Classics and Ancient History - Postgraduate Research Opportunities

The Department of Classics and Ancient History offers the opportunity to carry out postgraduate research in a distinctively wide range of areas, from all the major civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean, to all periods of classical antiquity.

As a postgraduate researcher in the Department, you will join an internationally acclaimed research community. Times Higher Education ranked us 8th among Classics department in the UK in the Research Excellence Framework exercise 2021 based on research rated 4*.

We offer promising candidates the opportunity to carry out research in a range of areas across the disciplines of Classics and Ancient History, including Ancient Near Eastern Studies and Egyptology as well as Byzantine Studies, the Ottoman Empire and the study of Modern Greek:

Classics and Ancient History PhD/MA by Research (On-Campus or by Distance Learning)

Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies PhD/MA by Research (On-Campus or by Distance Learning)

Subject to programme requirements, you can also learn or improve your knowledge of Classical and Byzantine Greek, Latin, Greek and Ancient Egyptian.

The MA by Research programme requires you to prepare a dissertation of up to 40,000 words on a topic of your choice, for which an academic staff member will provide expert supervision.

The PhD – the most advanced research degree – leads to a dissertation of up to 80,000 words on a subject of your choice and under the expert supervision of an academic member of staff.

You can study an MA by Research or PhD programme on campus or by distance learning. Please note that if you are studying with us by distance learning, there is a required visit to campus in the first year of your course.

Research interests of staff include:

The scope of our research is distinctively wide, encompassing all periods of classical antiquity up to and beyond the end of the Roman Empire, to all the major civilisations of the ancient Mediterranean and explores their after-effects in more recent periods.

• Byzantine, Ottoman and modern Greek studies
• Egyptology
• Heritage
• History, literature and culture of Classical and Hellenistic Greece
• History, literature and culture of the Late Republic and Early Empire
• History of rhetoric
• Inter-state religion in the Ancient World
• Mortuary and Funerary Archaeology
• Prehistoric and early historic Europe
• Reception of the Ancient World
• Religion and ritual
• Urbanism and the ancient city
• Wetland archaeology and environments of Northwest Europe

For full research interests of staff, please read our staff profiles or visit the research interest tab on each programme's course page. 

Funding Notes

Please visit the College of Arts and Law funding page for information on possible funding opportunities: View Website. Please visit the College of Arts and Law funding page for information on possible funding opportunities: View Website. You can find out about all the scholarships that are available on our Postgraduate Funding Database. If you find a scholarship that you are interested in, we would recommend you check the application guidelines as these can differ between funding schemes. For some of them, you can apply for funding as soon as you have submitted an application for the course. If you would like to start in 2024, applications for the AHRC Midlands4Cities Scholarship opened on 16 October 2023 and closes on 10 January 2024.