Study programmes

The doctoral programme in Slavic Philologies is, together with Slavic Literatures, one of two Ph.D. programmes taught jointly by three departments of Charles University’s Faculty of Arts: Department of Central European Studies, Department of East European Studies and Department of South Slavonic and Balkan Studies. One of the areas explored by the programme is the particular Slavic languages or philologies; the other – and more general orientation – is comparative Slavic linguistics from the synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The programme draws on a broad (methodological) basis formed by Slavic studies and general linguistics. Doctoral students are encouraged to either explore primarily one Slavic language, be it national (Belorussian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Macedonian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbian, Ukrainian etc.) or regional andminority languages (the Sorbian languages, Kashubian, Rusyn etc.) or they can choose to engage in Paleo Slavic studies or comparative and contrastive Slavic linguistics. The other research orientation is the study of the language situation in countries where a Slavic language is the state language or in countries with a Slavic ethnic component where a Slavic language is used as a communication means. The two major research interests are, therefore, the Slavic–Non-Slavic(especially Baltic) context and the Slavic–Slavic linguistic contact, encouraging research into the acquisition of Czech as a foreign language among speakers of other Slavic languages resident in the Czech Republic. Doctoral projects have a strong territorial, comparative or typological orientation while being always grounded in a broader cultural historical and socio political context. The comparative approach is the methodological basis of all doctoral projects, with the Czech context considered the most essential, methodologically as well as from the perspective of the material explored. Sociolinguistics provides a crucial source of inspiration for the programme, and is the primary research orientation of the teachers engaged in the Slavic Philologies programme. The programme is accredited in Czech, although all Slavic languages are present in instruction. 

No combinations have been found