Early Modern Notes

I sometimes get emails from prospective history PhD students seeking advice. This seemed a good time of year to gather together and set out some of my usual responses in a post.

NB: What follows is geared specifically to the university system that I’m familiar with in Britain. Only some of it will also be relevant to the very different PhD programs of the USA (and other countries); feel free to add further thoughts based on your own experiences there and elsewhere, or useful links.

You should take your time and do plenty of homework. If you’re contemplating doing a PhD (or, indeed, a Masters) next autumn, you do need to be thinking about it now, especially if you’ll be applying for funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) or the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) (and you probably should, even if you don’t think you’ll be successful!), which have strict application deadlines in the spring and complicated application procedures.

What is a British PhD?

The British PhD, essentially, is the PhD thesis (in American terms, you are ABD - ‘all but dissertation’ - from the word go). It is usually defined as a substantial piece of independent research, which should make an original contribution to an academic area or discipline. The PhD thesis is 80-100,000 words in length; the notional period of registration (standard period for funding) is 3 years full-time, and it usually must be completed in 4 years (the funding bodies set this deadline, and they get stroppy with departments that don’t achieve it with the majority of students…); for part-time students, it’s usually 5-7 years. (An MPhil is shorter, with less emphasis on ‘originality’, and many departments initially enrol students for this, ‘upgrading’ them after the first year if progress is satisfactory.) You will probably need at least an upper second class undergraduate degree in history or a related subject and/or a relevant Masters degree to be considered for a place.

Why do a PhD?

Perhaps the very first question you should be asking is if you really should do a PhD. It’s hard work, expensive if you don’t get funding, will eat several years of your life and probably drive you half-crazy in the process. Don’t go into a PhD simply because you can’t make up your mind what job you want or are having difficulty finding one, or because you aren’t keen on working 9 to 5 in an office or wearing suits (all that will seem even less appealing after three years as a research student). If you’re burning with desire to work on a particular topic then you might do it purely for its own sake, but you still need to think about the costs. If what you want is to be an academic historian, then it’s an essential qualification (though not a guarantee of employment; far from it). But otherwise? There are probably better ways to get a well-paid job than doing a history (or humanities generally) PhD. Yes, completing a history PhD will equip you with many skills beyond knowledge of the subject itself, which have value in the workplace beyond academia; the question is how much it really adds that you wouldn’t get simply from doing a Masters degree. Think it through very carefully.

A British PhD is an intensely personal, individualised experience. The only taught element will be research training in the early stages; that may involve a few exams or assessments, but the essential core of the PhD is independent research for the thesis itself. You will (nearly always) choose your own topic (unlike the sciences) and be responsible - with guidance from your supervisor - for designing and structuring the research. Some key issues follow from this.

Where to do your PhD?

The first is: it is not the overall prestige of a university or even a department that counts when deciding where to study. The first and foremost question you have to ask is: is this the right place for the research I want to do? If you can’t simply pack up and go where you please, because of, say, family commitments, don’t assume that you’re stuck with the nearest university whether you like it or not. Look into distance learning options (including the Open University). Think about whether you could commute once a month or so for meetings while using locally based library resources and inter-library loans. Unlike taught courses, it’s not necessary to be close at hand all the time, although you will miss out on some social aspects (and, perhaps, teaching opportunities). Some universities have quite strict rules about postgrads residing within a certain distance of the university; others seem to be more flexible.

You have to start, essentially, by looking for a department with at least one lecturer who will be a suitable supervisor (sometimes you will have more than one, especially if your research is interdisciplinary): someone who has the expertise to guide your research and, equally, someone you can feel comfortable with for three years plus. You’ll be spending a fair bit of time in intensive one-to-one discussions with them; you want someone who will both guide and challenge you, take your ideas seriously, treat you like an adult. There needs to be respect both ways. The precise nature of the ‘ideal’ relationship will depend on your own needs: how independent and mature you are; how much external stimuli you need to meet deadlines; how confident you are when it comes to developing your ideas (but remember, it’s not your supervisor’s job to massage frail egos or nag you into getting work done).

On the academic side, finding someone suitable is relatively easy. In Britain, you can check out the Institute of Historical Research’s list of academic historians, and visit departmental websites; where more specialised MA courses related to your interests are offered (this database is very good), that implies there are staff with the expertise to supervise PhDs. But you should already have an idea from your previous study and reading of historians whose work you respect and enjoy reading. Look them up. They aren’t gods just because they’ve been published. And they do not necessarily have to be specialists in precisely the narrow area in which you want to research (particularly if you’re doing something new); a supervisor who knows too much can actually, I think, inhibit the development of your own ideas. You don’t really want to end up doing their research for them, or feeling that you can’t approach their work critically where it relates to your own.

The personal side is harder. I was fortunate; I knew my supervisor well as an undergrad, I knew he was conscientious, highly knowledgeable and moreover that we were on the same wavelength. (I also knew several of his recent PhD students.) Not everyone can be in that situation. But this is something to emphasise: don’t walk into your PhD without having made personal contact. Don’t just fill in the forms, accept a place and turn up hoping that you’ll like it and they’ll assign you a good supervisor. Doing a PhD will require a lot personal initiative: get in some practice right at the beginning (OK, you can’t just demand a particular supervisor, but you can do a lot to make sure that the person you want chooses you…). If you can, go and meet potential supervisor(s) in person and also take the opportunity to look round the university’s facilities and environment too; if not, pick up the phone and write emails.

Get the insiders’ view

And not just to the staff. Perhaps the best way to find out about a supervisor – and a department and university generally – is from existing students. You could ask them questions like: How often do you get to meet your supervisor, and is it easy to get an appointment? Do you feel comfortable turning to the supervisor about problems like writers’ block or (say) family or work pressures that hold up your work? How long does it take to get work returned? Do you get constructive feedback? Are you encouraged to keep writing (conversely, do you feel under too much pressure to perform, too many deadlines)? Does this supervisor seem to care about their supervisees? And broader questions: What’s the library like? The computing facilities? The research training? Do you feel happy and at home in the department, or do you get treated like cash cows, ignored or condescended to? I don’t think that many prospective research students do things like this – but they really should if they’re planning to go to an unfamiliar institution.

How do you get in contact with students? If you can visit in person, then find out where the postgrad facilities are and go and talk to them. Otherwise, you may need to do a bit of work. Institutions don’t always provide the kind of information that helps to locate research students – unless they’re also on the teaching staff. But there is another way with history students in Britain. You can track them down through the IHR’s list of theses in progress (although it tends to be a bit out of date at this time of year); once you have names, you should be able to get email addresses – or write a letter c/o the department if the university doesn’t have an open-access email directory. The list of theses in progress (and the lists of theses recently completed at the same URL) is an important resource for prospective PhD students in another way: you can find out about the latest doctoral research in your topic area, potentially avoid replicating too closely someone else’s research (remember that ‘originality’ element of the thesis!) and, moreover, find people doing related work who you might want to strike up contacts and share ideas with.

That might be particularly helpful if you’re looking at studying in a department with few research students. Small departments and/or small PhD cohorts have advantages. Firstly, you’re more likely to get more personalised attention and not get lost in a crowd; individually, you (and the fees you pay, to be practical here) are more important to that department; your relationships with staff are likely to be closer and less formal. The thing is that they may well need to be, since there won’t be a large postgraduate community to fall back on for support, sharing of academic ideas and socialising. It’s something else to think about.

NB: check out the research training and facilities

Look at what’s offered in terms of research training - especially if you plan to go straight into a PhD from undergraduate study. Largely because of the demands of the funding bodies, some kind of RT programme is now pretty much ubiquitous. Some, I suspect, are better than others. Ask whether there is training geared to your particular needs as a historian (individually tailored training seems now to be the emphasis of the AHRB, while the ESRC has tended to more uniform approaches), or whether it’s a more general programme taking in students from across the university. Again, get actual students’ opinions (you really don’t want to know what we think of parts of the training in place at Aberystwyth over recent years…). It’s not the most crucial issue - though, frankly, don’t even look at a place that doesn’t offer some kind of RT - but, like library and computing facilities etc, it’s something that might tip the balance in a final choice.

Oh, and it’s worth checking out accommodation costs in the area (both university-owned and the local rental market), since these vary hugely around the country.

I hope to follow up this post with something on how to play the funding game (which is another reason to start communicating with potential supervisors and others who can give you advice that will help you in writing grant proposals). A final reiteration for now, however: don’t rush into anything. For autumn 2005, think in terms of spending from now until Christmas preparing to make your applications. Look around at different places, consider the possibilities open to you. Think hard too about what you do want to do a thesis on, what sources you would use and what facilities it would require. These are things that will need to go into a grant proposal.