PhD Biography

For their first year, students attend seminars that provide a critical awareness of the subject, which is an essential prerequisite for dissertation work:

• Autobiography (September to December)
• Special Paper in Biography (January to June)
• Research Methods (January to June)

The modules on Biography and Autobiography are designed to combine the study of classic biographies and memoirs with contemporary writing. In addition, the Research Methods module provides an invaluable and innovative training, especially devised for biographers.

Guest seminars on the course are led by leading biographers, critics, publishers and agents. Teachers and speakers on the course have included Andrew Motion, Kathryn Hughes, Frances Wilson, Frances Spalding, Jeremy Lewis, Rupert Shortt, Caroline Dawnay, Andrew Lownie and Miranda Seymour.

Research students are expected to produce, as a valuable preliminary to their own research project, written coursework for the Research Methods module (an annotated bibliography and a short biography, with supporting material, produced according to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography format), and one other piece of written work, but the full amount of termly written work required for the taught course is not compulsory. During the early part of the course, research students refine their research proposal under the individual supervision of the course director for eventual discussion with the Research Officer. Once the research proposal has been accepted students concentrate on individual research and the preparation of a dissertation, under the supervision of the course director.

Programme director

The Programme Director, Ophelia Field, is the author of a critically acclaimed life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744) titled The Favourite, first published in 2002 and in revised edition in 2018. In 2008, she produced a group biography, again set in the early eighteenth century, titled The Kit-Cat Club: Friends Who Imagined a Nation, which was one of the Financial Times’ History Books of the Year. Ophelia has also worked for over 25 years as a policy analyst and communications consultant for a range of human rights and refugee organisations including ECRE, Human Rights Watch, UNHCR, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights, and the Council of Europe. She has been teaching on the University of Buckingham’s Biography Programme since 2019, and previously taught at the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (CELL).

Location

Teaching takes place at the University’s London premises: 51 Gower Street, Bloomsbury, London, WC1E 6HJ.

Find out more and apply to The University of Buckingham's PhD Biography programme on our website.