European Theatre PhD

The University of Edinburgh

Doctorate-level study is an opportunity to make an original, positive contribution to research in European Theatre.

One of Europe’s foremost festival cities, with a rich artistic heritage and theatrical culture, Edinburgh is an inspirational place to study theatre. Researchers and practitioners are drawn here from across the globe.

As well as the Edinburgh International Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the city is a year-round cultural treasure trove. Venues range from pop-ups and community spaces to the multi-stage Traverse Theatre, which provides support and opportunities for new and emerging writers.

Join our community and undertake a specialised research project under the guidance of experienced and well-published supervisors.

Based in the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC), you will benefit from expertise that spans British, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian and Scandinavian theatre studies, as well as drama and performance theory.

Research excellence

In the latest Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021), our research was submitted in Modern Languages and Linguistics (Panel D - Arts and Humanities; Unit of Assessment 26).

The results reaffirm Edinburgh’s position as one of the UK’s leading research universities - third in the UK.

As published in Times Higher Education's REF power ratings, this result is based on the quality and breadth of our research in the unit of assessment.

We have particular strengths in:

• 17th-century French theatre
• contemporary French cinema and fiction
• 19th- and 20th-century Italian literature
• 20th-century German theatre and cultural politics, particularly in the Weimar Republic and the GDR
• digital philology
• early modern, modern and contemporary Spanish literature and culture
• electronic publishing
• English Renaissance Theatre and theories of performance and performativity
• film aesthetics and film philosophy
• gender and performance
• gender history
• Greek and Persian political and sociocultural history
• Greek poetry
• literary theory
• medieval literature
• Modernism and performance
• reception studies and popular culture
• Russian modernist and postmodernist film, theatre and literature
• Scandinavian literature
• word and image

Across the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) and the wider University, we are able to support PhD theses crossing boundaries between languages and/or disciplines, including:

• comparative literature
• intermediality
• film studies
• translation studies

Over the course of your PhD, you’ll be expected to complete an original body of work under the expert guidance of your supervisors leading to a dissertation of usually between 80,000 and 100,000 words.

You will be awarded your doctorate if your thesis is judged to be of an appropriate standard, and your research makes a definite contribution to knowledge.

Go beyond the books

Beyond the Books is a podcast from the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures (LLC) that gives you a behind-the-scenes look at research and the people who make it happen. Listen to a mix of PhD, early career and established researchers talk about their journey to and through academia and about their current and recent research.

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