Research

With more than 40 research-active members of staff, the School of Modern Languages at the University of St Andrews represents one of the most dynamic groupings of Modern Languages scholars in the UK, and boasts an exceptionally broad variety of research interests that range from the mediaeval period to the twenty-first century and engage with the cultures of four different continents.

St Andrews has a long-standing reputation in particular for research in French, German, Italian, Russian and Hispanic Studies, and will be expanding to incorporate Arabic in the near future. The School performed particularly well in the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise with German, French, and Spanish ranking 2nd, 4th, and 9th in the UK, respectively, and with the Italian Department being the highest scoring in Scotland.

In addition to these concentrations, with their respective areas of interest covering a wealth of disciplines which include world literature, linguistics, cinema, history, gender, identity studies, and comparative literature, the School of Modern Languages also has demonstrable expertise in areas ranging, for example, from 17th – 18th-century French moralists to 20th and 21st century crime fiction, and from Venetian philology to the theatre of the Spanish Civil War.

The School of Modern Languages frequently acts as host to visiting academics who participate in our regular seminars and conferences or who come to St Andrews for longer periods of research. The School is also home to a thriving and international post-graduate community.