Religion and Theology

MPhil: a one-year (full-time) research degree. Students will undertake their own research project, concluding in the submission of a 25,000-word dissertation. Students have the option to audit a wide selection of BA units giving you the opportunity to study subjects you might have missed out at BA level or want to develop if they are relevant to your research.

Students who register on the MPhil may choose to exit with the MPhil after the normal one year period of full-time study (or two years part-time study) or submit for upgrade to PhD.

PhD: a research project undertaken across four years (full-time, minimum period of study three years), 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 be studied via distance learning.

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.

The department has developed a research agenda based on a rationale of depth, and is highly recognised for its distinctive research environment and culture, ranking 15th in the UK for Theology and Religious Studies (THE analysis of REF 2021).

Staff and postgraduates are also engaged in Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences interdisciplinary research themes and centres: Centre for Medieval Studies; Centre for Material Texts; Centre for Health, Humanities and Science.

Equally, individual academics have established distinctive research areas that attract a number of research students. The department has expertise in the following areas:

• Global Islam: History and politics of Global Islam and the wider Middle East; confessional relations in Islam; the impact of the Arab Spring on the Gulf States; global history of Sunni-Shii relations as well as cross-cultural relations between Christian, Islamicate and Jewish thought in medieval Europe.
• Buddhist Material Culture: spanning from religious literary and visual narratives in ancient India, to material and visual culture of medieval Japan and material culture and ritual economy in contemporary Sri Lanka.
• Medicine and Religion: the analysis of the intersection between medical and religious knowledge and practices in premodern East Asia, as well as illness and healing in ancient Jewish medicine.
• Patristic and Medieval Christian Thought: the examination of patristic and medieval religious and intellectual culture, with a special emphasis on monastic traditions, the influence of Greek and Roman philosophy on Christian thought, and the significance of early and medieval Christian thought for contemporary theology.
• Philosophy of Religion: philosophical approaches to religious experience; philosophical implications of psychological approaches to the study of religion; religious love/the heart; Platonism (especially, Christian Platonism); atheism/agnosticism.
• Ritual Studies: the consideration of ritual in eastern and western traditions, with emphasis on Japanese and Sri Lankan religious practices, as well as medieval and early modern Europe.
• Religion and Textuality: the examination of scribal practices and religious agency in the transmission of scripture in the Hebrew Bible, the Hadith corpus, and Buddhist monastic codes.
• Christianity and Ethics: with focus on moral character, virtue and agency, learning and development; ecology, environmental ethics; medical ethics; ethics of non-human animals, transhumanism and AI; engagement between Christian theology and the sciences, including psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience and developing technologies.

The University of Bristol Religion and Theology department is recognised as having a characteristic and outstanding focus on Abrahamic religions and Buddhist Studies. The department has produced exceptional research in both these areas, realising the potential for interdisciplinarity between the two clusters and across the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences.