The Institute's activities attract those interested in the English language and its literatures (including other national, and international literatures in English), in the History of the Book, and in cognate fields of study.   It co-ordinates a substantial amount of interdisciplinary and inter-Institute activity within the School of Advanced Study .

In addition to Visiting Research Fellows' Seminars and Special Guest Seminars, the Institute's Research Seminars focus on a wide range of issues e.g. Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination (EMPHASIS), Enlightenment and Romanticism, Digital Text and Scholarship, Inter-University Post-Colonial Studies, Irish Studies, Literature and Classical Translation 1850-1950, the London Old and Middle English Research (LOMERS), Medieval Manuscripts, Modernism, Nineteenth Century Studies, and Shakespeare.  It also runs a seminar on Methods and Resources, aimed to help and inform postgraduate study techniques.

The national and international role of the Institute extends to an ambitious programme of conferences and symposia. These include the conferences held alternately at the Institute and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin. International conferences on a wide variety of topics are also organized collaboratively with other Institutes of the School, and with a growing number of academic institutions and specialist societies within the U.K.

From conferences and seminars the Institute has developed an active publishing programme, with commercial publishers, e.g., Palgrave Macmillan with which the Institute has published such volumes as:

Modernist Writers & the Market-Place, ed. I.R. Willison, Warwick Gould and Warren Chernaik [1996]
Writing the Lives of Writers, ed. Warwick Gould and Thomas F. Staley (1998)
The Holocaust and the Text: Speaking the Unspeakable; eds. Andrew Leak and George Paizis (1999)
Marvell and Liberty, ed. Warren Chernaik and Martin Dzelzainis (1999)
Female Communities 1600-1800, ed. Rebecca D'Monte and Nicole Pohl (2000)
The Art of Detective Fiction, ed. Warren Chernaik, Martin Swales and Robert Vilain (2000)
Political and Social Issues in British Women's Fiction 1928-1968, by Elizabeth Maslen (2001)
Print in Transition 1850-1910: Studies in Media and Book History, by Laurel Brake (2001); Macmillan: a Publishing Tradition, ed. Elizabeth James (2002), Plagiarism in Early Modern Europe, ed. Paulina Kewes (2002)
The Culture of Collected Editions, ed. Andrew Nash ed (November 2003)
Discourses of Slavery and Abolition: Britain and its Colonies, 1760-1838, ed. Brycchan Carey, Markman Ellis and Sara Salih (May 2004)
Mythologies, by W. B. Yeats, ed. Warwick Gould and Deirdre Toomey (July 2005)
George Gissing and the City: Cultural Crisis and the Making of Books in Late Victorian England , ed. John Spiers (2005).

In 1995 the Institute launched its interdisciplinary MA in the History of the Book, and in 1999 launched a second MA in National and International Literatures in English (NILE). It also registers research students under the supervision of Miss PR Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Palaeography, and the Director. The Institute organizes postgraduate training in Research Methods and Techniques using teachers from the six participating English Departments in the Colleges, the University of London Library and the British Library.

Block Membership is available on application.  Academic bodies both within and outside the University of London have subscriptions in this way on behalf of their staff and postgraduate students with particular interests in the field of English studies.  They include Kingston, Middlesex, and Roehampton Universities, the LTSN Subject Centre in English, the six Departments and Schools in the Colleges of the University of London, and the Faculty of continuing Education at Birkbeck College.

Individual Membership is also available upon application.   All members are entitled to attend research seminars without charge, attend conferences at the concessionary rate and to use the School of Advanced Study Common Room in Senate House.  At present the Institute has a further 600 members, including 122 overseas members. A significant proportion of those attending the Institute's seminars and conferences are scholars based outside London and outside Britain.

The Institute has developed close links (for both scholars and postgraduates) with the great metropolitan and national research collections. The British Library, the University of Reading, the National Art Library at the Victoria & Albert Museum, the British Museum, the Public Record Office, and Lambeth Palace Library are involved in the Institute's conference programme and in teaching for the MA in the History of the Book. Individual and collaborative research projects are thus facilitated for the Institute's members.

Through close links with the British Council, and a growing network of contacts in foreign universities, the Institute has developed its (non-stipendiary) Visiting Research Fellowship Scheme, by which scholars are invited to spend periods of time in London affiliated to the Institute, contributing seminars on their current research, and participating in the life of the Institute. Eight are currently in post.  There are also thirteen Senior Research Fellows.