Modern Languages
In 2011, Modern Languages at Newcastle celebrated its centenary. We offer expert supervision and teaching in the languages, cultures and societies of Europe (French, German and Spanish), Latin America (Spanish, Portuguese and Quechua) and East Asia (Chinese).
We also supervise MLitt, MPhil and PhD students in these and further language areas (Catalan, Japanese, Middle High German, Dutch) who are undertaking research in cultural studies, film studies, history, politics and society, literary studies and translation studies. We offer an excellent research environment for postgraduate students, both in Newcastle and beyond.
Our staff and students are based in the School of Modern Languages but they also contribute to multidisciplinary research groups across the University and to regional, national and international research networks including the Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language Sciences, the Instituto Camões (international centre for the study of Portuguese language and culture), the Northern Media Research Group, the Latin American Studies Network (North), the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group, and the Association for Studies in French Cinema.
The strength and depth of our research activity was confirmed by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2008. In the three research areas that we submitted to, 70–80 per cent of our research was classed as either ‘internationally excellent’ or ‘internationally recognised’, with 15–20 per cent classed as ‘world leading’.
We offer several funding opportunities for Masters’ and Doctoral students. Information can be found on the University’s funding database when they become available. We are part of the Durham–Newcastle ESRC Doctoral Training Centre (DTC), with three awards allocated to the Iberian–Latin American pathway for projects with a social science emphasis (for PhD study or MA + PhD). Other ESRC DTC pathways linked to Modern Languages include Linguistics, Politics and International Relations. We are also a part of the AHRC Block Grant Partnership.
As a member of the prestigious Santander Universities Network, which supports universities in this network to study and carry out research in Iberian and Latin American studies, we benefit from a number of scholarships for students on our MA in Latin American Interdisciplinary Studies. The School of Modern Languages also offers a number of postgraduate bursaries annually.
Our facilities on campus are excellent. A new postgraduate suite which opened in September 2010 provides students with their own common room, kitchen and a study room with networked computers and further facilities. We also have the Centro de Língua Portuguesa (Instituto Camões), which is a major national resource for the study of the Portuguese language and culture.
The University also has an on-campus Language Resource Centre providing computing, television and DVD resources in over 50 languages and an international film collection of over 800 titles.
