- English
- About the Department
- People
- Study
- Research
- News
- Media Gallery
- School Welcome Event 2016
- Edmund Spenser in Cork - School of English UCC
- Mary Breen: Pride and Prejudice
- MA in Irish Writing and Film
- Ann Coughlan: The Irish Influence on America's Greatest Abolitionist
- MA in Modernities: Romanticism, Modernism, Postmodernism
- MA in American Literature and Film
- MA in English Texts and Contexts: Medieval to Renaissance
- PhD in English
- Prof. Claire Connolly
- Tonio Colona - PhD in the School of English, UCC
- Prof Patricia Coughlan
- Mike Waldron - PhD in the School of English
- Ken Rooney and Heather Laird Book Launch
- School Welcome Event September 2014
- Contemporary American Trauma Narratives Book Launch
- Staged Transgressions in Shakespeare's England
- Seamus Heaney Memorial Event September 2013
- Creative Writing
- Current Students
- Student Achievements
- Research Seminar Series, Autumn 2024
- Digital Humanities
- Creative Writing
Research

Department of English Research
Research
The Department of English in UCC sustains a rich and productive research culture and was recognised as excellent in the last institutional Research Quality Review.
Across the Department, researchers investigate the ways in which meaning is embedded in form and shaped by historical, cultural and political contexts. The Department is active in close and engaged analyses of texts across the full range of English as a subject and beyond, from Old English through to twenty-first century literature, creative writing, and digital media. The Department offers PhD training in all these areas. The Department is also committed to enriching cultural and intellectual life, nationally and locally, through our research-based public engagement activities.
Literature and Place
There is a nexus of research expertise in the Department that relates to the culture, history and theory of space and place. Instances include research into regional, national and transnational identities; postcolonial theory; transoceanic and transatlantic literatures and cultures; eco-criticism; creative writing; the short story; theories of space and place.
Literature and the Past
Research in the Department currently represents the main periods of literature across its centuries of development. The fullness of our coverage animates a distinct and successful strand of Department research into the transmission and transformation of cultural texts across time, and is very important in defining our identity in national and international terms. The Department has strong theoretical interests in such issues as historiography; cultural history; materiality; reception, influence and intertextuality; mediation; and adaptation; while research in creative writing includes historical fiction and memoir.
Additionally, the Department has distinctive constellations of activity in Creative Writing and a growing presence in Digital Humanities.
Research strategy is organised through the School's Research Committee, chaired by Professor Claire Connolly.