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Dusk at Louvre, photo by Daniel Oi (c) 2009

Exceptional teaching quality

Modern Languages was rated excellent in the Teaching Qualify Assessment conducted by the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council

Placa Reial, photo by Daniel Oi (c) 2009

High ranking

All our departments are in the top five in The Complete University Guide 2010

Red Square at night - photo by Daniel Oi (c) 2008

Top choice for postgraduate studies

Personal supervision and teaching by experts in their fields, a caring and lively scholarly community

Panoramic view of old town, Cologne; original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cologne_-_Panoramic_Image_of_the_old_town_at_dusk.jpg

Sense of community

High level of personal contact and a genuine sense of community, complemented by excellent links to other Schools in the University

Spanish Steps - photo by Daniel Oi (c) 2006

Variety of degrees

Wide and flexible range of degrees in one, two or even three languages, or in one or two languages and a non-language subject

Panoramic view of the Umayyad Mosque, in Damascus, Syria, file source http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Umayyad_Mosquee_panoramic.jpg Used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Six Modern Languages

Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish span the globe.

Welcome

The School of Modern Languages houses seven subjects – Arabic, Comparative Literature, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish – three Research Institutes – European Cultural Identity Studies, Contemporary and Comparative Literature, and Linguistics – and nearly 50 members of academic staff. We are one of the leading Schools of Modern Languages and Literatures in the UK, regularly featuring in the top 5 in University Guides, 1st in Scotland, with outstanding results in the national Student Satisfaction Survey. Our results in the most recent Research Assessment Exercise were excellent, with German rated 2nd in the UK, French 4th and Spanish 9th. Our teaching and research are inextricably linked in a combination of high-powered training in languages, literatures and cultures, modern pedagogic methods and world-leading scholarship in subjects ranging from medieval to twenty-first century texts.

Professor Margaret-Anne Hutton,
Head of School

Featured event

17 February 2012
Forum for Modern Languages Studies Research Colloquium
Performance, Media and the Body: New Directions in Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies
2-6.15pm, School VI, United College
Download programme (PDF, 116 KB)

Latest news

Persian at St Andrews

PR1001 bookPersian will be taught at St Andrews at undergraduate level for the first time starting this semester. PR1001 will be taught by Maryam Ghorbankarimi (mg91@st-andrews.ac.uk), whose PhD research is in film studies at the University of Edinburgh, focusing on the representation of women in the Iranian cinema of the 1990s. Maryam has successfully taught Persian language to postgraduates in the School of History at St Andrews for the last 4 years.

More news stories

THE World University Rankings - top 20

Upcoming Events

8 February 2012
Poetry Forum / ITALICA / ICCL
Professor Enrico Palandri (Univ of Venice)
‘Italian Risorgimento Women’
5.15pm, Arts seminar room 4

10 February 2012
Department of Spanish
Natalia Benjamin
'Memory and the Basque refugee children in Britain'
4pm, Arts seminar room 1

29 February 2012
ICCL (Institute for Contemporary and Comparative Literature) 
Professor Neil Rhodes (School of English)
'The MHRA Tudor and Stuart Translations'
5.15pm, Arts sem room 1


Complete research seminar programme 2011/12

CRSCEES 21st Annual Conference: Orthodox Ecclesiology and Modernity (17 March 2012) - Conference information

Rethinking Humanism (28 Jun - 1 Jul 2012) - Conference information and call for papers

Emblems of Nationhood: 1707-1901 (10-12 Aug 2012) - Conference information

1st Honeyman conference - At the Crossroads of Arabic Literature (27–30 Sep 2012) - Conference information