PhD Translation and Intercultural Studies / Programme details
Year of entry: 2024
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Programme description
The Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS) attracts visiting scholars and postgraduate students from a wide range of countries and backgrounds.
CTIS provides an excellent environment for research and organises regular scholarly events for the benefit of postgraduate students. These include a seminar series, which attracts a large national and international audience of researchers, students and practitioners.
The Centre also provides specialist research training for doctoral students in the form of masterclasses and dedicated career development workshops.
Our students have regularly benefitted from supervisory expertise and events across the humanities to support interdisciplinary dimensions of their work.
Recent major research projects include:
- Genealogies of Knowledge: The Evolution and Contestation of Concepts across Time and Space (2016-2019), a large AHRC-funded project which explored how translation has impacted the transformation of key concepts in political and scientific thought as these concepts have travelled across centuries, languages and cultures.
- Translating Asylum (2018-2020), an AHRC-funded project which explored the role of translation and interpreting provisions in supporting refugee arrivals in Britain between the 1940s and the 1980s.
- Wiki[Alt]Med project (2021-2023), an AHRC-funded project which explored the mediation and negotiation of (alternative) medical knowledge in the English-language Wikipedia using a corpus-based methodology.
Find out more about our research , our staff and what our current postgraduate research students are working on.
Additional programme information
Humanities Doctoral Academy
Our Humanities Doctoral Academy combines the strengths of our four schools to bring expertise, knowledge, support and high quality services for postgraduate researchers.
We are a community of academic leaders and postgraduate researchers across all levels in the Faculty of Humanities. The Doctoral Academy Hub houses our specialist professional service teams who support postgraduate researchers throughout the programme journey. This includes admissions, registration, student experience, progression, examination and graduation. We collaborate closely with other University directorates including Manchester Doctoral College, Researcher Development team, and the corresponding Doctoral Academies in the Faculty of Science and Engineering and the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health. Together we provide the best experience and support for your studies and research.
EDI
Equality, diversity and inclusion is fundamental to the success of The University of Manchester, and is at the heart of all of our activities.
We know that diversity strengthens our research community, leading to enhanced research creativity, productivity and quality, and societal and economic impact.
We actively encourage applicants from diverse career paths and backgrounds and from all sections of the community, regardless of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation and transgender status.
All appointments are made on merit.
The University of Manchester and our external partners are fully committed to equality, diversity and inclusion.
Teaching and learning
The PhD is the major postgraduate research degree. It involves three years of full-time study or six years of part-time study and the preparation of a thesis of not more than 80,000 words that makes a significant contribution to knowledge.
A satisfactory PhD topic is one that a suitably qualified and properly supervised student can bring to completion within the permitted timeframe.
Recent thesis titles include:
- Theatre Translation, Communities of Practice and the Sri Lankan Conflicts: Renarration as Political Critique
- Analysing Fragmented Narratives: Twitter Reporting of the 3 July 2013 Events in Egypt
- Managing Translation Projects: Practices and Quality in Production Networks
- A Narrative Perspective on News Translation by Non-Professional Virtual Communities: The Case of Yeeyan
- Re-narrating the City: A Genetic Investigation into the Narrative Impact of the Translation Practices of Wikipedia Volunteers
- Hegel's 'Phenomenology' in Translation: A Comparative Analysis of Translatorial 'Hexis'
- Investigating the Cultural Determinants of Advertising Style in the UK and Greece
- The Phenomenon of Self-Translation in Puerto Rican and Puerto Rican US Diaspora Literature Written by Women
- The Translation of Children's and Adolescents' Literature in Iran: A Structurationist Approach
- Theorising Translation as a Process of Cultural Repatriation: The Greek Civil War Narrative Translated into Greek
- Making Knowledge Move: Translation and the Travel of Technical Textbooks in Meiji-era Japan, 1868-1894
- Amateur Translation and the Development of a Participatory Culture in China: A Netnographic Study of The Last Fantasy Fansubbing Group
- Transgressive Textualities: Translating References to Gender, Sexuality and Corporeality in Contemporary French and Francophone Women's Writing
- Connecting Protestantism to Chinese Ruism: Religion, Dialogism and Intertextuality in James Legge's Translation of the Lunyu
Please note that all PhD students are required to undertake research training as part of their PhD programme.
Coursework and assessment
Your research will normally be supervised by two members of staff at the University. Your supervisors will most likely be members of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, but if your research requires it, we may arrange for supervision by someone outside the School.
Supervisory arrangements at Manchester are governed by a Code of Practice which is available on the University's website.
Regular meetings will be held with the supervisors, and details of each of the meetings will be recorded.
Research panels (consisting of at least three academic staff, including the supervisors) are held once per semester to monitor progress.
Please note that the first year of the full-time programme is probationary. This means you will be required to show evidence of satisfactory progress to proceed with the programme.
Related research
REF 2021
In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF2021) Translation Studies was assessed as part of The University of Manchester's 'Modern Languages and Linguistics' submission.
The University of Manchester was ranked in the top 10 in the UK in terms (by grade point average) among the 47 departments assessed under Unit of Assessment 26.
92% of our research was judged to be in the highest two categories (4*) 'world-leading' or (3*) 'internationally excellent'.
Our research environment was also judged to be strong, with 100% judged to be (4*) 'world-leading' or (3*) 'internationally excellent'.
Find out more about our Modern Languages research at Manchester.
What our students say
Facilities
Manchester is home to one of the UK's five National Research Libraries - one of the best-resourced academic libraries in the UK and widely recognised as one of the world's greatest research libraries.
Find out more about libraries and study spaces for postgraduate research students at Manchester.
We also have one of the largest academic IT services in Europe - supporting world-class teaching and research. There are extensive computing facilities across campus, with access to standard office software as well as specialist programmes, all connected to the campus network and internet.
Every student is registered for email, file storage and internet access. If more demanding computer access is required, our specialist computing division can provide high-end and specialist computing services.
Find out more about facilities for Translation and Intercultural Studies students.