Staff members' research expertise is varied and wide-ranging. Current staff are active across a number of the University's research institutes and are members or coordinators of research groups.

Research institutes:

• Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis
• Amsterdam School for Historical Studies
• Amsterdam Centre for Language and Communication
• Institute for Logic, Language and Computation

Research groups:

• The Coetzee Collective
• ASCA Cities Project
• Literature in the 21st Century
• Emotion and Subjectivity, 1300-1900
• linguistic Variation constrained by Cognition, Acquisition and Social context
• Deliberate linguistic innovation
• Corpus-based and/or Computational Approaches to Language and Literature (CCALL)
• Language Learning, Literacy, and Multilingualism
• Natural Language Processing & Digital Humanities

The literature side of the department has particular strengths in literary and cultural theory, postcolonial studies, South African writing, Victorian and Modernist studies, Renaissance drama (including Shakespeare), city studies, literature and history, and the interface between literature and new media.

Linguistics staff have specialisms in discourse studies, second language acquisition, language variation and change, literary translation, psycholinguistics, and language and technology. 

Global Reach

The department takes a global view of its subject, positioning itself as a centre for the study of the language, culture and literature of English across the world. The department regularly hosts international events, workshops and conferences.

Recent research activities include:

• 15th York-Newcastle-Holland Symposium on the History of English Syntax (SHES15) in May 2017
• Second annual Women, Money and Markets conference (June 2018)
• Association of Adaptation Annual Conference 2018 (September 2018)
• Critical Misanthropy Conference (January 2023)
• Troubling Universalisms: Politics and Aesthetics in Critical Theory Symposium (June 2023)

These activities help foster a rich, inclusive and interdisciplinary research environment, with close links to fellow researchers at the UvA and beyond. 

Guest Lectures and Supervision

The department hosts its own monthly guest lecture series, linked to the Master's English Literature and Culture (Literary Studies), where invited scholars and writers present their work in progress. Several members of staff are also involved in Research Master's and PhD supervision, and the department welcomes enquiries from prospective research students.