Academic and professional literacies

Qualifications Duration Start dates Application period
PhD or Professional doctorate PhD:
Full time: 3–4 years
Part time: 6–8 years
Professional doctorate:
Part time: 4–8 years
October November to January
Qualifications
PhD or Professional doctorate
Duration
PhD:
Full time: 3–4 years
Part time: 6–8 years
Professional doctorate:
Part time: 4–8 years
Start dates
October
Application period
November to January

Academic and professional literacies is a key topic in the Language and Literacies Research Cluster. Researchers and students work in a variety of areas relating to literacies in education (secondary and higher) and professional contexts.

Past and present studies have focused on writing in different disciplines (e.g. history, geography, history of science, health and social care, business and management); digital literacies in teacher development; writing by UK and international students; at different levels of study; literacy practices in digital environments; developing teacher literacies through participation in ereading groups; the writing for publication of scholars working in non-Anglophone contexts; writing in professional social work practice and higher education pedagogies around writing. Methodologies include ethnography, multimodal analysis, corpus analysis, systemic functional linguistic analysis and discourse approaches, including critical discourse analysis and poststructuralist approaches.

Entry requirements

Minimum 2:1 undergraduate degree (or equivalent) and an MA or research methods training at MA level (or equivalent). If you are not a UK citizen, you may need to prove your knowledge of English.

Potential research projects

  • Academic literacies (including literacies in further and adult education, undergraduate taught postgraduate vocational and doctoral education)
  • The sociolinguistics of writing
  • Writing for publication
  • Digital literacies in post-compulsory learning contexts
  • Writing in English as a lingua franca contexts
  • Writing in social and healthcare professional contexts, including social work practice
  • Writing in business and management education
  • Literacy practices of higher education teachers and researchers
  • Contemporary workplace literacies

Current/recent research projects

  • Students’ writing and transitions from school to university
  • An exploration of the experiences of Japan-based English Language Teachers Writing for Academic Publication
  • Explorations of student academic literacy practices in digital multimodal disciplinary contexts in South African vocational higher education
  • Women’s academic writing and widening participation in higher education in the UK
  • Learning identity, belonging and writing in a Foundation Year context 
  • An exploration of the everyday and college-assessed literacy practices of further education students
  • Multimodal literacy and education in the context of new technologies
  • Russian scholars' writing for publication in Russian and English

Potential supervisors

Fees and funding

PhD fees

UK fee International fee
Full time: £4,712 per year Full time: £11,958 per year
Part time: £2,356 per year Part time: £5,979 per year

Professional doctorate fees

UK fee International fee
Part time: £3,587 per year Part time: £9,107 per year

Some of our research students are funded via the Open-Oxford-Cambridge AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership or The Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership; others are self-funded.

For detailed information about fees and funding, visit Fees and studentships.

To see current funded studentship vacancies across all research areas, see Current studentships.

Links

Man working at a computer
 

How to apply

Get in touch

If you have an enquiry specific to this research topic, please contact:

Dr Jackie Tuck, PGR Convenor in Applied Linguistics
Email: WELS-student-enquiries@open.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)1908 654057

Apply now

If you’re interested in applying for this research topic, please take a look at the application process.