Our faculty members are recognised leaders in their respective fields, with linguistic expertise in French, German, Hindi, Russian and Spanish. Our research interests are wide-ranging and interdisciplinary. Individual staff specialisms and research profiles can be found on the Academic Staff page.
We also offer supervision across departments of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film.
The department organises regular research seminars featuring our own postgraduate students and staff in the QMUL community as well as outside speakers from the University of London and beyond. Every year, the department hosts the annual George Steiner lecture, named after the eminent comparatist George Steiner, who has a long-standing affiliation with QMUL. The event is one of the highlights of our research event calendar. Previous speakers have included Marina Warner, Terence Cave, David Damrosch, Susan Bassnett, Haun Saussy, Emily Apter, Aamir Mufti, and Wiebke Denecke.
Our staff and students are active participants in LINKS, the London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies.
Our PhD students benefit from London’s wide array of resources for research in multiple disciplines and languages. Besides QMUL’s own libraries, our students have free access to materials in the University of London Library at Senate House, the individual libraries of the various colleges of the University of London and the specialist libraries of the British Film Institute, the Warburg and the Courtauld. The outstanding collections at the British Library are also close at hand.
See current PhD student profiles here.