About Birmingham City English Research Centre

English at BCU is a thriving research community, with significant strengths across Literary Studies, Linguistics, and Creative Writing. In the most recent Research Excellence Framework (REF2021), 94% of work by English staff was judged to be world-leading or internationally excellent. The impact of this research beyond academia was given the highest possible rating (100% 4*), placing the Centre joint 1st amongst all UK English departments. 

In Literary Studies, the Centre has expertise spanning the Renaissance, Romantic, and nineteenth-century periods, with notable achievements in twentieth- and twenty-first century literatures. Researchers in this cluster produce field-defining monographs with major publishers. One of the Centre’s two 4* REF2021 impact case studies was based on Prof Islam Issa’s ground-breaking work on the Stories of Sacrifice project and exhibition, which drew upon and contributed to research in History, Sociology and Theology. 

The Creative Writing cluster is a thriving environment for outstanding practitioners and researchers. Its members produce fiction, poetry, screen and radio plays, creative non-fiction, literary criticism and editorial work. Colleagues in Creative Writing also run public events bringing poets from around the world to Birmingham to foster access and participation in literary culture among the full diversity of the city's population. They work closely with Writing West Midlands, the creative writing development agency for the region and organisers of the Birmingham Literature Festival.  

In Linguistics, the Centre has significant research strengths in Corpus Linguistics; Sociolinguistics; Language, Gender and Sexuality Studies; and Language and the Law. Its Corpus Linguists develop open-access text analysis software (WebCorp, eMargin) with 5,000+ monthly users in education, government and industry worldwide, which formed the basis of the Centre’s second 4* REF2021 impact case study. Academics in Linguistics regularly apply a mix of methods in their research, combining statistics, visualisation, and qualitative approaches to the study of social, cultural, and legal issues, working with a variety of external stakeholders and partners.