German Studies

Our PhD German Studies programme will enable you to undertake a piece of significant and original research under the supervision of our academics.

Our understanding of German Studies is multiple and interdisciplinary, with a particular emphasis on culture and history from 1800 to the present day.

From the cultural history of Imperial Germany to contemporary Turkish-German culture, migration studies and cosmopolitanism, from Culture and Dictatorship, German-Jewish studies and Holocaust film to the history of translation, our research explores the interface between politics, culture and identity in the modern German-speaking world across and beyond its national boundaries.

Recent PhD projects supervised in the department include studies on:

The cultural history of German military music

Gender and sexuality in contemporary German culture

Hölderlin and Kant

Translations of Hegel

The perception of Europe and the EU in Germany, the Netherlands and the UK 

Early 20th-century German design

Architecture and dictatorship

The Ottoman Armenians in German literature and journalism 

Find out more about our research in German Studies , our staff and what our current postgraduate research students are working on.