Digital Humanities

Entry requirements

Before submitting an application, you are advised to discuss your proposal with a member of the academic staff who has interests in your proposed field of study. You can find our academic staff's contact details and areas of expertise in the Supervisors section.

Before agreeing to accept you, the School will require you to submit a research proposal, so it is worthwhile to have drafted this before formally applying. See the Guidelines on drafting your research proposal.

Candidates will normally receive an initial response to their application within 28 working days. Those who have been formally interviewed will normally be informed within one week as to whether they are to be offered a place.

Months of entry

January, September

Course content

Digital Humanities (DH) is an interdisciplinary subject area that brings a range of computational, quantitative and other innovative and collaborative methods to the study of texts, images, histories, languages and cultures, while also being critical about methodology, disciplinarity and pedagogy.

Digital Humanities in the School of Advanced Study demonstrates the value of digital research to the wider humanities community and fulfils the School’s remit to promote and facilitate digitally enabled research across the disciplines. The School’s multidisciplinary DH team comprises academics with strong connections to subject areas including Classics, English, History and Modern Languages and Cultures, as well as researchers and practitioners with technical backgrounds.

PhD students are based in the Digital Humanities Research Hub, which has strong connections with the Institutes and Centres in the School. Academic staff in the Hub has expertise in Classics, English, History and Modern Languages and Cultures. Students will also have the opportunity to work with technical experts and other digital humanities practitioners. It is also possible to secure co-supervision from a supervisor based elsewhere in the school who can offer additional disciplinary expertise.

Full-time study for the PhD degree entails three or a maximum of four years' independent research, culminating in the writing of a thesis of not more than 100,000 words. Part-time students complete the same programme in six, or a maximum of eight years. You'll initially be registered for our MPhil and then, providing your progress has been satisfactory, be upgraded to our PhD programme.

Recent research in the Hub has included:

• Humanities approach to the archived web

• Analysing COVID misinformation on social media

• The transnational comparison of parliamentary proceedings

• Computational text analysis of the 1921 Census records

• The application of digital methods to papyrology

• Digital resources in cultural heritage institutions

• Multilingual analysis of contemporary news coverage using natural language processing

For any further enquiries, please visit our enquiries portal.

Information for international students

Find out more about everything you need to know from visas to qualifications and language requirements here.

Fees and funding

For more information about funding and scholarships, see here.