Cambridge is an outstanding place to work on modern and contemporary literature. Students and scholars benefit from world-class libraries, and from each other. You will be joining an academic community that is, at every level, extremely active in this period: undergraduates encounter post-1830 literature from their very first term, and the MPhil in English Studies: Modern and Contemporary Literature – which feeds the PhD programme – attracts exceptionally gifted students from around the Anglophone world. The PhD cohort itself is large in number, and diverse. No particular area or approach is preferred. Faculty members who act as supervisors and advisors for doctoral dissertations work on a great variety of topics and in varied ways. Proposals of all kinds are therefore welcome: on little-known as well as canonical authors, in thematic as well as stylistic studies, from innovative and interdisciplinary as well as from more traditional, cultural and literary-historical perspectives. In addition to the formal training offered as part of the PhD, there are excellent opportunities for the sorts of enriching conversations and collaborations that emerge informally, between fellow PhDs, MPhils and Faculty. Fortnightly seminars, for instance (Nineteenth-Century; Twentieth Century and Contemporary Literature), which combine internal and invited speakers, encourage discussions and relationships between the entire research community.