Research Methods in Literature and Literary Culture

As a postgraduate student at the University of Edinburgh, ambitious to make an original contribution to knowledge, you have practical concerns. For before you can begin to frame your questions, you want to know where to locate relevant research materials, how to evaluate them, and how to use them effectively.

This site has been designed as a companion to the Research Methods & Scholarly Skills courses offered by the Graduate School of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures. We hope that it will assist as you progress through your MSc and PhD programmes. It will be updated throughout the year, subject to your feedback and to the availability of new materials.

Be sure to register with Shibboleth and EASE so you can access the restricted e-materials link from these pages from off campus. Postgraduates are urged to consult the College's Codes of Practice for Taught and for Research Postgraduates.

Many of the links on this page refer to articles posted on related university sites. Each of these has been evaluated for suitability and accuracy, but should any prove unreliable, please contact the site administrator.

Your comments, both on the site and on the materials covered in the courses, are welcome.

The theory and practice of research methods are subjects of renewed interest. There are numerous reasons for this.

They are partly economic: as job markets seek graduates with particular scholarly skills, universities and their funding bodies (notably the AHRC) are responding by standardizing and streamlining the way students develop those skills. The reasons are partly curricular: as British graduate programmes integrate seminars into their “research degree” requirements, there is greater opportunity for collaboration among students, availing scholarly methods themselves to critical discussion— click here and here for ongoing instances. Experienced researchers agree that solid scholarly practice is best learned by doing it, and yet doing it itself requires consideration—especially now. abcde

The rapid expansion of e-resources, with the subsequent availability of once-rare print and archival materials, brings new needs for guidance on how these can best be used. Until recently, libraries and archives were the only places in which literary scholars and historians could conduct substantial and original research; now libraries merely hold certain kinds of research materials, the balance and increasing bulk of which are available for consultation on our computer monitors. When should consultation with e-materials substitute for examining originals? Card catalogues and printed directories still exist: to what extent can they still be useful? 1 2 3

How might we locate research materials effectively? How should we assess the quality of print and electronic materials? How can we determine the research approaches anticipated by those (or indeed any) resources? And how should that determination shape our research questions?

These are the concerns these courses, and this site, seek to address.

Graduate School of Literatures, Languages, & Cultures