PhD Mentioned in Oxford Magazine

I met Chris Sladen at a Public History event at Ruskin College, and we’ve kept in sporadic contact ever since. In ‘Noughth Week, Hilary Term, 2014’, Oxford Magazine, Chris wrote a review of A Green and Pleasant Land by Ursula Buchan (2013), and towards the end he references my PhD. Maybe before too long it won’t be unpublished anymore… Second World War Posters Mass Communications Academic, @MMUBS. British Home Front Propaganda posters as researched for a PhD completed 2004. Continue Reading →

10 Truths for Prospective PhDs

Important reading if you’re planning on doing a PhD: As a prospective PhD student, you are precious. Institutions want you – they gain funding, credibility and profile through your presence. Do not let them treat you like an inconvenient, incompetent fool. Do your research. Ask questions. Use these 10 truths to assist your decision. The 10 are as follows: The key predictor of a supervisor’s ability to guide a postgraduate to completion is a good record Continue Reading →

PhD Vivas

I’ve only ever sat a PhD viva, and not yet supervised a PhD, or sat in on a viva, but I do remember my own experiences, so great story in Times Higher this week: In my limited experience, it is not the personal dimension of relationships that can fail the PhD candidate, but their very impersonality. My field of business and management studies is vast and fragmented. Some of us build careers within a sub-paradigm of Continue Reading →

Foucault-flaunting prose?

I’m a keen supporter of the plain English campaign, but I also used Foucauldian discourse analysis as the basis of my PhD! In @timeshighered this week: Dense, wordy, wooden, Foucault-flaunting prose? There is another way, scholar tells Matthew Reisz If you have ever needlessly added the term “Foucauldian” to a journal article or bludgeoned readers by starting an epic sentence with reference to the “post-Mendel application of Lamarck’s apparently superseded scientific theory by non-empirical social Continue Reading →

Bibliography

Unpublished Sources Manuscripts and Archives Art Department, Imperial War Museum, London Imperial War Museum Poster Database (Only available locally) Original posters Scrapbooks of newspaper cuttings: Abram Games, Artist ; ATS Glamour Girl History, 1939-1985; Edwin Embleton, Studio Director, Ministry of Information (1939-1947); F.H.K. Henrion, Artist ; Kenneth Bird (Fougasse), Artist Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge CHURCHILL, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer (1874-1965), Chartwell Trust Papers, 1874-1945. (CHAR) House of Lords Record Office, London Hist. Coll .184, Beaverbrook Continue Reading →

Doctor Who Required

Universities are increasingly demanding that new academics hold doctorates in a trend that some believe could accelerate when the tuition-fee cap rises to £9,000 a year. The proportion of UK academic staff with doctorates rose from 48 per cent in 2004-05 to 50.1 per cent in 2009-10, according to data prepared for Times Higher Education by the Higher Education Statistics Agency. Some pre-1992 universities, such as City University London and Birkbeck, University of London, have Continue Reading →

Related Projects of Interest

There are many others working on, or have already completed, theses that are also of interest to me as a researcher in this topic, and therefore may also be of interest to others. Boon, T., ‘Film and contestation of public health in interwar Britain ‘, PhD, 1999 Chapman, J., ‘Official British Film Propaganda during the Second World War’, PhD, 1995 Carruthers, S.L., ‘Propaganda, publicity and political violence: the presentation of terrorism in Britain, 1944-60’, PhD, Continue Reading →

Pat Cryer - PhD Skills

Postgraduates do not realise how employable they are. Pat Cryer explains how to get well paid job. “Students often give up when they realise how few jobs there are in their specialism. Believing they have nothing else to offer they end up jobless.” The long haul is over and the prospect of lucrative job offers are an enticing alternative to months of solitary confinement in the research laboratory. Yet very few PhD students do themselves Continue Reading →