PhD Postgraduate Research in Humanities

The PhD programme in the School has the following three milestones:

• Registration
• Progression
• Examination

Registration

Applicants who satisfy the entry requirements are encouraged to complete the online 'Expression of Interest' form. If the initial application is satisfactory, a conditional offer will be issued and a potential supervisor will be allocated who will provide guidance on the research proposal development. 

An interview will take place when the final draft of the research proposal is submitted for approval. The granting of the interview does not imply that the applicant will necessarily be admitted to a research degree programme.

Subject to the satisfactory interview and that the Faculty Research Committee (FRC) is satisfied that: a) the research proposal is sound and has the potential to deliver a postgraduate research award; and b) the proposal is appropriately resourced, the applicant will be admitted to the research degree programme.

Progression

All students who wish to study for a PhD are required to complete a progression within 18 months (for full-time students) or 36 months (for part-time students).

The student at the progression needs to produce a paper which summarises his/her achievements on the research programme and outlines future research plans (including research methods), and conduct an oral presentation of the paper at a workshop set up for the progression purpose.  

An independent assessor, nominated by the FRC, reviews the paper produced, together with supervisors’ assessment, the student’s presentation and other evidence. On this basis, the assessor will provide evaluative comments and recommendations to the FRC. Upon considering all aspects, the FRC may recommend that the student a) proceed as proposed; b) proceed subject to changes or amendments being made, addressing the concerns raised; c) be placed 'at risk'; or d) change the research degree originally sought. 

Examination

Towards the end of the research programme, the student will be examined on the basis of a thesis and an oral examination (viva voce). Normally two qualified examiners are appointed, at least one of whom is external to the institution. If the student is a member of staff at the University, then a second external examiner will be appointed.

Following the oral examination, the examiners will make recommendations to the University’s Research Award Sub-Committee (RASC) whether the research degree sought can be awarded.

PhD Supervisors - Humanities

Dr Stephen Gregg

Dr Stephen E. Gregg has been elected President of the British Association for the Study of Religions for 2021-24. With a research background in Hindu Philosophy, Interfaith Dialogue and New Religious Movements, and teaching expertise in Christianity and Atheism, Stephen is interested in religious communities that are often overlooked - minority religions, or minority communities within larger traditions, and contested or complicated religious identities. Stephen also works on method and theory in the Study of Religion and Religion and Performance.

He has published with the world's leading academic presses and has lectured on four different continents.  His work on Lived Religion is used by undergraduate courses in numerous countries, and he regularly consults at national and international level through his work with the BASR.

Current research projects include a long-term fieldwork study of a Guru community in Wales, and upcoming projects on Religion and Humour, Religion and Stage Magic, and Everyday Religion in Interdisciplinary Contexts.  Stephen became fascinated by religion as a teenager, especially dialogue between religions and mixed religious identities, and feels lucky to have researched and spent time with religious communities all around the world. 

Professor Aleksandra Galasinska

''My current research interests, publications as well as editorial work focus upon issues of the relationship between language/discourse/ and society and social identities, and in particular on ethnographic and discursive aspects of lived experience of post-communism as well as post-89 and post-enlargement migration. I've been collecting migrants’ narratives recounting experiences of moving country and researching on-line media and internet forum discourses in relation to post-04 migration from Poland. My new project BRAD Brexit and Deportations: Towards a comprehensive and transnational understanding of a new system targeting EU Citizens under H2020-MSCA-IF scheme is devoted to the topic of media and individual discourse of Brexit and migration. Earlier, after I graduated from the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland (MA in Polish Philology and MA in Social Anthropology), I was involved in a major government-funded linguistic project into Polish place names. In my doctoral dissertation I approached names as cultural texts mapping out cultural realities of their users. I became interested in the analysis of naturally occurring discourses while working on a large study of discursive construction of identities in European border communities funded by the European Commission (FP5).

I am available for postgraduate research supervision in the following areas: post-enlargement migration; netnography and internet; narrative and identity; discourse and (social) change'' Read more here.

Professor Meena Dhanda

Meena Dhanda is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Politics. She arrived in the UK from Indian Punjab 1987 with an award of a Commonwealth Scholarship for her doctoral work in Philosophy at Balliol College, Oxford University. She has taught and researched in philosophy at Wolverhampton from 1992. She is currently engaged in doing empirically informed social, moral and political philosophy, with a focus on casteism as a kind of racism. She is internationally recognised as a leading academic in the development of diaspora Dalit studies. To understand injustices, prejudices and misrepresentations suffered by powerless groups, she pursues transdisciplinary studies, specifically connecting caste, class, gender and race. She is interested in guiding research in social and political philosophy, ethics, cultural politics, identity, feminist philosophy, and theorists of anti-racism and anti-casteism in a comparative mode. Meena has led research funded by The Leverhulme Trust, Equality and Human Rights Commission UK, and the European Commission. Read more here.

Dr Simon Constantine

''I teach across a broad range of undergraduate modules at Wolverhampton and am currently the course leader for The Great War, Migrant Stories - Migrant Journeys, From Reich to Republic (Germany 1871-1919) and From Weimar to Auschwitz (Germany 1919-1945).'' Read more here.

Dr Robert Francis

Dr William Pawlett

''My research interests are wide-ranging. They include continental theory, with particular expertise on Georges Bataille and on Jean Baudrillard, and in the application of theory to society, culture and media. Topics or themes of especial interest include: the sacred, the profane and profanation, the mythological, the excessive, the inadmissible, the excluded, the radically other, the ghostly. My current research examines social control in the widest sense, covering guilt, sin and conscience, the operations of surveillance and disciplinarity, and resistance to social control.'' Read more here.

Opinderjit Takhar

Opinderjit Kaur Takhar is an internationally recognised researcher within Sikh Studies and Director of the Centre for Sikh and Panjabi Studies at the University of Wolverhampton.

Her work on Punjabi Dalits and identity formation has been published in a number of books. She is undertaking further research into the current activities towards distinct identity amongst the Ravidassia community and the implications of the installation of Amritbani Guru Ravidass in replace of the Guru Granth Sahib in Ravidassia places of worship. Her publication on ‘Sikh Identity: An exploration of Groups among Sikhs’ (Ashgate 2005) is used as a key text in many Universities around the world. Takhar’s research is on-going in terms of caste issues and gender dynamics amongst Punjabis, and Sikhs specifically. She is currently supervising two research projects and welcomes enquiries from prospective researchers. Read more here.