In the DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages programme, students complete a major piece of original research over a period of 3-4 years. Supervision is offered in most fields from medieval and early modern literature and culture through to modern and contemporary literature, film and cultural history. Areas of particular interest identified by the Faculty spanning our different languages and period specialisms include Performance and Voice, Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies, Gender and Diversity, Ecology and Environmental Humanities, Cognitive Literary Studies, Medical Humanities and Life Writing, and Comparative Literature and Translation Studies. Some of our current doctoral students are working on projects exploring Stages of Captivity: Professional Theater in the Gulag Capitals of Vorkuta and Magadan; The Ethics of Loyalty: decoding the loyalty gene in the works of Leon Battista Alberti; Sinking Feelings: Water and Distress in Contemporary Women’s Writing in French; Personification as Devotional Strategy in Middle Low German Literature; Liquid World and Solid Objects: Affect and the Nonhuman Turn in Clarice Lispector's Writing; and Jean-Baptiste Gentil (1726-1799), A Traveller, Patron, Collector, and Historian: A Page in Indo-French Cultural Relations.

The Faculty has an active research culture and is committed to integrating graduate students into our regular research seminars. We regularly host workshops and conferences with Oxford-based and visiting academics, which bring together students and faculty members in – and between – individual languages and disciplines. The Modern Languages Graduate Network offers academic and social opportunities for graduate students, including graduate-led seminars, and a mentoring scheme is in place to help new graduates integrate into the Oxford academic community. The Faculty also maintains an active presence in TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities) and our graduates, early career researchers, and staff members are driving forces in research networks and programmes such as Comparative Criticism and Translation, Enlightenment Network, Caribbean Studies, Writing Technologies, and Reimagining Performance.

The DPhil (Doctor of Philosophy) is a research degree for which students write a thesis of 80,000 words and are examined by an oral examination. Doctoral students work under the guidance of a supervisor who is a specialist in their subject. Where two areas of expertise are essential, joint supervision is arranged. Successful DPhil students possess good general knowledge of the field of learning within which the subject of the thesis falls and are required to make a significant and substantial contribution to the subject studied. In Modern Languages this may involve work on unpublished documents or manuscripts in foreign libraries or archives. A thesis may also be an edition of a text, if the task is complex enough and the introductory material sufficiently detailed.