PhD, MPhil, MSt (Res) applications
Prospective PhD and MPhil (direct entry to second year) students should be aware that they are applying to work with an individual supervisor within the School of English, not to a programme of study. It is therefore vital that applicants look at the list of staff who can supervise (below), ensuring that their draft project proposal matches an existing area of research in the School.
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Research proposal
Prior to the formal application process, PhD applicants should ensure that they have already communicated and received approval from a prospective supervisor.
Your research proposal should be original, well thought-out and fully developed by the time you apply formally. It is useful to send a draft version to your prospective supervisor for feedback prior to formal application and as part of the initial communication process. A sample academic research proposal (PDF) is available as a download here as an example of good practice. This has been made available with the kind permission from Katherine Bone, a graduate PhD student in English.
Application documents
The following documents are required to apply:
- CV or resume
- Two academic references (directly from referees via the automated system)
- A critical writing sample of approximately 2,000 to 5,000 words with relevance for the research topic proposed. The writing sample provided within your application is incredibly important in the assessment process. Ideally, this should be a piece of distinction-grade writing which you have recently completed at Masters level or equivalent. Students applying to Creative Writing should also submit an original creative writing sample of around 2,000 words, or poetry equivalent.
- Certified academic transcripts of study (interim Masters level transcripts are permitted at this stage where final results are not yet known, but applicants must also include complete undergraduate degree transcripts, including modular grades)
- PhD, MPhil, MSt (Res) research proposal (comprising draft title and a full proposal of at least 2,000 words, including chapter outlines if possible)
- Personal statement of Purpose
- IELTS, CPE, or TOEFL certificate (if applicable) with an IELTS 8.0 grade minimum in each sub-category, or equivalent.
Application submission
Applications should be submitted via the fully automated online application system and you should ensure that you have all additional documents required available for upload at point of application.
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All applicants must submit an application for study. Application deadlines for receipt of the complete study application (including references) are as follows, according to the applicant's intended funding pathway:
- 1 December for applicants wishing to be considered for Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH)
- 15 January for internal scholarship consideration
- 31 May for all other applicants
If applicants have questions about the status of their study application, they can contact the Postgraduate Administrator by emailing pgeng@st-andrews.ac.uk.
Applicants for internal scholarships must allow time for referees to respond to the automated reference requests sent out at study application submission point, so we recommend submission by early January to allow for completion before the January deadline, and in time for scholarship consideration. It is the responsibility of applicants to ensure all references are submitted in a timely manner. Where references have not been received by the relevant deadline, applications may later be rejected as incomplete.
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Tuition fee information can be found on the University's fees and funding page. This page also includes links to other relevant information, such as accommodation fees.
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The School of English offers a small number of awards for applicants to postgraduate research courses. Successful candidates are selected on the basis of academic merit.
For students who wish to be considered for these internal sources of funding, applications for study, including all supporting documents and references, must be received by 15 January each year, except where an earlier deadline is advertised. Applicants must therefore allow time for referees to respond to the automated reference requests sent out following study application submission. It is anticipated that School of English awards will be announced by the end of April.
Following submission of a study application, students should also apply separately through the scholarships and funding catalogue for any available awards. Deadline dates and eligibility are separately listed for named individual awards within the catalogue, and students normally do not require to hold a study offer prior to application.
- If you are a new applicant to the University of St Andrews, you will receive a unique link directly to the scholarships and funding catalogue approximately one week after your study application has been submitted.
- If you are a current student at St Andrews, you can access scholarships and funding through MySaint, located under 'My Applications'.
School of English scholarships 2024-2025
School of English Handsel Tuiton Fee Scholarship
A number of three-year full tuition fee scholarships will be made available under the School of English and St Leonard's Postgraduate College handsel scheme. All PhD entrants are eligible to apply.
Other scholarships are available through the scholarships and funding pages.
External funding opportunities
Recent School of English postgraduate students have been successful in obtaining funding from various external sources in order to study here, including Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Carnegie, Commonwealth, Fulbright, Marshall, Ransome, Rotary, and Saltire to name a few.
Information relating to additional scholarship opportunities may be found through the general scholarships and funding pages. The careers centre also has a searchable database of external funding opportunities.
External sources of funding, administered through the University of St Andrews, such as Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) normally have earlier deadlines that you should be aware of in relation to the study and scholarship application cycles.
AHRC SGSAH Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship
All entrant and Year 1 PhD students are eligible to apply for Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) funded doctoral training partnership studentships.
The School has prepared a guide on applying for the SGSAH AHRC scholarship:
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded studentships are available for application by UK and EU residents and are offered as part of the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science Doctoral Training Programme.
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Applicants for research degrees in the School of English are recommended to contact a potential supervisor before applying.
Applicants cannot be admitted to the research degree programme unless a suitable supervisor can be identified by the postgraduate committee. The committee must agree that the applicant’s research interests are viable and are a reasonable match with a prospective supervisor’s interests, who is willing to take primary responsibility for supervising the candidate; the School must also be able to identify a stand-in supervisor.
Contacting a supervisor
Prior to formal application, we would therefore expect all prospective PhD students to identify and contact a suitable supervisor directly by email to check the viability of any chosen project and be given authorisation to proceed to the next stage of the application process where applicable. When contacting a potential supervisor, please include:
- a full research proposal,
- a CV or resume,
- a relevant academic writing sample.
Potential supervisors
The following members of staff may be available to supervise research topics:
Dr Alt is interested in exchanges between literature and science, particularly ecology and climate science, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and would be happy to supervise projects in Victorian and modernist literature and the environmental sciences.
Dr Archer welcomes applications from students working on any aspect of literary culture in the long 16th century. She is particularly interested in print culture, histories of knowledge, and the representation of classical and medieval texts and contexts in Tudor writing, as well as ecocritical approaches to the literature of the period.
Dr Augustine is pleased to hear from students with interests in 17th-century English literature, especially the poets John Milton, Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, and John Wilmot, Lord Rochester. His particular expertise lies in the areas of politics and literature, reception history, and early modern literary culture.
Anne Boyer welcomes enquiries from students working in poetry and poetics, autotheory, and experimental literature. Of particular interest are the intersections of literature with critical theory or philosophy, social movements, and the visual arts.
Dr Burns welcome projects from students interested in working on postcolonial and world literatures. She is particularly interested in supervising PhD work on contemporary postcolonial literatures and theory, Caribbean literature, theories of world literature, and Black British and British Asian writing. She is also interested in philosophical approaches to literary studies and aesthetics, in particular the work of Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Rancière and Bruno Latour applied to postcolonial contexts.
Professor Connolly is happy to supervise in any area of Middle English literature, religious or secular, including writings of a non-literary nature (medical, practical, historical, legal). She is especially interested in proposals to edit Middle English or Older Scots texts. Also of interest are topics that focus on the close study of manuscripts, scribes, and medieval book production, and on readers, reception and the later history of manuscripts and their collectors. Proposals that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries of literature and history, including art history, manuscript and print, and the later medieval and early modern periods, will also be considered.
Dr Davis is interested in supervising students working on any aspect of 16th and 17th-century literature and culture. He has previously supervised theses on theatre and national identity, on the penitential psalms in literature, and on the emotion of pity in the Renaissance.
Dr Garner welcomes enquiries from students interested in pursuing doctoral work on any aspect of Romantic or Victorian women's writing, or on Gothic literature in those periods.
Dr Gill welcomes enquires from potential research students who are interested in developing projects on fin-de-siècle literary culture, the 19th-century press, Victorian publishing, and Victorian and Edwardian popular culture.
Dr Haddow welcomes enquiries from students working on contemporary British and European theatre, performance studies (particularly concerning political violence), storytelling performance, critical theory and contemporary film, television and video games.
Dr Hazzard is interested in supervising students working on 20th and 21st-century poetry. He is particularly interested in transnational poetic exchange, coteries, influence, ekphrasis, appropriative and constraint-based writing.
Ian Johnson is happy to supervise in the area of later medieval English and Scottish literature, and in particular in topics involving the following: Latin and vernacular medieval literary theory, vernacular theology, devotional and meditative literature, paratextuality, Lives of Christ, translation, Boethius in English, and Chaucer.
Professor Tom Jones is happy to supervise research projects focusing on the following areas in 18th-century studies: poetry and poetics; history of linguistic thought; philosophy and literature; literature and the history of ideas. He is also happy to supervise projects on poetics and the theory of poetic language across a broader historical span, particularly those touching on experimental or linguistically innovative poetry and associated poetics.
Dr Mackay is interested in supervising students working on Irish or Scottish literature from 1890 onwards, modern and contemporary poetry, and modern Scottish Gaelic literature.
Dr Manly is interested in supervising students who wish to work on Romantic-era writing for children or Romantic-era women’s writing, especially of the 1790s and very early 1800s.
Johnny McKnight is a playwright and screenwriter and would be happy to supervise students who are interested in stage and screenwriting. He has worked across a variety of forms – from original dramas to pantomime to crime dramas to musicals and operas. His work includes adaptations from novels and short stories; TV reboots; original drama and long-form serial drama.
Ms Nayeri would be happy to supervise fiction or non-fiction, in a range of narrative forms, relating to displacement and movement of all kinds: not only across borders or in language and culture (though the middle east is one of her own focal points), but stories that reflect upon and dramatize moments of profound change, undoings, and times of estrangement and otherness in a variety of lives.
Professor Plain is interested in supervising theses on British literature and culture 1930-1960; 20th-century war writing and representation (in particular Second World War literature and film); the construction of national identity, gender and sexuality; disability studies, and crime fiction in pretty much any context or form.
Professor Purdie welcomes PhD applications in any area of Older Scots literature up to ca. 1560, in secular Middle English literature of the 14th and 15th centuries, or in comparative studies of medieval romance in French and English or Scots. She also publishes scholarly editions, so would welcome editorial projects in these areas as well as traditional PhD theses.
Dr Purdon welcomes approaches from students working on 20th and 21st-century literature, especially fiction. He is particularly interested in supervising projects that deal with the relationship between literary texts and other (new or old) media, projects involving postwar and Cold War-era culture, and the social inscription of technology more generally.
Dr Rauer is interested in Old English language and literature, insular Latin literature, hagiography, and the literary history of Anglo-Saxon England (particularly ninth-century literature, Mercian literature, the Old English Martyrology and Beowulf). Her current projects include writing a history of Mercian literature and adding new entries to the Fontes Anglo-Saxonici database of which she is the general editor. She welcomes applications from postgraduates interested in any of her research areas and is happy to advise on potential funding applications.
Dr Raychaudhuri is interested in supervising PhD students working in the following areas: cultural studies, medical humanities, postcolonial and diasporic studies, with special emphasis on south Asia, memory studies, war writing, Marxism, critical theory and cultural studies, popular culture and cinema. Feel free to get in touch with a project in any of the above areas. Dr Raychaudhuri is also happy to work with and support students through the various PhD funding application processes.
Professor Roe welcomes enquiries from postgraduate students interested in working on Romantic literature and culture, especially Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats and Leigh Hunt, and biography.
Karen Solie is interested in supervising students working with 20th-century and contemporary poetry. Particular interests include writing about work and place, ecopoetics, form and the potential of hybrid genres, epistemology and the influence of philosophy, research methods, and Canadian poetry.
Professor Stabler is interested in supervising PhDs on any aspect of Byron’s poetry, prose and drama. She has a particular interest in editorial approaches and manuscript-based work.
Professor Sutton is interested in supervising students working on the relationship between music and literature, particularly projects that concentrate on literature from the 19th century onwards. She is also interested in supervising theses on the work of Virginia Woolf, on decadence or aestheticism, and on British writing, visual art or culture of the fin-de-siècle.
Dr Tate's research interests are in Romantic and Victorian poetry; grammar and linguistics in the nineteenth century; literature and science; literature and philosophy; literature and psychology; the periodical press; and the connections between literary form and gender in the nineteenth century. He welcomes applications from students interested in pursuing doctoral research in any of these areas.
Dr Treen welcomes enquiries from students working on any aspect of 19th-century American literature. She is particularly interested in projects which explore the literature, culture, and afterlives of the American Civil War; African-American literature; American literature and material culture; constructions of national identity; the history of emotions; and popular genres. She is also happy to supervise projects which consider these topics in relation to American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Dr Ward has research interests in modern and contemporary writing, especially encyclopaedism and maximalism in fiction and the relationship between epistemology and the literary imagination, and literatures of indentureship. His work draws particularly on 'global modernism' and the contemporary novel, with a focus on writing from the Americas, the Caribbean, and Ireland, as well as the UK.
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As a mature, international student working towards my PhD in English literature, I could not be happier with the dedicated, personal attention I receive from my tutors, the faculty in the English department, and my colleagues. The resources at St Andrews' library, the extraordinary history of the town and the university, this atmosphere has inspired and enthralled me. The quality of the learning I have received and the supportive, tight-knit academic community, has made my experience studying English literature like no other. Studying at St Andrews has changed the course of my life.
Rachael
2023
Joining the University of St Andrews has been a wonderful experience. Apart from the world-class facilities and research-intensive programmes, the stand-out feature has been their focus on student wellbeing. The School of English has been extremely understanding of my status as a mature student and mother. From the application process to my arrival, my supervisors, the administrators, and the student reps have supported me every step of the way, academically and otherwise. The University and the town are safe spaces where one can thrive and grow in the most unexpected of ways. I cannot recommend it enough!
Maitrayee
2023
My first year at St Andrews has gone utterly swimmingly. I loved living in Seattle and knew I wouldn’t entertain moving for a PhD unless I felt certain that my new situation would set me up for success. St Andrews told me nothing but "Yes!" ever since they accepted my application. I study with Prof Emma Sutton, who has been more supportive and helpful than I could have ever hoped. After working as a music teacher for three years, returning to academia has gone surprisingly well, which I attribute that to my wonderful advisor and my fascinating research topic!
Nat
2023
St Andrews is a magical place where dreams become smaller and hearts become bigger. Studying here completes one no matter what the outcome might be.
Cuilin
2018 -
The benefits of postgraduate study at St Andrews stretch far beyond graduation. As well as joining a long line of notable alumni and academics, postgraduate students are supported in their next steps by both the Careers Centre and the University alumni relations team.
The University also provides an extensive and award-winning generic skills development programme – GRADskills – for all of its early career researchers, including PhD, MPhil and MSt (Res) students.