Research Highlights

The School’s research focuses on the transnational study of literatures, cultures and histories.

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures consists of Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hispanic Studies, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and the Centre for Foreign Language Study. Our community of academics, teachers and support staff aim to foster a world-class student experience in all our disciplines. Sections within our School feature regularly in the top five in national league tables such as the Good University Guide and the Complete University Guide. In the recently published Complete Uni

Staff Publications

Year Abroad photography competition by MLAC

Meet some of our academics

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures functions as a single unit for research with strength in the areas of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Digital, Environmental and Medical Humanities, Translation, and Visual and Performance Studies.

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Professor Andrew Beresford

Prof Beresford's research combines medieval and early modern Spanish literature as well as painting, sculpture, and visual culture more broadly. Within County Durham, his interest in Spanish art has led to a series of collaborations with The Bowes Museum and The Auckland Project.

Zurbarán Centre for Spanish and Latin American Art Spanish Gallery

Dr Fusako Innami

Dr Innami's first book 'Touching the Unreachable', examines touch as the mediated experience of the memories of previous touching and the accumulation of sensations, all of which create an interstitial space between those in contact. Dr Innami is also interested in performance and performativity.

Touching the Unreachable Performance and Performativity Research Group

Professor Daniel Newman

Professor Daniel Newman’s research centres on Arabic geographical and travel literature (with a special focus on Arab travellers to Europe in the 19th century) as well as the 19th-century Arab reform movements in Tunisia and Egypt. He is also passionate about medieval Arab recipes.

Eat Like a Sultan

Professor Ita MacCarthy

Prof MacCarthy studies the connections between early modern Italian literature and the visual arts. Her book The Grace of the Italian Renaissance explored grace as a complex keyword that conveys and connects the most pressing ethical, social and aesthetic debates of that period in time. She also recently appeared on BBC's Moving Pictures to discuss April by Francesco del Cossa.

Listen to Prof MacCarthy on BBC's Moving Pictures

Dr Axel Pérez Trujillo

Dr Pérez Trujillo works on the intersection between philosophy, ecology, and literature in Latin America. His projects address the complex relationships between culture and nature as they are manifested in literature. His book, Imaging the Plains of Latin America: An Ecocritical Study, was recently published by Bloomsbury. He is also a member of the Centre for Culture and Ecology.

Centre for Culture and Ecology