Founded in 2007, the Centre aims to promote interdisciplinary collaboration in linguistic research and teaching. Membership includes not just linguists within SECL but also researchers in classics, philosophy, computing, psychology and anthropology, reflecting the many and varied routes by which individuals come to a love of language and the various disciplines and sub-disciplines of linguistics. Kent provides academic progression in linguistics from undergraduate to graduate levels (taught and research MA, MPhil and PhD) with CLLS offering supervision and support in areas such as syntax, semantics and pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and stylistics. We run lectures, symposiums and workshops with experts from Kent and far beyond and have recently held the third of a series of biennial international conferences devoted to Interfaces in Language, with published proceedings.

Many of the most significant European writers and literary movements of the modern period have traversed national, linguistic, and disciplinary borders. Co-directed by members of Comparative Literature, French, and German, the Centre for Modern European Literature aims to promote collaborative interdisciplinary research that can do justice to these kinds of border crossing.

Ranging across English, French, German, Italian and Spanish literature, the Centre focuses in particular on the European avant-garde, European modernism and postmodernism, literary theory, the international reception of European writers, and the relations between modern European literature and the other arts, including painting, photography, film, music and architecture. The Centre's activities include a lecture and seminar series and the regular organisation of conferences. It also works with the editors of the postgraduate journal Skepsi, and runs the MA in Modern European Literature.