Choosing a supervisor for niche or emerging research interests

[inkstainedarm]

Hi everyone,

How are those of you with very specific or not yet well explored research interests choosing supervisors and balancing the need to go to a highly respected university (because, well, resources & jobs) with finding potential supervisors who are a close fit to your interests? Do you look for scholars who work in the same time period/geographical region but who don't share your interest in a particular topic, scholars who use the same sources that you do but ask very different research questions, scholars who work outside of your period/region but who share the general interest, or some combination of the three? Or do you choose universities with limited resources, weak placement records, or smaller departments that have the scholar(s) with whom you can best work? I'd love to hear what your thought processes were while choosing schools to apply to.

I'm considering applying to medieval history PhDs either this cycle or next, but so far, while I've found programs that seem like they would be fantastic for their resources, research produced, and support of students, I've struggled to find academics that match my research interests even peripherally.  In general, my research (during my undergrad years and for my current master's dissertation) is on disability and facial disfigurement in the late medieval period, which is a considerably better known field than it was ten years ago, but which still doesn't have all that many scholars in it. Most of the scholars in the field, especially the established ones, are UK based, and while I've enjoyed my time at UEA, if I'm going to commit to the tumultuous journey of academia, I'd rather have a US PhD for a variety of reasons. And in the US, a lot of the scholars that I'd like to work with are at universities that simply aren't good options for getting a PhD, are literary scholars first and foremost, are working on disability but in a wildly different region or culture than I am, or aren't far enough along (or are too far along, i.e. retired) in their careers that I could feasibly ask them to be my supervisor. There are some medical historians with whom I could work, but from their publications, I'm not sure that my more cultural history approach to disability would be a good match. And then, of course, there are quite a few late medieval historians with a wide range of research topics with whom I'd love to work, but I'd have to make more of a stretch to claim our specific research interests match up.

Any thoughts or advice that you all have would be appreciated!

[pudewen]

Your primary advisor should be a medieval historian, preferably at a school with a strong placement record. However, it is probably wise to look into departments/schools where there are also strong faculty in disability studies who can serve on your committee, even if they don't work on your period (or even if they are in literature rather than history). Working with people who don't share your thematic and theoretical interests is completely normal at the PhD level, particularly for non-Americanists (as there are rarely more than a couple people in a particular temporal/geographical field in any given school). Your goal should be to be at the strongest school possible (in terms of placement and resources) where you can get the training you need, both in medieval history and in disability studies, not to find an exact advisor match at an institution that will make it harder to get a job. A historian of medieval medicine could be a good advisor match for you - even if they are using a different approach, the combination of field+thematic interest fit is a real positive (and you might find thinking about disability from both a history of medicine and a cultural studies perspective productive - indeed, to do good work, you will need to be well versed in both approaches, even if you mostly end up using the latter).

[dr. t]

2 hours ago, inkstainedarm said:

I'm considering applying to medieval history PhDs either this cycle or next, but so far, while I've found programs that seem like they would be fantastic for their resources, research produced, and support of students, I've struggled to find academics that match my research interests even peripherally.  In general, my research (during my undergrad years and for my current master's dissertation) is on disability and facial disfigurement in the late medieval period, which is a considerably better known field than it was ten years ago, but which still doesn't have all that many scholars in it.

You're having trouble identifying scholars who work on disability, disfigurement, difference, or monstrosity? I would gently suggest that you haven't looked quite hard enough. You are going to see a bias towards English departments in who's interested in this stuff, but you should be able to come up with a decent list of historians - Princeton (Reimitz), Columbia (Kosto), and UChicago (Lyon) come immediately to mind.

Were I you, I'd pull through a couple of the Kzoo/Leeds programs from recent years to find them.

Edited July 14, 2018 by telkanuru

[Sigaba]

2 hours ago, inkstainedarm said:

I've struggled to find academics that match my research interests even peripherally.  

Any thoughts or advice that you all have would be appreciated!

I'll put it less gently. In addition to increasing the intensity and range of your due diligence, you should consider re-ordering your relationship with the profession. It isn't what established professional academic historians can do for you, it is what are you going to do advance existing scholarly debates.

Often, up and coming scholars conclude that they're doing something that's leaps and bounds ahead of what's gone on before (e.g. the many "new" histories) when, in fact, they're giving an already well-refined historiographical kaleidoscope a slight turn. To be certain, that turn can show the past in a different light that illuminates and invigorates a field--if not the entire profession--but it's rarely as pathbreaking as some say.

[TMP]

What broke the deal between two POIs were the questions they were asking.  And I mean, the kinds of books/articles they'd like you to read for you PhD exams (generals, comps, etc.).  Building a list takes a lot of negotiating but the list will generally reflect the committee member's interests and questions and it will be your job to suggest new avenues for scholarship, which then informs them.

Your primary concern at this stage is to build a list of medieval historians in your general geographical or thematic focus and see who works in the disability studies at their universities with whom you might be able to work with as a committee member.   Build a list of 4-5 scholars who you can envision working with on your project.

[inkstainedarm]

Thank you all for your replies!

@pudewen it's reassuring to hear that it's not unusual to work with someone with different thematic interests, and thank you for the suggestion to look at schools with strong disability studies faculty, that's definitely something I'll check out.

@telkanuru my initial search focus was definitely too niche; I hadn't considered looking at historians who focus on the broader constructions of identity and difference beyond impairment and othering by physical and mental ability, which was a misstep on my part.

@Sigaba I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give the impression that I was expecting a supervisor to do something in particular for me. Given the extremely competitive nature of admissions for top programs, my thinking was more that I wasn't sure how closely an applicant's potential research should fit with the current department members for the applicant to have a better chance of being accepted. 

@TMP thank you, that's a good point about how the exam questions and the adviser's interests will intersect, and I hadn't quite thought that far ahead.

[dr. t]

14 hours ago, inkstainedarm said:

my initial search focus was definitely too niche; I hadn't considered looking at historians who focus on the broader constructions of identity and difference beyond impairment and othering by physical and mental ability, which was a misstep on my part.

Even then, there's been a longstanding interest in, say, lepers at least since Formation of a Persecuting Society. And so I don't think it's so much a misstep as it is the need to understand better how our field structures knowledge. That is, you have your very specific area of interest, but what is the next category up to which your very specific area is a member? And the one above that, until you get to "medieval history" and then "history"? This is a very important process, as it will greatly aid you in crafting the right "level" of question in your statement of purpose, in writing your prospectus and dissertation, and will serve as a touchstone at those points in your graduate career where you feel lost.

For example, I am very specifically interested in the interactions between Cistercian monks and the incipient kingdoms of western Europe in the 12-13th c. For my project, I work within the frameworks provided by postcolonial studies, frontiers studies, religious studies, political history, and the digital humanities.* The next step from there is to say that this means that I'm interested in socio-political intersections, particularly focused on religious institutions, in the high middle ages. It's this latter criterium that I used to seek out professors with whom I would want to work, and who would be interested in working with me. This gave me a list of about 20 people who did work which interested me, from which I used the various programs' placement rates etc., to whittle down to 6.

Happy hunting!

 

* DH is much to young to provide a framework. I'm making it up as I go along.