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English and Comparative Literary Studies

Our department

Our Department

English and Comparative Literary Studies was established in 1965. Our research and teaching are interdisciplinary, and we collaborate closely with departments across both the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Social Sciences, particularly in Philosophy, History, Film and Television Studies, and the School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures.

We are ranked among the top 10 UK universities for research environment according to the 2021 Research Excellence Framework, with 91% of our research rated as 'world-leading' or 'internationally excellent' (Times Higher Education). Our department is also ranked among the top 5 English departments in the UK (Guardian University Guide, 2023) and is listed as one of the top 30 English departments globally (QS World Subject Rankings, 2022).

Current Head of Department

Professor Paulo de Medeiros

EnglishHoD@warwick.ac.uk

Teaching

We offer a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, including:

Postgraduate Courses:

Additionally, we offer joint degrees with several other departments:

Our department attracts high-caliber students at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels and is dedicated to supporting the university's widening participation agenda, where we take a leading role. We ensure that our students experience literature as a dynamic and global subject, grounded in historical, aesthetic, and theoretical frameworks. Students across all programs have the flexibility to choose from a wide range of modules. Our department has received numerous awards for teaching excellence, including several National Teaching Fellowships and one of the highest NSS-Teaching scores within the university.

Research

Our research is interdisciplinary, comparative, and dynamic, with particular strengths in areas such as American Studies, eighteenth and nineteenth-century studies, environmentalism and ecocriticism, gender studies, the literary and cultural history of the medieval and early modern period, performance studies, poetry and poetics, and World Literature.

Our major research centres include Poetry at Warwick and the Warwick Research Collective (WReC). We were also instrumental in establishing the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance in 1993, which unites staff from five departments dedicated to the study of Renaissance Europe. This centre has established formal academic links with several renowned institutions, including the Warburg Institute, the Sorbonne, and the University of Venice. Additionally, we maintain close collaborations with the Centre for Research into Philosophy, Literature, and the Arts, the Early Modern and Eighteenth-Century Centre, and the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies.

We host an ECLS Research Seminar during term time, where members of the department—both staff and post-doctoral fellows—as well as visitors from outside the university, present their research. All graduate students are invited to attend. Our international connections are further nurtured through conferences, taking advantage of Warwick’s exceptional facilities, with internal funding often available to support these events. Conferences and colloquia are a key component of our research activity and graduate training, providing a platform for graduate students to connect with international scholarly networks and gain exposure to global academic communities.