PhD East Asian Studies / Overview

East Asian Studies at Manchester comprises Chinese Studies and Japanese Studies. It has academic staff, and language teaching teams in Chinese and Japanese. Besides PhD and MPhil programmes in Chinese Studies and in Japanese Studies for those who specifically focus on one or other of these cultural areas, East Asian Studies offers scope for MPhil and PhD topics concerning the East Asian region, broadly defined (including South-East Asia, especially when related to areas and cultures which use Chinese writing characters), while transcending specific cultural boundaries or seeking to utilize the academic specialism and guidance of scholars in East Asian Studies to engage with academic topics within the region.

In such contexts East Asian Studies staff can offer postgraduate supervision in a variety of areas related to religion, education, popular culture, art, history, gender studies, identity formation, literature, social dynamics, social and business networks, as well as medical history and policy, either in terms of specific East Asian cultures or relating to topics defined as crossing national and cultural boundaries within the wider East Asian context.

In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF 2014) Japanese Studies and Chinese Studies were assessed as part of the University of Manchester's 'Modern Languages and Linguistics' submission. In REF2014 the University of Manchester has been confirmed as a leading centre for research in Modern Languages and Linguistics, ranking third in the UK in terms of research power (an established criterion which values research quality in relation to the number of staff submitted). We achieved joint fourth in terms of the overall amount of 'world-leading' (4*) research activity and 80% of our research was judged to be in the highest two categories (4* or 3*). Specifically, 73% of our publications were judged as either 'world-leading' (4*) or 'internationally excellent' (3*); moreover, 85% of our research activity achieved 'outstanding' (4*) or `very considerable¿ (3*) public impact in areas spanning policy, public discourse, education, cultural life and society. Our research environment was also judged to be strong, with 100% judged to be 'world-leading' (4*) or 'internationally excellent' (3*).