Renaissance Studies (PhD/MPhil)

Warwick's PhD in Renaissance Studies offers you the opportunity to join an exciting, internationally renowned research culture. Studying at the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, you will receive specialist guidance as you conduct your research project.

Course Overview

Students in Renaissance Studies focus on completing a dissertation of up to 80,000 words in a period of up to four years. They work closely with a supervisor (and often two) from the Centre’s allied departments (Classics, English, History, History of Art, and the School of Modern Languages and Cultures).

They are encouraged to develop an interdisciplinary profile, as well as to strengthen their skills in palaeography and ancient and modern languages. Warwick’s CSR is in fact a worldwide leader in doctoral training: every year it organizes a training programme (‘Resources and Techniques for the Study of Renaissance and Early Modern Culture’) together with the Warburg Institute.

Its students benefit from an Early Career Club and from the Centre’s unusually broad international connections, for instance with Johns Hopkins University (student exchange) and Monash University (Prato Consortium). The CSR’s community of doctoral students is tight-knight, fairly small, and very well looked after. We do everything possible to help our applicants secure funding.

Research Themes

Areas for PhD supervision

History of the Book and Reading Practices; Religious Art, Polemics, Thought, and Literature; The Classical Tradition (including neo-Latin and vernacular cultures; Plato; Aristotle); The History of Ideas (especially science and medicine, ethics and politics); Theatre and Performance (especially in England); Gender; Society and Power; Court and Civic Culture; Renaissance Learned Culture (including humanist circles, academies, universities); Popular Culture; Visual Culture and Debates on the Arts; Venetian Economy, Art and Culture; Travel, Colonialism and the New World.

Teaching and Learning

Students will be able to attend skills training, language, and palaeography sessions provided for our PGT students, and audit some taught MA modules in Renaissance Studies.

Entry requirements 2:i undergraduate degree and Master’s (or equivalent) in a related subject.