PhD studies at the Department of English

The Department of English at City University of Hong Kong has an outstanding international faculty, with world-renowned scholars in the fields of applied linguistics and language education, discourse analysis, literary and cultural studies, professional communication and sociolinguistics. The Department admits postgraduate students with research interests in fields relevant to the Department's areas of expertise. Our programmes focus on a wide range of interdisciplinary theories and perspectives drawn from relevant domains in the social and behavioural sciences, the humanities and related professional fields.

Research areas in the Department include:

  1. Applied Linguistics and Language Education: English for specific/academic purposes, English-medium instruction, identity, intercultural communication, language policy and planning, pedagogical grammar, second language acquisition, second language writing, and self-access learning.
  2. Discourse Analysis: conversation analysis, corpus-assisted discourse analysis, critical discourse analysis, genre analysis, mediated discourse analysis, multimodal discourse analysis, pragmatics, semiotics, and text analysis.
  3. Language, Technology, and Media: computer-assisted language learning, digital literacies, language and mobile communication, and online discourse.
  4. Literary and Cultural Studies: aesthetics, Asian diaspora literature, Asian writing in English, children's literature, colonial and postcolonial literature, contemporary literature, creativity, creative writing, fashion studies, narrative studies, popular culture, and Victorian literature.
  5. Professional Communication: business communication, English for specific purposes, health and risk communication, language and law, persuasive communication, and rhetoric of science.

The Department admits postgraduate students with interests in any of the five research areas identified above. The PhD programme focuses on a wide range of interdisciplinary theories and perspectives drawn from relevant domains in the social and behavioural sciences, the humanities and related professional fields. Many of our graduates have gone on to hold important positions at various tertiary institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China and overseas. Others hold key positions in various private and governmental organisations, such as the Education Bureau of the HKSAR Government.

Implementation of 4-year PhD programme

To enhance the quality of our PhD programme, and to improve the quality of our PhD students’ research work, the study period of our full-time PhD programme will be set at 4 years from the 2019/2020 intake.

How to fund a PhD

There are two main ways in which you can fund a PhD programme at City University of Hong Kong:

  1. scholarship
  2. self-financed

There are two types of scholarship - The Hong Kong Fellowship scheme (see https://cerg1.ugc.edu.hk/hkpfs/index.html); and the internal CityU scholarship scheme. Both these are competitive schemes and candidates need to adhere to the time line for applying.

For self-financing students all costs related to the PhD programme have to be met by the student, or from an externally funded scholarship source.

For full details about fees and funding of our programme please refer to the Graduate Student Handbook from the School of Graduate Studies Office at https://www.cityu.edu.hk/sgs/files/prospective/rpg/handbook.pdf