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Trending Topics and Research Areas for PhD in English Literature: A Contemporary Guide

English Literature
Topics for PhD Research Trending Contemporary Thesis Guide English Literature

The landscape of research in English literature has changed significantly in the last two or three decades. What counted as a cutting-edge topic in the 1990s or early 2000s now often functions as basic groundwork. New technologies, climate crisis, public health emergencies, and changing university policies have reshaped what English departments expect from a PhD. At the same time, central strengths of literary study, such as close reading, historical understanding, and theoretical reflection, have not disappeared. They now appear within broader frameworks such as digital humanities, environmental humanities, medical humanities, public humanities, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

For Indian students of English literature, these changes are intensified by particular local conditions. The National Education Policy emphasises Indian knowledge systems, regional literatures, and interdisciplinarity. Translation from Indian languages into English is expanding. Dalit, tribal, North Eastern and other marginalised literatures are receiving more critical attention. More universities are offering courses that combine literature with film, media studies, and culture, and with digital tools. All of this means that PhD students in English literature in India stand at a moment of considerable opportunity, provided they can recognise the main directions in which the field is moving.

This article offers a detailed overview of some of the most prominent and promising areas of research in English literature at present, with particular reference to Indian contexts. It is written for students who want both a conceptual understanding of the field and concrete ideas for doctoral topics. Wherever lists appear, they are restricted to possible issues, trends, or research ideas. The overall aim is to help you see how literary research can be both academically rigorous and socially relevant in the present moment.

Understanding what “trending topics” in literature really means

When students ask about trending topics in English literature, they often expect a short, fashionable list. In reality, trends in academic research emerge slowly through a combination of institutional changes, new archives, technological developments and global events. Departments of English worldwide now advertise their research strengths on their websites. Journals announce special issues on emergent areas. Funding bodies support specific themes, such as climate change or digital transformation. When you step back and connect these signs, clear patterns become visible.

Today, terms such as digital humanities, environmental humanities, medical humanities, world literature, postcolonial and decolonial studies, gender and queer studies, disability studies, translation studies, and public humanities appear repeatedly in such spaces. In the Indian context, one also sees constant reference to Indian knowledge systems, comparative literature, regional languages, Dalit and tribal writings, diaspora studies, and questions of caste, language, and identity.

It is important to note that these are not disconnected buzzwords. They reflect a more profound reorientation. Literature is increasingly studied within larger ecosystems of media, technology, law, policy, and everyday life. A PhD topic that leverages these connections is more likely to be both intellectually original and socially meaningful.

Postcolonial, decolonial and world literature in a new phase

Postcolonial literary studies have been a key area in English departments for several decades. However, the field is undergoing a second phase. Earlier work often focused on the relation between metropolitan centres and colonised margins, on national allegories, and on the critique of British or European imperialism. While these concerns remain, recent research is moving in new directions.

Firstly, there is significant interest in decolonial thought and planetary perspectives. Scholars are connecting histories of colonialism with current ecological crises, corporate extraction, and new forms of dispossession. Rather than treating the empire as a closed past, they read it as part of ongoing structures that shape vulnerable communities and environments. This offers Indian students many possibilities, since questions of land, forest rights, rivers, mining, displacement, and environmental injustice are central to contemporary public debates.

Secondly, the term “world literature” has gained importance. English departments now pay attention not only to British or American texts, but also to a wide range of global Anglophone writing. Further, there is rising awareness that translation, publishing networks, festivals, prizes, and international markets shape world literature. Indian novels in English, texts translated from Indian languages, and works by the diaspora circulate in this space and can be studied in relation to questions of visibility, gatekeeping, and canon formation.

Thirdly, there is a clear move to seriously recenter South Asian and Indian archives. Dalit autobiographies and poetry, tribal narratives, North East Indian writing, Partition literature, Emergency memoirs, post-liberalisation novels, regional literatures in translation, and experimental Indian English texts provide an extraordinarily rich corpus. For a PhD student, the challenge is not the absence of material, but the selection of a manageable corpus and a precise angle.

Possible topic clusters in this broad area could include:

These topics demonstrate how postcolonial work can be refreshed by engaging with environment, translation, global circulation, and marginalised voices rather than simply repeating older theoretical debates.

Translation studies, multilingualism and comparative literature

For Indian research students, translation studies and comparative literature are particularly fertile grounds. India’s multilingual environment offers possibilities that many European or American contexts do not possess. Every Indian language has a rich literary tradition, and a growing number of works are being translated into English and across Indian languages.

Translation studies are no longer limited to technical questions of equivalence. It engages with the ethics and politics of who gets translated, into which languages, for which audiences, through which institutions, and with what consequences. It considers whether translation domesticates or foreignises a text, how it deals with caste, dialect, orality, ritual terms, and untranslatable concepts, and how translators position themselves as co-creators.

Comparative literature in English departments is also changing. It no longer restricts itself to comparisons between European literatures. Instead, it places Indian vernacular literatures, oral traditions, films, and digital texts into conversation with global works. When aligned with the current emphasis on Indian knowledge systems, this approach allows students to explore classical texts, Bhakti and Sufi traditions, regional modernisms, and contemporary experimental writing within a single framework.

For Indian students of English literature, promising research ideas could include:

Such projects combine textual analysis with awareness of institutional and economic factors, and they fit neatly within the NEP’s encouragement of multilingualism and Indian knowledge traditions.

Digital humanities and computational literary studies

Digital humanities has become one of the most discussed areas in contemporary literary research. For many students, the term sounds intimidating, as if it requires high-level coding expertise. In reality, digital humanities covers a spectrum of practices. At one end, there are highly technical projects involving large-scale text mining, machine learning, and network analysis. At the other end, there are more accessible projects that build digital archives, interactive maps, or online exhibits based on traditional humanities methods.

In literary studies, digital humanities can involve creating digitised collections of manuscripts, letters, out-of-print works, or periodicals. It may mean modelling a corpus of novels to see how themes change across decades. It can involve mapping the journeys undertaken by characters or authors. It can also take the form of public-facing websites that bring a community’s stories into wider circulation.

For Indian contexts, some auspicious directions are digital archives of early Indian English writing, digitisation of rare journals and little magazines, corpus-based studies of Indian English poetry or fiction, computational studies of gender, caste, or regional markers in texts, and digital storytelling platforms that preserve oral histories.

Illustrative research ideas in this field might include:

Students attracted to such work must be prepared to learn new technical skills or to collaborate with colleagues in computer science or information science. However, the intellectual reward is considerable, since such projects place literary study at the centre of larger conversations about data, archives, and public engagement.

Environmental humanities, climate fiction and eco criticism

The environmental humanities have emerged as a major interdisciplinary field because the climate crisis demands more than technical solutions. It requires ethical, cultural and imaginative shifts. Literature plays a crucial role in this space because stories, poems, plays and films can render abstract issues such as warming, extinction, pollution, and displacement into emotionally powerful forms.

Eco-criticism examines how nature, the environment, animals, landscapes, and ecological processes appear in literary texts. It explores anthropocentrism, environmental justice, indigenous knowledge, and the concept of the Anthropocene. Climate fiction focuses specifically on works that imagine climate change and its effects on human and non-human life, often through speculative, dystopian or utopian scenarios.

In the Indian context, environmental humanities can engage with river narratives, tribal relationships to land, forest rights, urban pollution, agrarian crises, Himalayan ecologies, and coastal vulnerability. Indian English novels, regional literatures in translation, and oral traditions all provide rich material. Students can also connect literary texts with environmental policy debates, activist movements, and scientific reports.

Potential research topics in this area could include:

Work in this area allows students to unite literary sensitivity with urgent ethical and political questions, and to show how narrative imagination contributes to climate consciousness.

Medical humanities, health narratives and pandemic literature

The medical humanities examine intersections between literature, medicine, public health, ethics, and the lived experience of illness. In recent years, particularly after the COVID pandemic, this field has expanded rapidly. Literary and cultural scholars analyse how illness, disability, care, ageing, and medical institutions are represented in texts and media. They ask how such representations shape public perceptions of health and influence debates about policy, access, and justice.

Illness narratives include autobiographies, diaries, poems, graphic novels, films, and digital testimonies that depict the experience of disease or disability. They may be written by patients, family members, or health workers. Literature that describes hospitals, clinics, pharmaceutical companies, vaccination campaigns, or psychiatric institutions can also be read through the lens of biopolitics and medical power.

For Indian research students, possibilities include studying tuberculosis, leprosy, HIV, mental health, cancer, and COVID in Indian writing, in both English and translation. Questions of stigma, gender, caste, rural-urban healthcare disparities, informal caregiving, and medical corruption can all be explored through literature.

Some possible doctoral topics in this domain are:

Such projects are inherently interdisciplinary, connecting English literature with medicine, sociology, psychology, and public policy, while remaining grounded in close reading and narrative analysis.

Gender, sexuality, queer studies and disability narratives

Gender and sexuality have long been central to literary criticism. What has changed in recent decades is the depth and range of approaches. Feminist literary studies now incorporate issues of intersectionality, care work, ageing, and embodiment. Queer theory explores non-normative desires, identities, and kinship forms. Trans studies and intersex studies raise new questions about body, language, and representation. Disability studies challenge normative assumptions about ability and productivity, and examine how texts depict disabled bodies and minds.

In India, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, debates around trans rights, and growing public discussion of gender based violence have given new urgency to such work. Literature, film, theatre, digital storytelling, and autobiographical narratives are vital sites where gender and sexuality are negotiated, contested, and reimagined.

At the same time, disability narratives are gaining recognition. Texts that depict physical disability, sensory impairment, chronic illness, neurodivergence, and psychiatric conditions can be read for the ways they resist or reproduce stereotypes. Recent work also pays attention to how narrative form itself can respond to disability, for instance, through fragmented structures, altered temporalities, or shifts in point of view.

Some focused research themes in this broad area could be developed around topics such as:

Projects of this kind ask students to engage with theory, law, and activism, while maintaining a careful sensitivity to lived experience and ethical representation.

Popular culture, media convergence and genre fiction

The strict separation between “high” literature and popular culture has become challenging to maintain. English departments increasingly recognise that popular genres such as crime fiction, fantasy, romance, thriller, horror, and science fiction are essential sites where societies work through anxieties and desires. At the same time, stories travel across forms: from novel to film, from web series to graphic novels, from folklore to podcasts and games.

Media convergence means that a literary researcher today can legitimately study not only printed novels and poems, but also comics, graphic narratives, web series scripts, adaptations, fan fiction, and social media narratives. This suits Indian students very well because the country’s media environment is highly dynamic. Web series platforms have generated new forms of storytelling that often adapt literary material or echo popular genres. Graphic novels confront historical trauma, caste injustice, gender violence, and urban life. Crime fiction and noir reflect concerns about policing, corruption, and law.

Research in this area might take the form of:

Work in this area draws on narrative theory, film and media studies, cultural studies, and reader response, and it recognises that serious thinking about power, identity, and ethics happens across popular media, not only in canonical texts.

AI, platform capitalism and the future of reading and writing

Artificial intelligence and platform capitalism have begun to reshape literary culture in profound ways. Recommendation systems on online retailers, streaming platforms, and reading apps influence which books and authors gain visibility. Self-publishing platforms and digital writing tools change how writers produce and distribute their work. AI-assisted writing tools and chatbots raise questions about authorship, creativity, and originality.

Speculative fiction has long imagined artificial intelligence, robots and machine consciousness. Today, these narratives intersect with real-world applications of AI in surveillance, finance, healthcare, and governance. Literary and cultural studies can analyse how such narratives represent AI, what hopes and fears they project onto technology, and how they link AI to race, gender, class, and geopolitics.

In addition, there is growing interest in how readers speak about AI in their everyday lives, including on social media, blogs, and online forums. These public narratives can be studied discursively as emerging forms of technology folklore.

Possible PhD topics in this emerging area include:

Such work will often intersect with media studies, science and technology studies, sociology, and ethics, while retaining a literary core.

Pedagogy, curriculum, and public humanities in English studies

Another critical, but sometimes overlooked, direction for research concerns the teaching and public outreach of English literature. Questions of syllabus design, assessment methods, classroom technologies, and community engagement are increasingly recognised as legitimate areas for serious research. This is particularly relevant in India, where changes in policy, massification of higher education, and the digital divide all affect how literature is taught and who has access to literary learning.

Pedagogical research in English studies can take the form of textbook analysis, curriculum comparisons across universities, ethnographic studies of classrooms, examination of online teaching practices, or case studies of community-based reading initiatives. Public humanities work examines how literature circulates outside formal institutions, in book clubs, libraries, NGOs, community archives, and festivals.

Research ideas in this area might include:

This area can be significant for students who are passionate about teaching, curriculum design, and public engagement, and who want their research to have a visible social impact.

Cross-disciplinary research pathways for Indian literature students

Many of the areas mentioned above are inherently cross-disciplinary. However, it is helpful to outline a few specific areas of intersection that Indian students can explore in collaboration with other departments or fields.

One critical intersection is between literature and sociology or anthropology. Fiction and poetry about cities, villages, migrants, domestic workers, and marginalised communities can be read alongside ethnographic and sociological studies. A thesis might involve interviews or participant observation in book clubs, libraries, or reading groups, coupled with close readings of texts. For instance, one could examine how residents of informal settlements in a city interpret certain novels that depict urban poverty, thereby combining literary analysis with fieldwork.

A second intersection involves literature and law. Crime novels, courtroom dramas, narratives of communal violence, carceral narratives, and human rights testimonies all invite legal and ethical analysis. An Indian PhD could analyse riot narratives or custodial death narratives in fiction alongside legal reports, commissions of inquiry, and activist documentation, asking how literature represents justice, testimony and memory differently from official documents.

A third fruitful connection lies between literature and management or work studies. Novels and short stories about corporate offices, call centres, BPOs, start-ups, academia, and gig work reflect the changing nature of labour in post-liberalisation India. A doctoral project might compare management discourse about teamwork and leadership with literary representations of burnout, exploitation, and resistance.

Another set of intersections relates literature to psychology and cognitive science. Narrative empathy, trauma, memory, and moral decision-making have all been studied empirically in recent years. Indian students might design reader-response experiments or surveys to examine how different narrative techniques affect readers’ emotional engagement and judgments, while also conducting traditional close readings of selected texts. Trauma narratives from Partition, riots, or domestic violence contexts offer another rich field in which literary form and psychological theory can meet.

Equally important is the link between literature and climate science or environmental policy. While scientists model climate scenarios, literary scholars can analyse how stories shape public understanding of climate risk, resilience, and adaptation. A thesis might connect climate data for a particular region with novels and stories set there, exploring how literature makes climate impacts tangible and how it might influence public discourse.

The intersection of literature with the health sciences and public health has already been discussed in the context of medical humanities. Here, cross-disciplinary collaboration can be very concrete. Medical schools and public health institutes increasingly welcome literature-based teaching on empathy, communication, and ethics. A PhD student in English could collaborate with such institutions to develop and evaluate literature-based modules, while simultaneously analysing relevant texts.

Finally, literature and data science can meet fruitfully in studies of reading communities and reception. Online review platforms, book blogs, and social media posts generate large volumes of textual data about reader response. Using simple text analysis tools, an English literature researcher can map patterns in how Indian writers are perceived globally, which themes elicit positive or negative reactions, and how readers discuss identity, language, or politics in relation to books.

Choosing a topic that is both current and manageable

Knowing what areas are prominent is only the starting point. The real challenge lies in formulating a topic that is trending but not superficial, original but not unrealistically ambitious. Several practical considerations can help.

First, align your topic with accessible archives and languages. If you know, or can seriously commit to learning, one or more Indian languages besides English, your range of possibilities expands dramatically. If your access is primarily limited to English, you can still work on Indian English texts, translated works, and global literatures, but you must be clear about that limitation. Consider what libraries, digital databases, community organisations, or online platform data you can realistically access over three to five years.

Second, choose methods that match both your interests and your institutional context. If you are drawn towards digital humanities, enquire whether your university offers basic training or whether you can take open online courses. If you intend to conduct fieldwork or reader-response studies, ensure you have some mentoring in qualitative or quantitative research methods. Theoretical ambition must be balanced by methodological clarity.

Third, make the Indian context central rather than an afterthought. Many students choose a European theory or theme and then add an Indian chapter almost as an example. Instead, try to frame your research questions in a way that arises from Indian realities: caste, multilingualism, rural-urban divides, informal economies, digital inequalities, environmental vulnerabilities, or public health infrastructures. You can still use global theory, but the direction of enquiry should move outward from Indian material rather than inward from imported frameworks.

Fourth, think in terms of systems and ecosystems instead of isolated texts. A strong PhD thesis usually moves across at least three levels: close reading of texts, analysis of institutions such as publishers, platforms, universities, clinics, or NGOs, and study of broader discourses in media, law, policy, or activism. For instance, a topic on translation might examine specific translated texts, as well as publisher decisions, prize circuits, festival panels, and reader communities.

Finally, cultivate ethical and political awareness. Research on tribal, Dalit, queer, disabled, or otherwise marginalised communities requires sensitivity to questions of representation and consent. Be cautious about speaking for others. Where possible, prioritise collaborative, dialogic approaches and remain self-reflective about your own position in relation to your material.

Concluding reflections

The current moment in English literary studies is both challenging and exciting. On one hand, students must navigate a more complex academic environment that expects familiarity with theory, context, and sometimes even data or technology. On the other hand, they have access to a broader range of topics and methods than ever before. Digital tools enable new forms of reading. Environmental and medical humanities highlight the relevance of literature to pressing global problems. Postcolonial, decolonial, and world literature debates open space for Indian voices and archives to reshape global conversations. Gender, sexuality, and disability studies encourage more inclusive understandings of identity and embodiment. Popular culture studies and media convergence allow serious work on forms that many students already engage with in daily life.

For students of Indian English literature, this is a critical juncture. Policies that emphasise Indian knowledge systems, translation initiatives that bring regional literatures into English, anthologies and archives that collect tribal and Dalit writings, and curriculum debates around decolonisation all create a rich intellectual environment. Within this environment, a carefully conceived PhD project can speak to both local realities and international scholarly concerns.

When you think about your potential topic, you might keep three guiding questions in mind. First, which larger problem, tension, or transformation in the world does your project address? This might be climate change, digitalisation, AI, health, migration, language loss, inequality, or something else. Second, which specifically Indian or South Asian materials, communities, or histories will you foreground? Third, which methodological or cross-disciplinary angle will give your work distinctive depth, whether it is digital analysis, ethnography, legal reading, cognitive approaches, environmental data, or public humanities engagement?

If you can give convincing and concrete answers to these questions, and if your project remains manageable in scope, you will be well placed to undertake a PhD in English literature that is both contemporary and enduring, rooted in Indian realities and connected to global debates, intellectually demanding and socially meaningful.

Do let me know your thoughts, ideas, questions or anything else you wish in the comments section. I will try to get back to as many as I can. All the best with your research!

Thanks for reading!

..

Dr Alok Mishra

for English Literature Education

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