Area Studies at Warwick

What is Area Studies? What projects will this pathway support?

Normally, Area Studies expertise entails in-depth personal acquaintance with the region studied. Proposals to this pathway will therefore usually be expected to involve regional fieldwork (travel restrictions and access considerations permitting) and/or the use of one or more regional languages (which either the candidate should already possess or they will seek to acquire in a reasonable timeframe as part of their research training).

In the UK, Area Studies also usually involves extending and deepening our scholarly knowledge of other regions of the world, so the pathway excludes studies that focus solely on the UK or its constituent nations. However, we will accept projects that undertake comparative analysis using the UK as one of the case studies and/or that study socio-economic phenomena within the UK in wider transnational contexts (e.g. studies of migration and asylum that focus not principally on UK institutions, policy or practice, but on processes and experiences of mobility and settlement).

Note that the main supervisor from your chosen department should be a specialist in the region or country on which you will focus. However, your second supervisor may have expertise linked to the topic of your proposal, but not necessarily on the specific region.

Area Studies at Warwick

Warwick excels in the study of the following regions: East Asia and Latin America.

If you are unsure whether Area Studies is the best fit for your project, please contact Madeleine Fagan, m.fagan@warwick.ac.uk.