12 tips to applying for a research degree
UTS Design PhD graduate and Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr Jesse Adams Stein shares her expert advice for approaching your application, developing your proposal, and finding the right supervisor.
1. Contact the Faculty Research Manager and give them a brief outline of your proposed research. The Research Manager has a thorough understanding of all the research supervisors, and can help recommend and match you up with the best supervisor based on your area of interest and requirements.
2. Make contact with your proposed supervisor/s. Start a conversation, get feedback on your proposal and ask them any questions you have about supervision. This will give you a good idea of the kind of working relationship you are likely to have.
3. Choose a supervisor who has the right fit in terms of approach. If you are a confident writer, you may prefer someone who is more focussed on the big picture and strategy; if you would like detailed support and feedback on your writing, find a supervisor whose approach is compatible.
- Find a Design research supervisor
- Find an Architecture research supervisor
- Find a Built Environment research supervisor
4. Consider what is more important for you: methodology or specific research interests. If you are interested in doing cross-disciplinary or practice-based research, it may be more important to have a supervisor who can guide and support that methodology, even if their field of research is quite different from your own.
5. Make sure that you feel truly passionate about your research topic. You will be spending several years becoming a world-leading expert on the subject, so it’s very important that you are dedicated, and most of all that you enjoy it!
6. Don’t leave your application to the last minute. The more prepared you are, the more support and feedback you can get from the Research Manager and your proposed supervisor.
7. Understand that your research topic will change and evolve over time, and that this is an important part of the research process. That said, your research proposal still has to sound like a very viable project, and it must show some understanding of the discipline/s that you wish to work within.
8. Almost all research topics are ‘too big’ in the early days. Throughout a research degree, the topic and argument will be refined again and again. But it helps to start with something that sounds manageable, rather than proposing something so broad and amorphous that it’s completely unworkable.
9. Look for the gaps. While the university won’t expect you to have done all of your literature review before you begin, you will at least need to have some understanding of where there are ‘gaps’ or omissions in particular sets of academic knowledge, and how your proposed research project might help fill that gap.
10. Understand that this proposed research project doesn’t have to cover everything that you’re interested in. If you have five areas of interest, maybe your research project will only cover one or two of those areas. Remember – once the degree is over, you might want to continue your research practice, looking into other topics. So save something for later!
11. Think carefully about why you want to do a research degree, and let that inform the decisions you make in terms of your topic, supervisors, and the degree you choose (i.e. Masters or PhD). Do you want to work in academia? Do you want to advance your standing in industry through a higher qualification? Do you want to become an expert in a particular area because you’re so passionate/curious about it? Do you want to further develop your creative practice? Being strategic about these early decisions can help you much further down the track.
12. Be aware that a research degree is about more than just writing the thesis. It’s about the wide knowledge and skills you gain from the research process, it’s about the people you meet in industry and academia, it’s about the talks and conferences you may attend, the papers you may write, the teaching you may undertake, and about the sharing of knowledge and experience with your colleagues. Take that understanding with you as you prepare your application.
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Need help finding a supervisor? Unsure about the application process? Want to know the secret to a great research topic proposal?
