The Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature reshapes how we think about languages, literatures, and cultures in a global context.
Rooted in the university’s commitment to widening participation, our research bridges the local and the international, embracing diversity, multilingualism, and cross-cultural dialogue. Our interdisciplinary research spans literary, linguistic, intellectual and cultural history from the Middle Ages to the present. We explore national and world literatures, postcolonial studies, digital humanities, philosophy and literary theory, childhood studies, the history of science, intercultural transfer and translation studies, transnational migration, visual culture, political and language policy, and modern theatre. Our regional coverage includes Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, South and East Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
Our work is organised both by language area, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hispanic (Spanish, Latin American, Portuguese, Catalan), Ukrainian and Russian, and by thematic and interdisciplinary clusters focusing on global epistemologies, language and social justice, visual and material cultures, medical humanities, and translation and adaptation studies.
