Russian MPhil

The Department of Russian has an outstanding record of research. We pride ourselves on our strong, active research culture, and the research interests of staff span a broad range of disciplinary emphases.<br/><br/>We can support postgraduate research in many areas within the following broad fields:<br/><br/><br/>• Russian and Russophone literature from the 18th century to the present;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Russian intellectual history from the 19th century to the 20th century;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Russian and Soviet film and visual culture;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Soviet history;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Stalinist culture and the Stalin cult;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• British-Soviet wartime relations (1941-45);<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Literary and cultural theory;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Issues of cultural identity (semiotics of space, perceptions of time and of modernity);<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Transnational and decolonial approaches;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Urban studies;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Russian Orthodox theology and culture;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Gender and sexuality in Russian literature and culture;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Translation studies;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Media studies;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Medicine and the body in literature and visual culture;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Late-19th and early-20th-century Czech literature and visual culture.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Recent and ongoing projects by our postgraduates include:<br/><br/><br/>• The history of Soviet translation theory;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Translatorial visibility and agency in the post-editing process through the lens of feminist translation studies;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Contested feminisms in Soviet, Post-Soviet and contemporary Russian translations of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, 1976-2010;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• The corporeality of mourning in post-Soviet womens prose;<br/><br/><br/><br/>• Blood and the body in the Bolshevik utopian project.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Our postgraduates are a key part of the research community and are integrated into the research activities of the Department, the School of Modern Languages and the faculty. <br/><br/>Possible start dates are September 2026 and January 2027. Please see the programme page on our website for more information.