Doctoral Studies in Studies in the Humanities

As a subject, studies in the humanities thematises cultural awareness and language practices in a humanistic, cultural and historical perspective. With an openness to different theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches, the subject specialisations are united in their common focus on questions dealing with our understanding and interpretation of the world, both as individuals and as belonging to different groups, and the values being inherent in these interpretations.  Another common ground is the focus on interaction and communication within and across cultural boundaries. Within all specialisations on the programme, past, present and future-oriented perspectives are applied.

The subject has five subject specialisations:

• Comparative literature
• English
• History
• Rhetoric
• Swedish language

Within history, society’s temporal dimensions are problematised, highlighting change and continuity in the past. Research areas with special research competence at Örebro University include gender history, cultural history and migration history. History research at Örebro University has, together with comparative literature research, a focus on narration and narratives and their significance for human meaning-making.

Literary history, literary theory and literature didactics are all studied within the subject specialisations of comparative literature and English. At Örebro University, there is special competence within areas such as classic and contemporary fiction, cross-genre texts, as well as within theoretical perspectives such as narratology and cultural studies.

Rhetoric is based on classical theories and methods for critical analysis of persuasive action and objects such as speech, text, images and other symbolic expressions. Rhetoric research at Örebro University is conducted within areas as diverse as crisis communication, intercultural rhetoric, body language, visual rhetoric, rhetoric and gender, and rhetoric and education.

The subject specialisations of the Swedish language and English thematise several aspects of various speech communities, from both a historical and contemporary perspective. At Örebro University, there is special competence within areas such as multimodality, linguistic variation in speech and writing, and literacy – the latter particularly from a subject-didactic perspective.

The emphasis on subject didactics is shared by English, history, comparative literature and the Swedish language. Swedish as a school subject traditionally, and at Örebro University, encompasses the subjects of the Swedish language and comparative literature.

The doctoral programme plays an important role in the research environment Center for Research in the Humanities and in the research teams Narration, Life and Meaning; Multimodal Communication; Sustainability Centered Humanities and Teaching and Learning in the Humanities.

Guidelines for doctoral students in Studies in the Humanities