Course summary

The Slavonic Studies Section is unique in the United Kingdom in offering postgraduate opportunities in Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. The research interests of its academic staff span a wide range of topics in the languages, literature, visual studies and cultural history of Poland, Russia and Ukraine, from the medieval period to the present day. The intellectual vitality of the Section is evident in its thriving research areas: medieval Rus culture; early-modern Ruthenian culture, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian literary and cultural studies of the 19th and 20th centuries; cinema studies; nationalism studies; memory studies; visual culture; the history of science and medicine; print and media culture; sensory history; and Slavonic linguistics. Students taking the PhD in Slavonic Studies may focus on a single national or linguistic tradition, or they may pursue comparative research across languages and national boundaries. A dynamic research culture of public lectures, seminars and conferences, together with a close-knit system of supervision and mentoring, encourages individual and collective endeavour within the Section. In British universities, the PhD (Doctorate of Philosophy) is traditionally awarded solely on the basis of a thesis, a substantial piece of writing which reports original research into a closely defined area of enquiry. The completion of the PhD thesis is generally expected to take three to four years, and most funding is based on this assumption. It's also possible to take a part-time route through research degrees, for which the expected timeframe would be five to seven years. During your research, you will have the opportunity to work closely with a supervisor who is a specialist in your research area. You might reasonably expect to see your supervisor fortnightly or at least three times per term. In addition to your supervisor, you will normally also be able to draw on the help and support of other members of the Section with expertise in your field of study. In addition to the specialist supervising provided by the Section, the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics runs a programme of professional training for the benefit of all research students. The programme includes seminars and workshops on library resources, giving conference papers, publishing, applications and interviews, and teaching skills. The School of Arts and Humanities runs a central programme covering a range of skills relevant to doctoral students. Doctoral students may also be offered opportunities to do small-group teaching for the undergraduate Colleges and, in some cases, language teaching for the Faculty. The University of Cambridge has been judged the best in the UK for Russian and East European Studies in the 2022 University Subject Tables compiled by The Complete University Guide. The Slavonic Studies section is part of the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics, which has a Postgraduate Centre with computing, study, seminar, and social areas. It maintains extensive library resources, which include the Catherine Cooke collection of Soviet visual materials. Postgraduate students at Cambridge benefit from a rich, diverse research culture, both within the Slavonic Studies section and the University as a whole. The Slavonic Studies section also works in close collaboration with the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES) and the Cambridge Centre for Research in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CRASSH).