The University of Warwick’s School of Modern Languages & Cultures invites applications from highly qualified prospective doctoral students for its PhD programmes in French, German, Italian, and Hispanic Studies, and Translation & Translation Cultural Studies (TTS).

For further information, see the School’s webpages on postgraduate study.

Doctoral funding is available through university-wide schemes (Chancellor’s International Scholarships, China Scholarship Council/University of Warwick scholarships), the AHRC Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership, and joint PhD programmes (e.g. the Monash-Warwick Alliance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University-Warwick Joint PhD programme).

Given the early deadlines (in late November; December; or January, depending on the scheme), and the multi-stage selection process, we encourage applicants to get in touch with their preliminary enquiries by sending an academic CV and draft research proposal to the School Director of Graduate Studies, Professor Ingrid De Smet (I.de-Smet@warwick.ac.uk), by 28 October 2024,

and/or to the relevant subject-specific postgraduate research admissions advisors:

• French & francophone: Prof. Ingrid De Smet (i.de-smet@warwick.ac.uk)
• German: Dr Nicholas Jones (Nicholas.d.jones@warwick.ac.uk)
• Italian: Prof. Fabio Camilletti (F.Camilletti@warwick.ac.uk)
• Hispanic Studies: Assoc. Prof. Tom Whittaker (t.whittaker@warwick.ac.uk)
• Translation & Transcultural Studies: Assoc. Prof. Caroline Summers (Caroline.Summers@warwick.ac.uk)

Enquiries from suitably qualified self-funded or externally funded (sponsored) students are also welcome.

Online PhD admissions interviews will likely be held in the weeks commencing 9^th and 16^th December 2024.

The School of Modern Languages & Cultures invites applications for a fully-funded PhD scholarship, to work with Prof. Katherine Astbury (French Studies) and Dr Charles Walton (History) in conjunction with historians at English Heritage on 'Anglo-French relations during the age of Revolutions'. The project will be financed by the AHRC-funded Midlands4Cities Doctoral Training Partnership (Collaborative Doctoral Award).

Applications must be received by noon (UK time) on 13th January 2025. The successful applicant will commence their studies in October 2025.

On Thursday 11th of April, we will be joined by Hannah White from the Institute for Government for the first InReach10x Seminar of the summer term.

Hannah is the Director of the Institute for Government. She is a frequent commentator on radio and television and writes regularly for The Telegraph, Guardian, and The Times. Hannah holds a PhD in Human Geography and began her career as a parliamentary clerk in the House of Commons. She joined the Institute in 2014 and was appointed Director in October 2022. Hannah serves as deputy chair of trustees for Involve and was awarded an OBE in the 2020 Birthday Honours. In April 2022, she published her first book, Held in Contempt: what’s wrong with the House of Commons?.

Hannah will be giving a seminar as part of the InReach10x Series on Thursday 11th April, from 13.00 - 14.00 in JX2.02 (Junction).

If you would like to sign up for the talk and receive a calendar invite, please click here.

Colleagues and former students will be saddened to hear of the passing of Professor John Osborne, Chair of German at the University of Warwick from 1979 until his retirement in 2002.

The InReach^10X @IAS Seminar Series is a programme of open lectures that showcases some of the most outstanding research taking place at Warwick, bringing it to the widest possible audience across campus.

The speakers who will present at the upcoming Spring InReach10x @IAS seminar series are:

• Thursday 1^st February 2024 | 13.00 - 14.00 | C0.02 IAS Seminar Room – Dr Saad Bhamla, The Frugal Science Academy.
  • Dr. Saad Bhamla, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, will give a talk about The Frugal Science Academy. The academy's goal is to make scientific experimentation accessible to everyone.

• Thursday 29^th February 2024 | 13.30 - 14.30 | C0.02 IAS Seminar Room – Professor Helen Wheatley, Film and Television Studies

• • Professor Helen Wheatley from the Film and Television Studies will be giving a talk titled 'Ghost Town: Exploring Posthumous Television and Doing Engaging Research'.

• Thursday 14^th of March 2024 | 13.00 - 14.00 | C0.02 IAS Seminar Room – Professor Timothy Saunders, Warwick Medical School

• • Professor Timothy Saunders from Warwick Medical School will be giving a talk titled 'Imaging the beginnings of life at single-cell resolution'. 

For more information on the speakers and to sign up for calendar invites please go to the IAS website. 

Dr Katie Reynolds| Strategic Programmes Manager | Institute of Advanced Study

Zeeman Building | University of Warwick | Coventry | CV4 7AL

Pronouns: she/her

"This message is sent in confidence for the addressee only. This email and any attachments may contain privileged information. The contents are not to be disclosed to anyone other than the addressee. Unauthorised recipients must preserve this confidentiality and should please advise the sender immediately of the error in transmission." Although you may get an email from me outside of normal working hours, I do not expect you to respond outside of your normal working hours.

Cultivating Mental Health and the Whole Person: Two complimentary day conferences promoting thinking across cultures

Friday 15th December (mental health focus) @9.30-17.00

Saturday 16th December (whole person focus) @9.30-15.00

Room OC1.01

The SMLC will be taking part in The Big Read on Sunday 2 April, an event designed for young people aged 3 to 11 to celebrate reading, writing and storytelling.

Colleagues will be running an interactive multi-lingual Harry Potter session for children aged 8+, and for younger children there will be story readings in French, German and Spanish. Everyone is also welcome to taste different languages and cultures through fun quizzes on the day or the simple online story title reading activitiesLink opens in a new window.

Hartmut Rosa (Jena/Erfurt) and Elisabeth Herrmann (Warwick)

Moderator: Irina Hron (Copenhagen)

Public Event at Jonsered Manor, Gothenburg

Monday, 27th March, 13:00-16:00 (CET)

Abstract

How does social reality come into being? Where do social impulses originate and how do they enter the public sphere?

Imaginaries are at least partly constitutive for what societies are, how they develop, how they are modified and continuously negotiated. Fictional stories, whether in the form of literary texts, visual media, or music and lyrics, can be catalysts for social transformation by reflecting the present from alternative viewpoints, including looking back at the past and imagining possible futures. Fictional stories turn imaginings into possibilities, taking them into the world, bringing them to mind and prototyping possible social realities through images and narration, figures and plots. How do social imaginaries emerge? How does fiction contribute to social transformation – and how are social transformations reflected in social imaginaries? What is social energy and how is it set in motion?

Available to watch now Ask an Autistic Panel Event

We are delighted to invite you to a research seminar jointly organised by the Department of Italianand the Centre for Digital Inquiry.

Monday 20^th February, 17:00-19:00

FAB 3.26  

The Digital Frontier? New Approaches to Literary and Translation Studies, History and Music

Giovanni Pietro Villani (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin - Paris Saclay)

in conversation with

Federica Coluzzi (Italian/CDI, Warwick)

While it is difficult to answer the question what are the digital humanities, empirically it becomes easier to show what advantages digital brings to research in the humanities. The aim of this talk is to show the inside of a digital laboratory in order to show what are the reflections, failures and successes of using informatics applied to different fields of the humanities. Examples will be shown of studies carried out in the English-speaking, Italian-speaking Francophone and Spanish-speaking areas relating to procedures typical of literary analysis and studies of translation, (socio)linguistics, history and music.

It is with great sadness that the School of Modern Languages & Cultures has received news of the death of Professor James Shields on 9 February 2023.

Published in November 2022 by Leuven University Press and with the support of the European Research Council: Unfinished Histories available in open access.

Belgian colonialism was short-lived but left significant traces that are still felt in the twenty-first century. This book explores how the imperial past has lived on in Belgium, but also in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda and Burundi. The contributing authors approach colonial legacies from an interdisciplinary perspective and examine how literature, politics, the arts, the press, cinema, museal practices, architecture, and language policies – but also justice and ethics – have been used to critically revisit this period of African and European history. Whilst engaging with significant figures such as Sammy Baloji, Chokri Ben Chikha, Gaël Faye, François Kabasele, Alexis Kagame, Edmond Leplae, VY Mudimbe, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, Joseph Ndwaniye, and Sony Labou Tansi, this book also analyses the role of places such as the AfricaMuseum, Bujumbura, Colwyn Bay, Kongolo, and the Virunga Park to appraise the links between memory and the development of a postcolonial present.

Arising from a Warwick-Monash Alliance collaboration, with Dr Chris Watkin, undertaken during the Covid years, this new edited volume considers whether autonomy is still a useful concept today. Is the Enlightenment understanding of autonomy still relevant in addressing contemporary challenges? How have the limits and possibilities of autonomy been transformed by recent developments in artificial intelligence and big data, political pressures, intersecting oppressions and the climate emergency? The challenges to autonomy today reach across society with unprecedented complexity, and in this book leading scholars from philosophy, economics, linguistics, literature and politics examine the role of autonomy in key areas of contemporary life, forcefully defending a range of different views about the nature and extent of resistance to autonomy today. These essays are essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the predicament and prospects of one of modernity’s foundational concepts and one of our most widely cherished values. Oliver Davis's chapter, on conceptualising the role of patient autonomy in psychedelically assisted psychotherapy, can be viewed Open Access here. 

Warwick Data event for the academic community and PGRs

Warwick Data event for the academic community and PGRs

At the start of term, the brand-new Warwick Award – from Student Opportunity – officially opened its doors to all undergraduate and postgraduate taught students…have you registered yet?

The Award recognises and showcases all of the employability skills you’re building across your entire Warwick experience, to help put you in a position to make the start to life after graduation that you want to. It’s free to join, can be personalised to match your own skills development and can be completed whenever works best for you during your studies here.

It’s never too early – or too late – to start reflecting on your own skills development, and the Warwick Award will make that task much easier. More than 5,000 students have already registered in the last month alone, why not join them?

Head to the Award’s website to check out their launch video and register.

Get involved: warwick.ac.uk/warwickawardLink opens in a new window

A research project in the psychology department is looking for participants for a language study. The study involves describing pictures in English and filling in a few questionnaires. Participants should be English OR French native speakers. The test lasts between 30min and 45min, it takes place in the humanities building at the University of Warwick and you will receive a £5 Amazon voucher for taking part.

Please get in touch with me (m.coumel@warwick.ac.uk) if you would like to participate.

Thank you

Dr Marion Coumel

Postdoctoral Researcher

Department of Psychology

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) wamly invites applications from outstanding candidates for doctoral study commencing in September/October 2023. The SMLC will support pre-selected candidates for the Chancellor’s International Scholarships and Midlands4Cities scholarships

To express an interest, please send your CV and a two-page research proposal to smlcoffice@warwick.ac.uk (cc I.de-Smet@warwick.ac.uk) as soon as possible, ideally by 16 November 2022.

Interested in applying for a Midlands4Cities scholarship for doctoral study in Modern Languages or Translation Studies at Warwick? Register for the online Application Writing Workshops for M4C scholarship candidates on 19 November 2022, 10 am-1 pm. Registration details and the link to subscribe are on the M4C website.