PhD

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Information for

PhD Students

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PhD Students CIRCL

CIRCL supervisors welcome applications for PhD research from applicants who have an interest in advanced research in Children’s Literature, as well as in literary and cultural studies in general. Please contact them by e-mail to describe your project, to see if it would be suitable for supervision at CIRCL. For general University guidelines on how to write a research proposal for an application, please go to: https://www.reading.ac.uk/web/files/graduateschool/writing_a_research_proposal_for_application.pdf

For information on fees, please go to the University web-site post-graduate fees page.

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The photo shows Reading’s Graduate School for Arts and Humanities where the PhDs have study and meeting spaces. Photo copyright: Professor Klaus Meyer, used by kind permission

CIRCL PhD graduates have gone on to achieve academic careers at the Universities of Reading, Roehampton, Plymouth, Exeter and East Anglia, as well as at Bunkyo University in Japan.

Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein 


Present PhD Students and their Supervisors and Projects

CIRCL has a large and active group of PhD students, both full and part-time and both home, EU and overseas. Most CIRCL PhD students complete the CIRCL M(Res) in Children’s Literature before they start on the CIRCL PhD in order to have already addressed and worked through significant issues and questions to have the best preparation for PhD research. Many CIRCL PhD students research in areas other than children’s literature or childhood because of the transdisciplinary critical theory which is CIRCL’s main focus.

Supervisor: Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein

Alexander Hellens

Researching ethnicity and/as identity.

Hanne Kouwenberg

Researching children’s literature and specific aspects of constructions of childhood and fantasy.

Krissie Hunt

Researching psychoanalysis and critical theory.

Katy Corderoy

Researching ideas around ‘expression’.

Natalie England

Researching ideas around ‘adaptation’

Xiaoyu (Linda) Hou

Researching ideas around ‘ADHD’ and childhood

Lex Nicholls

Researching ideas around mental health and the internet

Kasturi Roy Bardhan

Researching ideas around ‘invisible’ Dis/abilities

Claire Buckley

Researching childhoods in literature

Supervisor: Dr Neil Cocks

Lana Theodoulou

Researching Pokemon

Ting Fang (Grace) Yeh

Researching critical theory and Art History

Kate Rhodes

Researching construction of childhood in educational texts and practices.

Rachel Gauthier

Researching fandom and computer games.

Supervisor: Dr Sue Walsh

Sue is second supervisor to several of the PhD students listed above.

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Former PhD student Helen Ainslie completing her PhD here!


PhD students and their thesis abstracts