Authoring a PhD
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Authoring a PhD How to plan, draft, write and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation Patrick Dunleavy
Patrick Dunleavy 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-4039-1191-9 hardback ISBN 978-1-4039-0584-0 ISBN 978-0-230-80208-7 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-0-230-80208-7 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dunleavy, Patrick. Authoring a PhD : how to plan, draft, write, and finish a doctoral thesis or dissertation / Patrick Dunleavy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4039-1191-9 ISBN 978-1-4039-0584-0 (pbk.) 1. Dissertations, Academic Authorship Handbooks, manuals, etc. 2. Academic writing Handbooks, manuals, etc. I. Title: Authoring a Ph. D. II. Title. LB2369.D85 2003 808.02 dc21 2002042453 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03
For Sheila and Rosemary Thanks for the encouragement
All rules for study are summed up in this one: learn only in order to create. Friedrich Schelling
Contents List of figures and tables Preface ix x 1 Becoming an author 1 Authoring is more than just writing 2 Different models of PhD and the tasks of authoring 5 Managing readers expectations 11 2 Envisioning the thesis as a whole 18 Defining the central research questions 18 Doing original work 26 3 Planning an integrated thesis: the macro-structure 43 The whole and the core 44 Focusing down or opening out 53 Four patterns of explanation 62 4 Organizing a chapter or paper: the micro-structure 76 Dividing a chapter into sections 76 Devising headings and subheadings 84 Handling starts and finishes 89 5 Writing clearly: style and referencing issues 103 The elements of good research style 104 Effective referencing 120 VII
VIII CONTENTS 6 Developing your text and managing the writing process 134 Drafting, upgrading and going public 135 Remodelling text 143 Organizing the writing process 148 7 Handling attention points: data, charts and graphics 157 Principles for presenting data well 159 Handling tables 165 Designing charts and graphs 172 Other techniques for data reduction 185 Using diagrams and images 192 8 The end-game: finishing your doctorate 197 From a first full draft to your final text 199 Submitting the thesis and choosing examiners 209 The final oral examination (viva) 217 9 Publishing your research 227 Writing and submitting journal papers 227 Re-working your thesis as a book 251 Afterword 264 Glossary of maxims, terms and phrases 266 Notes 277 Further reading 287 Index 291
List of Figures and Tables Figures 3.1 Interrelating the whole and the core 50 3.2 The focus down model 55 3.3 The opening out model 59 3.4 The compromise model 61 3.5 Three ways of viewing my home study 64 3.6 Examples of a matrix structure 74 4.1 The tree structure of a chapter 102 5.1 How PhD students writing can develop 105 7.1 Eight main types of chart (and when to use them) 173 7.2 How health boards compare 182 7.3 How Scotland s health boards compared in treating cataracts, 1998 9 financial year 183 7.4 An example of a box-and-whisker chart comparing across variables 189 7.5 An example of median-smoothing 191 8.1 Integrating themes 200 9.1 An example of a journal article evaluation form 236 Tables 5.1 How different pressures on authors improve or worsen the accessibility of their text 107 7.1 How health boards compare 166 7.2 How Scotland s health boards compared in treating cataracts, 1998 9 financial year 167 IX
Preface The conservative political philosopher Michael Oakeshott once argued that: A university is an association of persons, locally situated, engaged in caring for and attending to the whole intellectual capital which composes a civilization. It is concerned not merely to keep an intellectual inheritance intact, but to be continuously recovering what has been lost, restoring what has been neglected, collecting together what has been dissipated, repairing what has been corrupted, reconsidering, reshaping, reorganizing, making more intelligible, reissuing and reinvesting. 1 Even if we leave aside Oakeshott s evident antiquarian bias against any genuine or substantive innovation here, this mission statement is extensive enough. Indeed it is far too large to be credible in the era of a knowledge society, when so many other people (working in professions, companies, cultural and media organizations, governments, civil society groups or as independent writers and researchers) also attend to the intellectual capital [of] a civilization. This book is written in the hope of somewhat assisting any of these people who produce longer creative non-fiction texts. It is especially directed to research students and their advisers or supervisors in universities. In undertaking or fostering the X
PREFACE XI doctorate they still pursue the most demanding ideal of original research. Nothing was ever yet done that someone was not the first to do, said John Stuart Mill, and that is what the doctoral ideal always has celebrated and always should. 2 Each doctoral dissertation or thesis is to a large extent sui generis. But this book reflects a conviction that in the humanities, arts and social sciences research students also need to acquire a core of generic authoring skills that are substantially similar across diverse disciplines and topics. While research skills training has been formalized a great deal in the last two decades, these craft skills of authoring have been relatively neglected and left unsystematized. For Oakeshott and other traditionalists my enterprise here will seem no more than another brick in the wall, a further step towards the bureaucratization of modern society foreseen by Max Weber. 3 But I believe that learning the craft of how to plan, draft, write, develop, revise and rethink a thesis, and to finish it on time and to the standard required, is too important and too often mishandled a set of tasks to be left to the somewhat erratic and tangential models of induction and training that have prevailed in the past. There is a long and honourable tradition now of scholarship reflecting upon itself. It stretches back through Friedrich Schelling s idealist vision in On University Studies, to Francis Bacon s musings in The Advancement of Learning, and before him to some significant reflective writings of the medieval thinkers and the ancient Greek philosophers. 4 Now, as in those earlier times, scholars and students are not (cannot be) immune to external influences and rationalization processes. In modern conditions universities can privilege their existing modes of generating and transmitting knowledge only so long as they are demonstrably the best of available alternatives. Of course, completing a doctoral dissertation is also too personal and too subtle a process, too dependent upon students and supervisors or advisers, too variable across thesis topics, disciplines and university contexts, for any generic advice to encompass more than a tiny proportion of what a given doctoral student needs to help her develop as an author. But covering this fraction in a systematic way can still be very valuable, time-saving and perhaps inspiring. PhD students know their own situation better than anyone else in the world. They can
XII PREFACE build on a small amount of ready-made knowledge (as Schelling termed it), 5 picking and choosing those elements of this text that are relevant for their problems. I hope that this book may also help thesis advisers (with knowledge of a range of doctoral projects in their own discipline) to extend and systematize their thinking and guidance to students about authoring issues. So this book is written as a foil for students and their supervisors, as a grid or a framework which they can set against their own situations and experiences. I have written up this advice in a modest but not a tentative way, because I know no other style that will seem honest or convincing. For some readers there is a risk that my suggestions may come across as overly slick or didactic, as if I am seeking to dictate what squads of PhD students should do. But I am acutely aware that readers always will and always should construct their own personalized versions of this text, adapting and domesticating what works for them, and setting to one side what does not fit. I have written like someone devising a menu for a restaurant, wanting to offer a treatment that is challenging and convincing, and an experience which is consistent and as complete as possible. But I am conscious that no one (in their right frame of mind) will pick up and consume more than a fraction of this menu at a time. Lastly let me stress that this book is to a large extent a conduit for the ideas of many student and staff colleagues, whose wisdom and suggestions I have jotted down, adopted, tried out and probably shamelessly purloined over the years. I owe my heaviest debt to some 30 people who have worked with me on their own doctorates across two and a bit decades. They have taught me so much as they developed their ideas, not just about their thesis topics but also about our joint profession. 6 In different ways, each of them will know the frailties and limitations of supervisors all too well, and I can only ask their tolerance of any gloss on their experience which this volume inadvertently gives. My next biggest debt is to colleagues at the London School of Economics and Political Science who have co-supervised PhDs with me or co-taught the School-wide seminar on PhD writing. 7 From their very different styles of teaching and encouraging, I have learned much. I am grateful also to a wide range of other colleagues, who may recognize their own ideas and inputs
PREFACE XIII scattered across these pages. Lastly I would like to thank the students from 18 disciplines who attended my PhD writing course at LSE over more than a decade. Their questions, challenges and innovations have consistently stretched my knowledge, and convinced me that we could do more to help. I hope that the enterprise of gathering these ideas together in one volume will seem justified for most readers, and that if it does you will contribute to the book by e-mailing me your comments, criticisms and suggestions for changes or additions. For me, even in our rationalized times, the doctorate still remains a crucial vehicle for developing new and original thought in the humanities and social sciences, especially amongst young people, who (as Plato said) are closer to ideas. 8 If this book strikes even a few positive chords among new generations of scholars and supervisors, then writing it will have been worthwhile. Patrick Dunleavy January 2003 London School of Economics and Political Science London p.dunleavy@lse.ac.uk