School of Languages and Social Sciences
The School of Languages and Social Sciences at Aston University is offering four three-year fees-only bursaries to students who already have, or who will have completed at the latest by October 2008, a Masters degree in a relevant subject area. The bursaries will enable students to undertake research in any of the School's areas of academic endeavour: English, French, German, Politics & International Relations, Sociology, Spanish and Translation Studies. The School's vibrant research culture - Grade 5 rating in the last RAE - and the rapidly expanding cohort of full-time research students, provides a stimulating intellectual environment.
Research areas are:
English: corpus linguistics; discourse analysis, including CDA; forensic linguistics; literary linguistics; sociolinguistics and TESOL.
French : French political institutions, political leadership and social movements; writing, politics and gender; French language acquisition and development; linguistic semantics; French media and cultural policy; French literature and philosophy.
German: Modern German and Austrian culture and literature; German film studies; German history; German -Jewish studies; sociolinguistics (multilingualism, migrant and minority languages, dialect - standard contact in the German speaking countries); Low German and Yiddish.
Politics: Comparative politics; British domestic politics and foreign relations; French and German politics; EU foreign relations; EU institutions; globalization; international relations; political discourse and leadership, politics and religion, regionalism and federalism; international political economy
Sociology: Globalization; work and organizations; gender and ethnicity; social theory and social change; knowledge and education; environment and health.
Spanish: Contemporary Spanish literature and cultural studies; women studies; translation; sociolinguistics; second language teaching and Latin American political discourse.
Translation Studies: Translation and politics; translation history; translation and ethnography; translation and advertising; corpus analysis for translation; translation didactics and translator training.
The value of the bursary, £3,300, is sufficient to cover Home/EU fees for 2008-9, and will rise annually as the university's fees increase in step with inflation. An overseas student could set the bursary against the normal annual overseas registration fees, which for 2008-9 are £9,500, thereby reducing the fees payable to £6,200.
If you wish to apply, please complete and submit, as soon as possible, an electronic PhD application form, which can be downloaded from the University's website. This will enable us to check that no necessary details are missing. Your application should also include a CV, as well as a 2-3,000 word research proposal and the names of two academic referees. To speed up the process, please ask your referees to send their references immediately by post or by email to Ms Margarita Seresht, (see below for address).
If you are not a native speaker of English, proof of English language competence will be necessary, usually in the form of a TOEFL or IELTS test score. The minimum test scores are as follows:
TOEFL: 610 (paper-based) or 253 (computer-based) or 101/102 (Internet-based)
IELTS: 7.0 (minimum 7.0 in writing, and 6.0 in speaking, listening and reading)
Applications for the studentship should be sent by email to m.seresht@aston.ac.uk, or by post to Ms Margarita Seresht, School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET. Please mark the envelope with the phrase ‘PhD Bursary Application'.
Applications and references must reach her at the very latest by 31st July 2008.
Ref No. ST08/151/99
Click here for Employer Profile
