PhD Applications

PhD Admission Procedures

To be eligible for consideration to enter on a programme of study and research for the Degree of PhD, a candidate must have obtained a standard of at least Second Class Honours, Grade I, in an approved primary degree.  It is increasingly the case that applicants for a PhD will have completed an MA prior to embarking on PhD research. 

Before making an application, we advise you to consult the research profiles of our staff and contact a staff member who has expertise in the area in which you are interested and who may be willing to act as your supervisor.  All applications for a PhD in English (and in the College of Arts more generally) must include a Research Proposal, which your prospective supervisor will want to read before you submit a formal application.  You may receive some guidance on improving your proposal before the formal application.  If you would like to make a general enquiry about the posibility of doing research on a particular topic, please contact the Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee, currently Dr Maureen O'Connor: maureen.oconnor@ucc.ie 

All applications (whether EU or Non-EU) are made online through UCC's application system

Once your application is received by UCC, it will be forwarded to the Department of English, and approved by the named supervisor(s) and the Head of Department.   It must then be approved by the College of CASSS. The process, from initial enquiry to final approval, can take several months, so do be sure to plan well in advance.  There are 4 recognised start dates for PhD students in UCC: October, January, April and July.  

In the case of the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences, all successful applicants are registered as "PhD track" (i.e. provisional registration for a PhD) in the first instance. Students will be subject to a review within 12 to 18 months from the date of registration and will be required to demonstrate progress in the form of 10,000 words minimum written work, as well as defending their work at interview. Students may then, on the recommendation of the Head of Department and the Supervisor(s) and with the approval of the College/Faculty, transfer to the PhD. 

For further guidance on application procedures, fees and entrance requirements please consult the following links:

Study@UCC: Postgraduate Students

Studyabroad@UCC (International Students)

PhD Scholarships

Information about the PhD Excellence Scholarships provided by the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences PhD Excellence Scholarships is published on the CACSSS Graduate School website.

PhD students are also encouraged to apply to the IRC's Government of Ireland Postgraduate Scholarship Programme. More information on deadlines for the Irish Research Council scholarships can be found IRC website.

Scholarships & Awards

The graduate students and postgraduate researchers of the Department of English have an excellent track record in securing scholarships and research funding, in what is an increasingly competitive environment.  The various awards made are listed here by year:

2018

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Sarah McCreedy "The Resurgence of American Literary Naturalism in the Neoliberal 21st Century"

2017

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Kieran Nee "Solastalgic America: Literature of the environmental psyche"

2016

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Ciaran Kavanagh "Reading Postmodernism: Indeterminacy, Instability and the Changing Role of the Modern Reader"

Fiona Whyte "On Lindisfarne: A Novel"

Loretta Goff  "Hyphenating Ireland and America: Examining the Construction of Contemporary Hybrid Identities in Film and Screen Media 1990-2015"

Patricia O'Connor "Retrieving the Textual Environment of the "Old English Bede": A Digital Remediation of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 41"

Sean Travers "Innovative Representations of Trauma in Contemporary Literature, Postmodernism and Popular Culture"

 

2015

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Eoin O'Callaghan "Submerged Stories: The Evolution of William Faulkner's Short Fiction"

Martin McConigley "The Border in Contemporary Irish Fiction 1970-2014: Interrogating the lines that continue to separate"

Niamh Kehoe "Vernacular Saints' Lives in England 900-1300: Humour, Gender, and Violence.

Yen-Chi Wu "Temporalities in the Novels of John McGahern: "Against the Tide"

2014

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Kathy D'Arcy "A Poetic Heteroglossia Re-Articulating 1930s Irish Women's Poetry: Weighted Silences"

Rebecca Graham "An Ecofeminist Reading of Identity, Place, and Language in Éilís Ní Dhuibne's Fiction" 

David Roy "The Unity of Edmund Spenser's Complaints

2013

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Dan O'Brien "The Intertwining Fiction of Philip Roth and Edna O'Brien: 'A Piece of Fine Meshwork'"

Murphy Irish Exchange Fellowship (University of Notre Dame)

Dan O’Brien  "The Intertwining Fiction of Philip Roth and Edna O'Brien: 'A Piece of Fine Meshwork'"

UCC CACSSS 2013/14 PhD SCHOLARSHIP

Rebecca Graham "An Ecofeminist Reading of Identity, Place, and Language in Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's Fiction"

Eoin O'Callaghan "William Faulkner's 'Snopes' Trilogy"

 

2012 

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Donna Alexander"Women in the Borderlands in the Writings of Gloria Anzaldúa and Lorna Dee Cervantes"

Gwendolen Aoife Boyle "Autobiography and Fiction in the Work of Thomas Wolfe"

Mark Kirwan "Banville as Writer: The Discursive Practices of John Banville"

Laura Pomeroy "Mary Devenport O'Neill: Writing the Free State"

2011

IRC POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

James Cummins "'I shall / be in my segments': Dissecting and Reassessing Raworth's Oeuvre through a Multitude of Influences"

Siobhan Higgins "Britain's Bourse: Cultural and Intellectual Transmissions between the Low Countries and Britain in the Early Modern Era"

Edel Mulcahy "Travel, Pilgrimage and the Family in Middle English Writing"

Niamh O'Mahony "Poetic Epistemology and Philosophical Fact"

Michael Waldron  "Verbal Painting: Elizabeth Bowen and the Art of Visuality"

FULBRIGHT SCHOLARSHIP

Niamh O'Mahony "Poetic Epistemology and Philosophical Fact"

2010

UCC COLLEGE OF ARTS, CELTIC STUDIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES PHD SCHOLARSHIP

Donna Alexander "Women in the Borderlands in the Writings of Gloria Anzaldúa and Lorna Dee Cervantes"

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP 

Coirle Mooney "Infected Vision in the Works of Thomas Middleton"

2009 

WILLIAM J. LEEN AWARD (UCC)

Niamh O'Mahony "Poetic Epistemology and Philosophical Fact"

IRCHSS CARA POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

Dr. Carrie Griffin  "Learning and Information in the English Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: An Analysis of Textual Genres, Material Structures and Reorganisation"

UCC DOCTORAL SHOWCASE

Michael Waldron (2nd Place)

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Adrian Goodwin  “The Language of Space”: The Influence of Twentieth Century Irish Gay and Lesbian Narrative on the “Post-Gay” moment in Irish Literature.

Colin Lahive  "Milton and Romance: Vernacular Romance and Chivalric Traditions in Paradise"

Cian O'Mahony  “A King for the Queene”: Samuel Sheppard’s The Faerie King and his reception of Spenser’s epic authority.

Bairbre Anne Walsh "Claude McKay and the Transnational Novel"

2008

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Alan Foley, "The Objects of Laughter:  A Poetics of Humour in Old and Middle English Literaure".

Sarah Kate Hayden, "Resonances of the Radical in the Female Modernist Poetic"

2007

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIPS

Richard A. Hawtree, "Vox Meditans:  Studies in the Anglo-Saxon Liturgical Imagination and the Unity of Old English Poetic ManAuscripts.

Victoria Kennefick, "Lonely Voices of the South:  Exploring the Transatlantic dialogue of Frank O'Connor and Flannery O'Connor"

IRCHSS POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

David Coughlan, "Ghosts of American Writing"

NUI POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

Liam Lenihan

2005

UCC COLLEGE OF ARTS, CELTIC STUDIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES PRESIDENT'S SCHOLARSHIP

Katherine D'Arcy

IRCHSS RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

Dr Andrew King, "Mirrors Of British Kingship: The Galfridian Tradition in Early Modern Drama"

2005

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Sarah Louise Melnyk, “The Arthurian Legend in Scottish and English Literature”  

2004

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Mary O’Connell,  “Truth from the bookseller”:  Murray, Moore and the manufacturing of Byron

Louise Denmead,  “Representations of ‘Blackness’ and the Female Foreigner in Aemilia Lanyer and Elizabeth Cary.”

Sorcha Fogarty, In Memoriam:  Jacques Derrida, The Working of Mourning, and the Regeneration of Responsibility.

IRCHSS POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

Dr Mary Pierse, “George Moore and Early Literary Impressionism” 

2003 

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Emma Bidwell, "Female Performance of Masculinity." 

2002

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

Siobhan Collins, "Discourses of sexuality in the poetry of John Donne"

Eileen Forristal, "The sublime in Virginia Wolf"

Kalene Nix-Kenefick,  "Una Troy (1910-1993)"

IRCHSS POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP

Dr Tina O’Toole, “Narrating the new woman: the feminist fictions of Sarah Grand and George Egerton."

Dr Jason King, "Refugee narratives in Irish historical and contemporary perspective"

IRCHSS RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

Dr Lee Jenkins, "The language of Caribbean poetry" 

Dr Margaret Connolly,  “An Index of Middle English Prose in the Main Manuscript Collection of Cambridge University Library”.

SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

Professor Patricia Coughlan,  "Gender, sexuality and social change in Irish literature 1960-2000"

2001

IRCHSS POSTGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIPS

Susan Burke, “The Presence of Wollstonecraft in the Work of Mary Shelley.”

Ruth Connolly, “Subjectivity in the Writings of Mary Boyle Rich and Katherine Boyle Jones.”

Brendan Kavanagh, “W.B. Yeats and Eastern Mysticism”

Catherine MacHale, “Infinity in Language and Literature.”

Eleanor Neff, “A Comparative Study of Beowulf and the Tain Bo Cuailnge”  (Department of Celtic Civilisation and Department of English).

Paul O’Connor,  “Sensibility & Romanticism:  The Poetics of Modernity.”

Michael O’Sullivan, “Where is the Ethics in Ethical Criticism?”

Mary Pierse, “Rattling the Railings:  George Moore’s Creative Literary Resistance to Late Victorian Society.”

2000

IRCHSS POSTGRADUTE SCHOLARSHIP

Kenneth Rooney, “Timor Mortis: Aspects of the Macabre in Late Middle English Narrative.”