Postgraduate Research in Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology

The Department of Classics, Ancient History and Archaeology (CAHA) offers you the opportunity to carry out your postgraduate research in a distinctively wide range of areas. The study of Classics at Birmingham goes back more than 100 years, and we also have leading expertise in Archaeology as well as Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies.

As a researcher in the Department, you will join an internationally acclaimed research community. Times Higher Education ranked us among the top 5 departments of Classics in the country for our performance in the latest Research Excellence Framework exercise.

CAHA is home to specialists working on classics, ancient history, prehistoric and classical archaeology, Egyptology, Byzantine studies and Modern Greek culture and so the opportunities for supervision are broad-ranging.

Our areas of expertise and supervision:

• 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
• 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

We offer PhD programmes in Classics and Ancient History, Archaeology and Byzantine, Ottoman Modern Greek Studies. All of which can be studied full- or part-time and via distance learning. We also offer a range of Masters-level programmes, which offer an ideal stepping stone to doctoral study or an excellent development opportunity in their own right.

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Research resources

You can take advantage of our world-class resources to support your research, including the main University Library and the Library of Birmingham, the largest municipal library in Europe. You will also have access to CAHA’s specialist teaching collections and the Cadbury Research Library, which is home to the University’s Special Collections and Archives consisting of approximately 120,000 pre-1850 books and 3 million manuscripts.

In addition, you have the opportunity to learn graduate academic languages free of charge to support your research activity, as well as to attend taught modules to develop appropriate research skills; this includes the study of ancient languages such as Greek, Latin, Ancient Egyptian and the Languages of the Ancient Near East.

Supporting your studies

CAHA is part of the College of Arts and Law, which offers dedicated support for postgraduate students, from extra-curricular activities to funding opportunities. This includes access to our postgraduate hub, Westmere, which regularly hosts workshops, conferences and social events, as well as being a space to meet and study with fellow researchers.

The Department hosts regular Research Seminars, where final-year PhD students can present their research alongside prominent national and international invited speakers. There are also several active student-led forums and journals including Rosetta and Gate to the Eastern Mediterranean (GEM).

To find out what it is like to be a postgraduate researcher in the Department, please watch the video below or take a look at the work of our current doctoral researchers.

We have created our six-step process, which includes detailed advice on writing a research proposal, to help you with your application to the College of Arts and Law.

Apply Online