German
- PhD
- MPhil
Overview
Staff and postgraduate students in the Department of German pursue research across a diverse and dynamic spectrum of German studies, covering many aspects of language, linguistics, literature, culture, history, and translation, from the early modern period to the present day.
We are committed to supporting a positive and collaborative research culture, developing together exciting and innovative research that helps shape, and reshape, our discipline. We offer expertise in German-language literature and culture in its national, transnational, and comparative contexts (including the novel, poetry, theatre and performance, visual cultures, and translation), with particular strengths in the classical age, the long 19th century, the 20th century, and the post-Wende and contemporary periods.
We also have specific expertise in historical and modern sociolinguistics (in particular in language variation and change, vernacularisation and standardisation, and in language attitudes and language policy), as well as in the history and politics of Germany and Austria since 1800 (especially the political East), and in exile writing, memory studies, and Anglo-German and German-American relations. We benefit from strong links with partner universities and research centres in Germany and Austria, and further research connections around the world.
We warmly welcome applications from graduates wishing to pursue research programmes with us. Interdisciplinary, comparative, and cross-language research is also particularly encouraged and supported across the School of Modern Languages and the wider faculty. Our postgraduates are fully integrated into a professionally and personally supportive departmental and school community.
You will be encouraged to present your work at departmental and school-level research events, and at colloquia elsewhere within the faculty, and beyond. We will help develop your full range of academic skills, including publication, and we may be able to offer opportunities for undergraduate teaching after your first year.
Programme structure
MPhil: a standalone, one-year (full-time) research degree. Students will undertake their own research project, concluding in the submission of a 25,000-word dissertation. Students may have the option to audit units from our taught master's programmes if they are relevant to their research.
PhD: a research project undertaken across three to four years (full-time), culminating in an 80,000-word thesis. As well as having the option to audit taught units, there may be the potential for PhD students to teach units themselves from their second year of study onwards.
The MPhil and PhD can also be studied part-time, and via distance learning.
Entry requirements
MPhil: An upper second-class degree or international equivalent. Please note, acceptance will also depend on evidence of your readiness to pursue a research degree.
PhD: A master's qualification, or be working towards a master's qualification, or international equivalent. Applicants without a master's qualification may be considered on an exceptional basis, provided they hold a first-class undergraduate degree (or international equivalent). Applicants with a non-traditional background may be considered provided they can demonstrate substantial equivalent and relevant experience that has prepared them to undertake their proposed course of study.
See international equivalent qualifications on the International Office website.
Read the programme admissions statement for important information on entry requirements, the application process and supporting documents required.
Go to admissions statementIf English is not your first language, you will need to reach the requirements outlined in our profile level C.
Further information about English language requirements and profile levels.
Fees and funding
- Home: full-time
- £4,850 per year
- Home: part-time
- £2,425 per year
- Overseas: full-time
- £21,300 per year
Fees are subject to an annual review. For programmes that last longer than one year, please budget for up to an 8% increase in fees each year.
More about tuition fees, living costs and financial support.
Alumni discount
University of Bristol students and graduates can benefit from a 25% reduction in tuition fees for postgraduate study. Check your eligibility for an alumni discount.
Funding and scholarships
The University of Bristol is part of the South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership (SWW DTP), which will be offering studentships for September 2025. For information on other funding opportunities, including University-funded studentships, please see the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences funding pages.
Further information on funding for prospective UK and international postgraduate students.
Career prospects
Graduates from this programme develop a wide variety of careers, including in the cultural and heritage sectors and as academics in higher education.
Meet our supervisors
The following list shows potential supervisors for this programme. Visit their profiles for details of their research and expertise.
Research groups
Research within the department focuses in particular on the following major areas:
- The literature and culture of Germany, Austria, and German-speaking authors and creatives, from the 18th century to the present day, with particular strengths in the German classical age (especially Goethe, Schiller), the long 19th century, Realism and the novel, modernism, the literature of the two Germanies, and in contemporary German-language culture and authorship (including political authorship, activism, transnational and translingual authorship);
- Transnational and Comparative German-language studies, including the literature of migration and exile, and Anglo-German and German-American relations;
- Historical and modern sociolinguistics, and in particular, language policy, language variation and change, language standardisation, vernacularisation, and language attitudes;
- The social and political history of modern Germany and Austria, especially the German Democratic Republic (GDR);
- The memory and cultural representation of Germany's challenging pasts - in particular, the Third Reich and the GDR - and of the former Eastern Bloc as a whole;
- Theatre and Performance Studies; Visual Cultures
Staff are also active in interdisciplinary research at school and faculty level, and several of our postgraduates are co-supervised by colleagues from other departments, where this is desirable.
The department has had success recently in obtaining external funding for postgraduate studies, post-doctoral fellows and research grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Leverhulme Trust and the Humboldt Foundation, among others.
The department's collaborative research in linguistics and East German studies has been supported by AHRC-funded networks for work in 'History and Language, Linguists and Historians' (2008-10) and 'After the Wall: Reconstructing and Representing the GDR' (2009-11). Our commitment to literary studies has been recognised with AHRC awards to study Arthur Schnitzler (2014-17) and work on archives at the British Library which belonged to the author Stefan Zweig (2014-17) and the poet and translator Michael Hamburger (2020-). Post-doctoral fellows have researched a range of topics on German-language and comparative literature, historical sociolinguistics, and East German history.
Contact us
- Contact
Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences Postgraduate Research Admissions
- Phone
- +44 (0)
117 428 2297
artf-pgadmissions@bristol.ac.uk
- Contact
Dr Ben Schofield, Head of Subject
- Phone
- +44 (0)
117 455 8440
benedict.schofield@bristol.ac.uk
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