners and communities.