The School of Languages, Cultures and Societies is one of the UK's leading centres for research and teaching in languages and cultures. Our academic community works across a variety of key themes including European works of literature from the medieval age to the 21st century, the Arab world, the cultures of South East Asia, gender, film, translation and interpreting, linguistics and language computing, and many more. Through the MA by Research (MAR), you'll conduct an original piece of independent research that will provide you with an in-depth understanding of your chosen discipline. You'll be guided by an academic supervision team, who'll be leading experts in your field, attend research training sessions and have regular meetings with your supervisors. The MAR can be considered ideal preparation for undertaking a PhD in that it is also entirely research-based and does not (at least formally) include any taught components.<br><br>The Literary Studies Research Group is part of the Centre for World Literatures, which groups together researchers (postgrads, postdocs and staff) interested in literary texts in their broadest sense. Within our school we draw on specific expertise in literature written in Ancient Greek, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai. Affiliated members also bring expertise in art history, cinema, literatures in English, music, philosophy, politics and religion. Our research embraces areas and themes including the following: aesthetics, animal studies, artists' books, comparative literature, cosmopolitanism, detective fiction, epistolary writing, electronic literature, family narratives, the fantastic, literature and the law, multilingualism, performance, postcolonialism, reception, text and image, translation, transnational memory, trauma, war poetry, world literature. The Centre organises an annual lecture and series of talks by visiting and internal speakers. It welcomes applications for collaborations and for postgraduate and postdoctoral research.