French

Entry requirements

MPhil: An upper second-class degree or international equivalent. Please note, acceptance will also depend on evidence of your readiness to pursue a research degree.

PhD: A master's qualification, or be working towards a master's qualification, or international equivalent. Applicants without a master's qualification may be considered on an exceptional basis, provided they hold a first-class undergraduate degree (or international equivalent). Applicants with a non-traditional background may be considered provided they can demonstrate substantial equivalent and relevant experience that has prepared them to undertake their proposed course of study.

Months of entry

January, September

Course content

MPhil: a standalone, one-year (full-time) research degree. Students will undertake their own research project, concluding in the submission of a 25,000 word dissertation. Students may have the option to audit units from our taught master's programmes if they are relevant to their research.

PhD: a research project undertaken across three years (full-time, plus a writing up period), culminating in an 80,000 word thesis. As well as having the option to audit taught units, there may be the potential for PhD students to teach units themselves from their second year of study onwards.

The Department of French is committed to research innovation and excellence in major aspects of French studies. The department has particular strengths in the medieval period, early modern period, visual-textual relations, 19th, 20th and 21st century literature, screen and stage adaptations, cultural history and politics. We collaborate extensively with other departments, especially in the fields of visual and literary cultures, conflict and culture, medieval studies, English and comparative literature.

Each research student is assigned to an academic who works in their proposed area of research or related field, and benefits from the input of a second supervisor who may be from another department, depending on the interdisciplinary nature of the project.

The department is a regional centre for the Group for War and Culture Studies and members of the department are active in a wide range of Faculty of Arts research clusters. A number of our staff members are editors of leading journals and active in subject associations. Postgraduate students can benefit from an exchange agreement with the Ecole Normale Supérieure (rue d'Ulm), or take an exchange lecturer post at the Université de Bordeaux III.

Research students lead the organisation of a postgraduate seminar series in literary and visual landscapes, and an initiative to edit postgraduate creative writing.