-
Courses
Courses
Choosing a course is one of the most important decisions you'll ever make! View our courses and see what our students and lecturers have to say about the courses you are interested in at the links below.
-
University Life
University Life
Each year more than 4,000 choose NUI Galway as their University of choice. Find out what life at NUI Galway is all about here.
-
About NUI Galway
About NUI Galway
Since 1845, NUI Galway has been sharing the highest quality teaching and research with Ireland and the world. Find out what makes our University so special – from our distinguished history to the latest news and campus developments.
-
Colleges & Schools
Colleges & Schools
NUI Galway has earned international recognition as a research-led university with a commitment to top quality teaching across a range of key areas of expertise.
-
Research & Innovation
Research & Innovation
NUI Galway’s vibrant research community take on some of the most pressing challenges of our times.
-
Business & Industry
Guiding Breakthrough Research at NUI Galway
We explore and facilitate commercial opportunities for the research community at NUI Galway, as well as facilitating industry partnership.
-
Alumni, Friends & Supporters
Alumni, Friends & Supporters
There are over 90,000 NUI Galway graduates Worldwide, connect with us and tap into the online community.
-
Community Engagement
Community Engagement
At NUI Galway, we believe that the best learning takes place when you apply what you learn in a real world context. That's why many of our courses include work placements or community projects.
English (Structured PhD)
Course Overview
As part of the doctoral training available on the Structured PhD programme, students avail themselves of a range of interdisciplinary taught modules. The wide menu of available options include modules that:
- are discipline-specific in that they augment the student’s existing knowledge in their specialist area
- are dissertation-specific in that they supply core skills which are essential to completion of the research project, e.g., additional language skills
- acknowledge a student’s professional development, e.g., presentation of a paper at an international conference
- enhance a student’s employability through generic training, e.g., careers workshops, computer literacy.
Each student is assigned a primary Supervisor(s) and a Graduate Research Committee made up of experienced researchers to plan their programme of study and to provide on-going support to their research.
A PhD dissertation should make a substantial and original contribution to its field of knowledge. The PhD degree is awarded for work that is 'worthy of publication, in whole or in part, as a work of serious scholarship' ( NUI Galway Calendar). The length of the dissertation in English is normally 60,000 to 80,000 words. The duration of research is usually four years.
Programmes Available
Structured PhD (English)—full-time
Structured PhD (English)—part-time
Applications are made online via the NUI Galway Postgraduate Applications System.
Associated
Learning Outcomes
Entry Requirements
The minimum qualification necessary to be considered for admission to the PhD programme is a high honours, primary degree (or equivalent international qualification), or ’other such evidence as will satisfy the Head of Department and the Faculty of his/her fitness’ (NUI Galway Calendar). It is more usual, however, for successful applicants to have already gained a Master's degree.
Who’s Suited to This Course
Current research projects
’Confessions in Early Modern Literature’
’The Culture of Printmaking in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century’
’British Imperial Policy and Popular Theatre in Ireland, Canada and the US, 1888–1911’
Current funded research opportunity
Work Placement
Related Student Organisations
Career Opportunities
Find a Supervisor / PhD Project
If you are still looking for a potential supervisor or PhD project or would like to identify the key research interests of our academic staff and researchers, you can use our online portal to help in that search
Research Areas
Dr. Rebecca A. Barr: Literature of the 'long' eighteenth century; masculinity and literature; printing and print culture; the novel: contemporary poetry and visual culture.
Dr Victoria Brownlee: 16th and 17th-century English literature; religious and devotional writings; the early modern Bible and reformed exegesis.
Prof. Daniel Carey: early modern travel writing; literature and colonialism; early modern literature and philosophy; John Locke; seventeenth-century literature and science; eighteenth-century fiction, esp. Defoe; the Enlightenment and postcolonial theory.
Dr. Cliodhna Carney: Chaucer; medieval aesthetics; medieval literary theory; Spenser.
Dr. Marie-Louise Coolahan: Women's writing in early modern Ireland; Renaissance manuscript culture.
Dr Sorcha Gunne: Gender studies and feminism, contemporary world literature, globalization and development, literary and cultural theory, postcolonial writing, popular fiction, South African and Irish writing.
Dr. John Kenny: Creative Writing and Practice; the works of John McGahern; the works of John Banville; contemporary Irish fiction; contemporary world fiction; literary journalism.
Dr. Frances McCormack: Old and Middle English literature: in particular the works of Chaucer, religious and devotional literature, and heresy.
Mr Mike McCormack: Fiction writing; short stories, novellas, and longer forms.
Ms Bernadette O’Sullivan: Journalism studies.
Dr Justin Tonra: Digital Humanities, Literature and technology, Quantitative approaches to literature, Book History, Textual Studies, Scholarly Editing, Literature of the Romantic period
Dr. Muireann O Cinnéide: Victorian Literature; women's writing; politics and literature; colonial & post-colonial writing, particularly travel writing.
Dr. Andrew Ó Baoill: Journalism studies; political economy of media; technology and culture.
Dr Adrian Paterson: Modernism; fin de siècle, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature; literature and the arts, especially music; orality, print, performance, technology, including radio broadcasting; Irish poetry in English; the works of W.B.Yeats, Ezra Pound, James Joyce.
Prof. Lionel Pilkington: Irish theatre history; Irish cultural politics and cultural history; Southern Irish Unionism and Irish Protestantism; J.M. Synge, W.B. Yeats, and Lady Gregory; colonialism and cultural theory.
Dr. Richard Pearson: Nineteenth-century literature; print culture and the literary marketplace in the nineteenth-century; archaeology and anthropology in fiction; the writings of W.M.Thackeray and Charles Dickens; William Morris and the arts and crafts movement; digital humanities.
Dr. Lindsay Ann Reid: Tudor and Jacobean Literature; Middle English Literature; Classical Mythology; Ovidianism; Adaptation, Intertextuality, and Reception Sudies; Periodisation; Book History and Early Print Culture
Prof. Sean Ryder: 19th century Irish culture; the work of Thomas Moore and James Clarence Mangan; digital humanities; critical editing; film studies.
Dr. Elizabeth Tilley: 19th century Gothic literature and history of the novel; 19th century serials, Irish publishing history and periodical production; book history; links between art and literature.
Researcher Profiles
See 'Areas of Interest.'
Course Fees
Fees: EU
Fees: Non EU
Extra Information
EU Part time: Year 1 [2021/22] €3,575. p.a.
Contact Us
Ms. Dearbhla Mooney
T 353 91 493 339
E dearbhla.mooney@nuigalway.ie
What Our Students Say

Rosemary Gallagher | English (Structured PhD)
As a PhD student in English you have the benefit of the different backgrounds and research interests of its vibrant and varied staff, as well as the support of your fellow postgraduate students. We’re very lucky here—it’s a great place to learn and work.