Authoring a PhD

Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe
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At the most fundamental level any doctorate is a contract, of 
a rather peculiar kind. For a ‘big book’ thesis the specific nature
of the contract is that the author develops and communicates 
a question, and then proffers an answer to it. For a papers model
dissertation there will rarely be one big central question, but
instead a set of more loosely related and more specific or
detailed research issues. Then the examiners or dissertation com-
mittee determine if the research text produced actually answers
the questions posed. If there is a close fit between the question
and answer, either at the whole-thesis level or within each
‘paper’, then the dissertation passes successfully. But students
must not offer a mushy set of materials undirected to a clear
question. They must not promise what they cannot deliver, or
claim to achieve what they have not established. An equally
common problem is that the question asked in a dissertation
and the answer provided may not connect in any discernible
way. The author may be convinced that they are doing X, but
to the readers it seems as if they are doing Y, a significantly dif-
ferent enterprise. Or the question may be so broad that the
answer the student provides relates to it in only the haziest way.
Alternatively the question may be specific but the answer given
may be too vague or ill defined to relate closely to it. Finally 
if some of the answer does not fit with the question asked, or 
if part of the question is left unaddressed or unanswered, the
thesis may seem problematic. Hence the thesis contract is a
demanding and constraining one both for students and for
those assessing their work.
But equally the contract provides students with a great deal of
protection and additional certainty. The examiners or disserta-
tion committee are not allowed to invent their own questions,
nor to demand that the doctoral candidate address a different
question from the one she has chosen. The assessors 
have
to take
the candidate’s question as the basis for assessment, within cer-
tain minimal conditions. These tests essentially require that the
PhD author should establish a clear question, whether for the
whole thesis or for each of its component ‘papers’. She must
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show that the question is a serious one and a legitimate focus
for academic enquiry, which is to say that it must relate to the
existing literature and debates in some sustained way. But once
these conditions are established, the interrelationship of the
question and the answer has to be the touchstone for accepting
or failing the work undertaken.
You define the question: you deliver the answer. The unique
features of this situation are often hard to appreciate. Through-
out all our earlier careers in education someone else defines 
the question. At first degree and masters levels we can concen-
trate solely on delivering an answer that satisfies this external
agenda. So it can be quite hard to understand the implications
of instead defining and then answering your own question.
Beginning PhD students often believe that they must tackle
much bigger or hard-to-research questions than could possibly
be answered in a PhD, just because this is the way that ques-
tions are framed in the research literature that they read. But
professional researchers in universities will typically have many
more resources for tackling big issues (such as large budgets,
sophisticated research technologies at their disposal, large co-
operative research teams, or squads of people to assist them).
What is a good question for professional researchers to address
is not usually a good question for someone doing a PhD thesis
in lone-scholar, no-budget mode.
If attempting an unmanageable or overscaled question for a
doctorate is one danger to be wary of, then veering to the other
end of the spectrum carries opposite dangers. Here PhD stu-
dents choose topics of perverse dullness or minuteness, think-
ing not about a whole readership for their thesis but only about
the reactions of a few examiners or members of their disserta-
tion committee. A topic is chosen not to illuminate a worth-
while field of study but just to provide a high certainty route to
an academic meal ticket. Such defensively minded theses focus
on tiny chunks of the discipline. They may cover a very short
historical period, a single not very important author or source,
a small discrete mechanism or process, one narrow locality
explored in-depth, or a particular method taken just a little fur-
ther in some aspect. The titles for such research dissertations are
usually descriptive, without theoretical themes, and often cir-
cumscribed by deprecatory or restrictive labels (‘An exploratory
study of …’ or ‘Some topics in …’).
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A closely related syndrome is the gap-filling thesis, designed
solely to cover an uninhabited niche in the literature rather
than to advance a wider intellectual purpose. Such projects can
exactly replicate an existing established analysis in a new area,
or fill in a small lacuna in knowledge between a set of already
studied points. There are two problems with empty regions,
however. The first is that gaps often exist for a good reason; for
instance, because the topic has little intrinsic interest or is too
difficult to undertake. The second problem is that the most
obvious holes in the literature that are worth studying may eas-
ily attract other researchers. Hence someone else may publish
research or complete a PhD on the topic over the three or four
years that it will take you to produce a finished thesis. Potential
competition from other people’s doctorates or from well-
funded research projects is a serious risk for any gap-filling the-
sis. A study whose chief rationale is that it is the first treatment
of something may be substantially devalued by becoming the
second or third such analysis.
There are longer-term problems with picking a defensive or an
overcautious topic just to get finished. Once your PhD is com-
pleted its title will have to be cited on your résumé or curriculum
vitae for many years to come. Your doctoral subject will only
cease to matter professionally when you have built up quite a
body of later work to succeed it, especially a later book. So while
a completed PhD is a fine thing, a very dull, off-putting, or
unfashionable subject is not a good foundation for getting hired
into your first academic job. Especially at the short-listing stage,
most university search committees operate with only a small
amount of paper information. Unless you have a set of different
publications already in print, they naturally tend to read a lot
into your PhD subject, seeing it as expressive of your character
and temperament. In addition, it may be very hard to spin off
any worthwhile publications from a completely dull PhD.
It’s no good running a pig farm for thirty years
while saying ‘I was meant to be a ballet dancer’. 
By that time pigs are your style.