Tag: PhD thesis

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Academic

WRITER/RESEARCH: PhD Thesis: The planning, design and reception of British Home Front propaganda posters in the Second World War

My Google Alert for ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ is going quite bonkers over the last few weeks (see example, and I post some to a Facebook page), and I’ve also seen comparisons of the current coronavirus crisis with the Second World War, and the need for ‘the Blitz spirit’ and the need to be ‘all in it together’, so I thought I’d do an overdue task and re-upload my PhD to my website.

The PhD was passed (without corrections) in 2004 by Lord Asa Briggs and Dr Adrian Briggs.

You can download my entire PhD thesis in PDF format from the British Library Ethos service, including images, etc. but I am putting my text available on my website for those who are interested.

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You can find some of the images on Wikimedia Commons, check the IWM collections, or National Archives ‘Art of War’ (for which I wrote most of the content).

The original plan was to turn this into a book, but instead, some papers are published or in development, and I wrote Keep Calm and Carry On: The Truth Behind the Poster for the Imperial War Museum in 2017.

Categories
History

PhD Mentioned in Oxford Magazine

phd-referenced

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 Maybe before too long it won’t be unpublished anymore…

Categories
History

10 Truths for Prospective PhDs

drbexl-70_600Important 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:

  1. The key predictor of a supervisor’s ability to guide a postgraduate to completion is a good record of having done so (although with new supervisors you will have a second, experienced supervisor)
  2. You choose the supervisor. Do not let the institution overrule your choice
  3. Stars are attractive but may be distant. Pick a well-regarded supervisor who does not spend too much time away
  4. Bureaucratic immunity is vital. Look for a supervisor who will protect you from ‘the system’
  5. Byline bandits abound. Study a potential supervisor’s work
  6. Be wary of co-supervisors
  7. A supervisor who is active in the area of your doctorate can help to turbocharge your work
  8. A candidature that involves teaching can help to get a career off the ground
  9. Weekly supervisory meetings are the best pattern
  10. Invest your trust only in decent and reliable people who will repay it, not betray it
Categories
History

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 broadly agreed standards, while many of us work across multiple paradigms and areas. We cannot rely on a tacit consensus about standards to ameliorate the potential for disasters on viva day. The external examiner, and often the internal examiner too, have no knowledge of the candidate, no loyalty towards the supervisor, and no investment in the institution. Many would say that is the way it is supposed to be. The work is engaged with as if it were an anonymous journal article or a grant application.

The problem is that examining a PhD thesis is not like reviewing a journal article. The PhD candidate has been through three years or more of a programme for which they’ve paid huge fees. Their supervisor has deemed their work to be worthy of examination, notwithstanding its imperfections. In the UK, the candidate is typically faced with a judgement that says: “You thought today would mark the end of the course that has almost bankrupted you, has dominated your life for years, and will determine your future. Wrong! You now have to do another three/six/18 months of extra work to correct the work you thought wasn’t really that bad.”

Read full story.

Categories
History

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 scientists”, then you have followed the trend for “wordy, wooden, weak-verbed” writing that dominates academic prose.

Those are two of the examples picked out by Helen Sword, associate professor in the Centre for Academic Development, University of Auckland, who hopes to bridge the “massive gap between what most people consider good writing and what academics typically produce and publish” in her book Stylish Academic Writing, published on 26 April.

Read full story.