Notes to PhD Applicants about How to Construct the Research
Proposal which will accompany your Application
Once enrolled onto our PhD programme, you will study with us for three years in
what will almost certainly be a highly positive life-changing experience. You will
come to us as a novice in the research process but will leave with a qualification
which shows you to be suitable for any research-related job, whether in academia or
beyond. We will offer you all the generic research training that you require in the
first year of your programme, and then in years two and three you will complete your
doctoral thesis under the guidance of your supervisory team (which will consist of at
least two full-time members of academic staff). At all times your progress will be
monitored so that we can ensure that you are receiving the best possible guidance: the
relationship between student and supervisors is fundamental to the successful
completion of a PhD.
This raises the crucial questions of how you come to have your supervisors allocated
during the application process and what role the research proposal plays in the
allocation procedure. This document is designed to provide you with answers to such
questions.
The Department prides itself on attracting high quality PhD students from around the
world who come to Warwick to study in one of the Department’s core areas of
expertise. Research is central to the way in which the Department defines itself
within the wider academic community; for this reason, we take our PhD programme
extremely seriously. Each member of academic staff is available for PhD supervision,
and you will be able to find out more about their research specialism from the
Departmental website (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/staff). In general, the
research of academic staff is organised within three principal clusters: International
Political Economy (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/ipe/),
International Politics and Security Studies
(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/ipss/) and Public Policy and
C o m p a r a t i v e
P o l i t i c a l
S y s t e m s
(http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/ppcps/). Our political theorists fall
within this final cluster. A list of areas in which individual members of academic
staff feel particularly able to offer expert supervision can be found on
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/staff/
If you are interested in submitting an application for our PhD programme, it is first
sensible to check to see whether there is anyone in the Department who shares your
field of interest and who could consequently act as your primary supervisor. If we do
not feel that we are able to offer you sufficient specialist supervision on your chosen
PhD thesis then we will be forced to turn down your application, irrespective of your
personal strengths as a candidate. If you do find a good match between your own
research interests and those of an individual member of academic staff, you should
contact the staff member concerned and make your interest known in studying for a
PhD on a particular topic under their supervision. That way, it is possible that you
will be able to solicit help from them in putting together your research proposal.
The application forms for entry onto the PhD programme can be found online
(https://postgrad.warwick.ac.uk/SWIFT/pgapp/login.asp), and they require you to
submit a fully specified research proposal in support of your application. It is
possible that you will be familiar with requirements for entry criteria for PhD
programmes elsewhere in the world, whereby all that is required is for you to gain
acceptance onto the programme on the basis of past grades and then the Department
or your supervisor will be responsible for allocating a topic to you. Unfortunately,
things are rather more difficult if you are to be accepted onto the PhD programme at
Warwick. In line with the entry requirements for all institutions in the UK, you
already need to have decided on your research topic and to have worked up in full a
convincing research proposal before you will be allowed entry onto our programme.
If you do not think that you are yet in a position to specify your research proposal
then we are probably not the right PhD programme for you. At the very least, you
should wait until you are able to present a serious proposal before making your
application to us.
Competition for places on our PhD programme is really rather exacting, as is
befitting a programme with a reputation which is as good as ours. Each year we reject
many more applications than we are able to offer places on our programme: for
academic year 2007/2008, only one-in-ten of our applicants finally enrolled
onto our programme. There are, in the main, two primary reasons for applications
to be rejected if the student meets the standards demanded of prior academic
performance. The first is that they have not checked closely enough to see whether
we will be able to offer them suitable specialist supervisory support, and they have
consequently gone ahead and applied to study for a PhD which we are just not able to
supervise. The second is that they have produced an inadequately specified research
proposal which does not go far enough in convincing potential supervisors that the
applicant has it within them to write a successful PhD. Potential supervisors can only
be asked to volunteer their time to supervision duties; there is nothing that the
Department can do to mandate such participation. In order to get them to say ‘yes’ you
really do have to submit an excellent proposal. It is worth reiterating once again that
the standards are high and that it is the applicant’s responsibility to ensure that those
standards are met in the application and in its accompanying research proposal.
In general, what we will need from you if we are to make a proper judgement on your
application is a detailed research proposal which will contain the following five core
pieces of information. Please feel free to use the following numbered points as the
title for subheadings in your proposal if that proves to be convenient for you. In
general, you should be aiming to write somewhere in the region of 3,000 – 4,000
words in total for your proposal. It does not mean that you cannot be accepted onto
our programme if you write fewer words than this, provided that your proposal is
sufficiently rigorous and of sufficient quality. It also does not mean that as long as
you write the requisite number of words you will automatically gain entry onto our
programme: those words still have to convey a convincing impression of the PhD you
have in mind. The questions we expect you to cover are these:
(i)
You must be able to show what your central research question is. This
should be simply stated in the first instance and then suitably fleshed out to
show why it is timely and important – both intellectually and politically –
for you to be writing a PhD on this topic. The central research question is
your first chance to make the case for being accepted onto our programme
by capturing the attention of potential supervisors.
(ii)
You must also be able to show how your central research question relates
to existing academic studies in your field of interest. This requires a short
review of relevant literature which will enable you to situate your
proposed research within the framework of the dominant perspectives on
similar issues to be found in existing work. Ideally, you should be able to
demonstrate how your proposed research covers a hole in the literature and
therefore adds substantively to academic debates. One key criterion for
writing a successful PhD is that it is original work, so you must try to
avoid setting up your analysis in a way which simply replicates work
which can already be found within the literature. Potential supervisors will
be looking to see whether you have it within you to make a lasting
contribution to academic debates, and your detailed research proposal is
the only way to demonstrate this to them at the application stage.
(iii)
The research proposal should review the literature with particular
significance being placed on the theoretical debates to be engaged in the
prospective PhD. The Department has a reputation for prioritising
doctoral work which is theoretically oriented and, as we are proud of this
reputation because it marks us out from many of our competitors, it is
something that we want to preserve. As a consequence, you are much
more likely to be successful in your application if you are authoritative in
your treatment of theoretical debates. You need to be able to say which
body of theory will underpin the explanatory framework to be used in your
PhD, why that particular theory was chosen rather than any other and what
advantages it gives you for being able to operationalise your central
research question.
(iv)
You must be able to talk convincingly about the type of data you will need
to collect in order to ground your research empirically. The only
exception in this respect is for prospective PhDs written on matters of
abstract political theory. For every other topic which it is usual for
members of the Department’s academic staff to supervise it is important to
be able to draw attention to the links between your chosen body of theory
and the substantive case study (or studies) you will be using. This will
involve naming your case studies and demonstrating why they are
appropriate to your central research question. It will also involve outlining
the methodologies you will adopt, as well as commenting on the relevance
of those methodologies to meeting your central research aims through
focusing on their generic strengths.
(v)
It would also help if you are able to reflect on the types of problems you
are likely to encounter whilst undertaking your research and how these
might be overcome. This will demonstrate to potential supervisors that
you are forward-thinking in your approach to your prospective doctoral
studies and that you are already attentive to the fact that writing a PhD
often requires you to activate a secondary plan at some stage of your
studies.
If you are able to integrate all five of these themes into your research proposal then it
will certainly begin to take the format which we will be looking for. You will have
placed yourself in the best possible position for securing the all-important willingness
from members of academic staff to act as your supervisors. Without that willingness
it unfortunately remains impossible to accept you onto our programme, whatever the
other strengths of your application.
The Department has added links to its website to further guidance on how to construct
a high quality research proposal to accompany a PhD application. Those links are to
the websites of the ESRC and can be found at:
http://www.esrc.ac.uk/ESRCInfoCentre/opportunities/postgraduate/fundingopportunit
ies/. Further queries about applications should be directed to the Department’s
postgraduate team on paispg@warwick.ac.uk and, from there, all suitable enquiries
will be passed on to Dr Dominic Kelly, the Director of Research Degrees in charge of
Admissions.