Research in Scottish Literature

The Department of Scottish Literature is the only academic department in the UK to focus exclusively on the Scottish literary tradition in its undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and research activities. This unique focus brings together a group of scholars who are active in editing the work of major Scottish canonical writers as well as engaging in research and publication in all periods of Scottish literature.  The School of English and Scottish Language and Literature achieved excellent results in RAE 2008.  Not only did we return the largest number of active researchers in Scotland -- we submitted all our staff -- and the third largest in the UK, but 70% of our research was rated as either "world-leading" (35%) or"internationally excellent" (35%).  Using various measures of research achievement, we are ranked between third and eighth in the UK.  This result demonstrates our status as a major institution for the study of English and Scottish language and literature, and builds on our achievement of a 5*-rating in RAE 2001.       

The Department’s work covers all aspects of Scottish Literature.  There are period groupings in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Eighteenth-Century, Romantic and Victorian Studies, and in Modernism/Twentieth-Century/Theory; there are also cross-period interests in Textual Scholarship and Editing, in Oral Tradition and Song, in Women’s Writing and in Creative Writing.  For information on research areas and themes, follow the links on the left-hand menu.

The Department regularly hosts conferences and symposia on all subjects in the broad field of English Literature. Recent major conferences hosted by the Department include the annual Association for Scottish Literary Studies (ASLS) and Burns conferences, and the Scotland and New Zealand Conference (2002).  The Centre for Burns Studies was launched at Glasgow’s Mitchell Library in 2007, and the Department, in collaboration with colleagues in English Literature, is centrally involved in preparations for the Royal Society of Edinburgh Burns Conference planned for 2009. 

The Department is honoured to have several distinguished Honorary Research Fellows.  There is a lively Visiting Speakers’ Programme, and a flourishing graduate programme, with a range of taught and research masters’ degrees and a large constituency of doctoral students. For details, visit our Postgraduate page.