PhD research means complete specialization?

[drpepper711]

How related do the chapters of a thesis have to be? Would you recommend specializing on one topic in one region with one methodology? or being more general? I know a person's passion may help determine this, but I am truly interested in a range of issues within international development. I am also considering job prospects. 

[fuzzylogician]

Shouldn't you apply to school before you start sketching chapters in your thesis? Seriously, you are worrying about (non-)issues that will not even be relevant until 5 or so years from now.

 

At the end of the PhD process, if you are successful, you'll be the expert in whatever you do; it'll probably be a small problem that you work on and solve, but you want to make it relevant to a larger audience by having the means to expand your research to some neighboring issue (tools, methodology, theory, question, whatever). So you want something focused but expandable.

[drpepper711]

For my field, most students continue research from their masters, which they had also continued from their bachelors. They already have significant knowledge about the specific topic they want to study. They have a strong network and familiarity with the region they are going to be doing their research.in. My masters research was unrelated therefore I will feel as if I am at a disadvantage and I have to 'catch up.' However, as many have mentioned, it may not payoff to think of research so early; that's my dilemma! I would have roughly 2 years for courses, after which I would start research. 

[fuzzylogician]

You know the conventions of your field better than I do. I can think of exactly one person in my cohort who still works on something that is a direct continuation of the work he came into our department with. The others have mostly stayed within their (general) specializations but are working on completely different problems than the ones they worked on before they started their PhDs. This is not unusual. So yes, I've worked in the same general field for close to 10 years now, but I work on very different questions and use different methodologies than I did before I started my PhD program. These things develop organically and I think it's hard to plan for them before you've even applied to programs. You may think you know exactly what you want to study 5-7 years from now, and that may turn out to be true, but it's likelier that something will change (region, methodology, questions, interests), and you can't plan for that now -- certainly not at the level of thesis chapters like you were asking about.

[drpepper711]

Duly noted.

[ak48]

Lots of professors I've talked to (Electrical Engineering or Material Science) do research now that is minimally related to their PhD project.

 

One actually told me that his field completely collapsed from roughly 200 experts in the 90's to 2. That professor is still doing fine in a different field.

[TakeruK]

For my field, most students continue research from their masters, which they had also continued from their bachelors. They already have significant knowledge about the specific topic they want to study. They have a strong network and familiarity with the region they are going to be doing their research.in. My masters research was unrelated therefore I will feel as if I am at a disadvantage and I have to 'catch up.' However, as many have mentioned, it may not payoff to think of research so early; that's my dilemma! I would have roughly 2 years for courses, after which I would start research. 

 

I don't think you will be at a disadvantage to have to "catch up". Now that I reflect on my research experience as an undergrad, I realised that it took me months to do some things that would now take me just a week to finish. I believe that the biggest hurdle to "getting into research" is getting used to "real world problems" instead of just nice textbook examples in coursework. Once you have learned to critically think about what you're doing and how to read and communicate in your field, you can pick up other topics in the same field fairly quickly. And that's what the bachelor's degree is for! 

 

In my field in Canada, sometimes people think it's a step backwards if you switch projects/supervisors between your Masters thesis and PhD thesis. But, once you become a quasi-expert in one topic of a field, it is usually a lot easier to get to the same level in another topic! 

 

Like others said, by the time you finish your PhD, you should be THE expert on the topic. You should know more than your supervisor! As one of my profs here put it, your committee should go into your thesis defense hoping to learn something from you. However, in the sciences especially, it's pretty rare that people will continue to exclusively work on their PhD topic in the future. When I read my profs' CVs, most of them no longer work in the same topic. It is pretty common to develop a very specific skillset during your PhD and then use that experience and knowledge to solve other problems! Don't think of a PhD thesis as locking in your specialty for life. Instead, think of it as a way for you to develop independent research skills that you could use for the rest of your life.

 

And as for relatedness of thesis chapters, many schools will now allow you to do a "manuscript thesis", where you "just staple" three (or so) papers you've written together and hand it in. I'm exaggerating here, a little -- you will have to justify some central theme to the 3 papers and probably write an intro and conclusion to wrap everything together, and format everything in thesis format. But the papers could have been submitted in different journals with different writing styles!

[drpepper711]

Thanks a lot for your response TakeruK...very helpful!