Russian

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.

MPhil/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

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.

We can support postgraduate research in many areas within the following broad fields:

• Russian and Russophone literature from the 18th century to the present;
• Russian intellectual history from the 19th century to the 20th century;
• Russian and Soviet film and visual culture;
• Soviet history;
• Stalinist culture and the Stalin cult
• British-Soviet wartime relations (1941-45);
• Literary and cultural theory;
• Issues of cultural identity (semiotics of space, perceptions of time and of modernity);
• Transnational and decolonial approaches;
• Urban studies;
• Russian Orthodox theology and culture;
• Gender and sexuality in Russian literature and culture;
• Translation studies;
• Media studies;
• Medicine and the body in literature and visual culture;
• Late-19th and early-20th-century Czech literature and visual culture

Recent and ongoing projects by our postgraduates include:

• The history of Soviet translation theory;
• Translatorial visibility and agency in the post-editing process through the lens of feminist translation studies;
• Contested feminisms in Soviet, Post-Soviet and contemporary Russian translations of Emily Dickinson and Sylvia Plath, 1976-2010;
• The corporeality of mourning in post-Soviet women's prose;
• Blood and the body in the Bolshevik utopian project

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.

Information for international students

See international equivalent qualifications on the International Office website.

Fees and funding

For information on funding opportunities, including University-funded studentships, please see the Faculty of Arts, Law and Social Sciences funding pages.

Further information on funding for prospective UK and international postgraduate students.