English

The CVS covers all areas of Victorian Britain and the Empire: culture (high Victorian and fin de siecle literature, gender, and sexuality); science (biology and economics); technology (print, optical and sound media). CVS is an institutional member of the University of California Dickens Project and annually sends one staff member and one advanced research student to California, where they share a week’s academic activities with international Victorianists.  CVS is also active in regular collaborations with the Nineteenth-Century Studies Centre at Birkbeck, the Victorian and late 19th and early 20th-century Divisions of the Modern Language Association of America, the North American Victorian Studies Association, the Australasian Victorian Studies Association, and the British Association for Victorian Studies. We have staff on the editorial boards of every significant Victorianist journal in Britain, North America and Australasia.

Centre for Victorian Studies 

The group aims to provide a focus for research activities and publications centred on the cultural phenomenon of eighteenth-century narrative. The period that saw the dawn of the novel also witnessed the exponential development of a market for print culture and huge social change.

18th Century Narrative Consortium

The centre holds many resources and manuscripts in the Special Collections archive, and actively encourages students to engage with this material.

Centre for Literature and Archives

English staff are also involved in the College's interdisciplinary centre which promotes advanced transdisciplinary research in performance and the arts through collaborations between artists, academics and scientists from a range of disciplines.

Centre for Intermedia and Creative Technology

The diverse work of this large group includes specialist research on African-American writers; the American South; autobiography and life-writing; American and British modernism; postcolonial literature; Irish poetry; Conrad; Joyce; Lawrence; war poetry; Plath and Hughes; writing the city; South West writing; US cinema; early cinema; digital cinema and animation; film genres; film style, film sound and film history; US TV series and serials.

We have Creative Writing colleagues working in Poetry, Screenwriting, Fiction in all forms, Life Writing, Childrens'/Young Adult Writing, and Creative Non-Fiction.

Our 19th-century research includes specialist work on the fin-de-siècle; social and feminist theory; the New Woman; Victorian psychology; Queen Victoria; Darwinism and eugenics; Victorian poetry; Charles Dickens; and William Morris. Members of the research group have a strong record of attracting large grants for internationally distinguished projects and events. We take part in the University of California Dickens project, sending staff and postgraduates to its annual international events.

The CVS runs its own Visiting Speaker series that has included long-term collaborations with distinguished international visitors and it hosts regular international conferences, normally co-sponsored with the British Academy, other universities, professional organisations, or other Exeter research groups.

Members of the 18th-Century research group specialise in: women poets of the Romantic era; the eighteenth-century novel; epic poetry; transatlantic relations; the development of the literary canon; feminist literary history and theory; oriental tales; Jane Austen; Aphra Behn; Frances Burney; James Fenimore Cooper; Oliver Goldsmith; Thomas Grey; Anna Seward; and Mary Wollstonecraft.

The work of this group includes specialist research on the Middle English religious tradition; hermits and anchorites; literature and nationalism; Renaissance drama; satire; witchcraft and magic; politics and patronage; literature of the English Revolution; literature of foreign and domestic travel; science and literature; archaeology and literature; Renaissance drama in performance on film; Shakespeare; Spenser; Marvell; and Milton. We organise the medieval Exeter Symposium and regularly host conferences and workshops.

Tuition fees per year 2025/26

• Home: £4,950 full-time; £pro-rata part-time
• International: £23,500 full-time

For those studying for more than one year, our fees are expected to increase modestly in line with Consumer Price Inflation measured in December each year. More information can be found on our Student Finance webpages.

Tuition Fees per year 2024/25

• Home: £4,786 full-time; £pro-rata part-time
• International: £22,600 full-time

For those studying for more than one year, our fees are expected to increase modestly in line with Consumer Price Inflation measured in December each year. More information can be found on our Student Finance webpages.

Our Postgraduate Funding webpage provides links to further information. If you are considering a PhD in the future, in addition to University of Exeter funding, we have been successful at securing postgraduate funding for PhD research through our Funded centres.

Current available funding