Is IAESTE http://www.iaeste.org/ worth a try? The only problem would be if you were no long registered as a student, but it might be worth asking them at any rate.

Perplexed - I'm afraid your discipline is actually better off than most! I imagine for instance that you didn't self-fund your PhD, as is often the case in the humanities, only to emerge to the same job market (or lack thereof). And at least there are still postdocs in the natural sciences... but pointing out that you might be one of the comparatively lucky ones doesn't really help.
Especially if you've always been a high flier, the post PhD job market can be like coming down to earth with a bump. First experience of failure etc. Presumably you're now at the stage, where if you want to have a more settled academic career then you have to apply for new PI type fellowships? I'm assuming this isn't where you originally wanted to go from your post, but given the lack of industry jobs at the moment, might you consider that route? Or do you think you're not competitive for those types of things? Or could you consider a couple of years abroad to get some industry experience in the hope things pick up here? I have a friend who moved into an industrial position in Germany, originally by getting a Marie Curie postdoc in a lab there that worked closely with industry. He loves it, and although he originally intended it to be a short-term move, has stayed.
OK your employment situation / immediate future is not what you had assumed it would be. You might not be able to step straight into what you want, but I think you're going to have to be realistic about what is out there and how you can get there in a series of steps. So rather than thinking perpetual postdoc, is there a skillset that industry are looking for that you lack - if so, could you gain that skill via another postdoc? Might a 'questionable' company at least give you some business experience? Or alternatively, how about a complete career change? Teaching? Scientific writing? Patent law? Good luck and my sympathies!

On supervisor and whether that gives an advantage - only a very small one, in that you can work with this person from early to develop a really strong proposal. It's normal that funding decisions are made between the institutions in the consortium and across disciplines, so you just don't know what the competition is in any given year.
On the last question - yes that scenario can develop, although hopefully before it goes to the decision-makers. If it does, don't worry - in some ways it's just an extra funded year, when you can make a start on your PhD too. Given a) that if they spot weaknesses they'll make you take classes in the first year of the +3 anyway and b) most soc sci PhDs take more than 3 years, this can actually be a blessing in disguise.

I think it might vary between institutions. Some will want you to apply for 1+3 some +3 with that MA. It will depend I think on what you want to do as a PhD (how methodologically complex) and how convincing the methods training you have looks in that context. They have to be able to make a convincing case to the committee deciding who gets funding, so it might depend on who is on the committee! Where I work, there is a methods fanatic who is highly influential - we never risk +3 applications unless the candidate has done a lot of methods courses as a result... But whether it will make a difference in funding decisions - I doubt it. It will be more about your marks on the course. You do need though to work on a narrative that shows how the Leiden experience has been beneficial in academic terms.

Does your u/g institution have ESRC funding for studentships in your area? This is the crucial thing to ask about to start with. In fact, I'd start by looking for all the places that do have ESRC funding in that area, look at the potential supervisors and try to put together a short list of possibilities, as you are in a field which is very competitive, and so you are probably going to be best served by making a few applications. If you want to do qualitative research, this will possibly knock out a couple of the London-based places as they seem very quant-focussed nowadays. Ideally, you want a supervisor who publishes in the field you want to: personally I'd say supervisor over institution, so long as the institution is somewhere ESRC recognised.
One hint regarding Leiden - very early on ask to see examples of essays / papers that got very good marks.

There will almost certainly be differences in expectations regarding style etc between the UK and the Netherlands and you can't afford to get low marks on a one year postgrad programme, and remain an attractive candidate for funding.

I'm taking for granted that you feel you can't just book a holiday, which is the obvious thing to do as a first step. But you are not doing your health any favours not taking a break when you need one. Universities put stupid demands on their staff, and often it just doesn't occur to supervisors that the life they themselves lead is so abnormal, because they've come to take it for granted. And then they expect the same from their PhD students and the cycle is perpetuated... But if your supervisor is generally a decent person, I think I'd just go and say I need to take a holiday.
If you can't ask, I think a trip to your GP is a good idea. You sound like you are suffering from stress. Even if your GP signs you off for 2 weeks, speaking from experience, 2 weeks of decompression time can really help to get things back into perspective. Then you can make sensible decisions about whether you need to take a few months off, or even quit altogether. Sometimes walking away is the right thing to do. But right now you aren't in a mental place where you can make good decisions. You need a bit of time to breathe first. I'd also suggest that as the undergrads have all left, that this would be a good time to see if you can book an appointment with the counselling service. Talking it all through with someone trained might help you think through your options better.

Politics student - this really isn't intended sarcastically, but as your requests aren't being answered, I wondered if you were aware of inter-library loans from the British Library? Your librarian will be able to help you, if you don't know about how they work. It's very quick for articles these days, as you can get them emailed to you, and probably less frustrating than posting here without response. Also do you know about COPAC? www.copac.ac.uk You can search and see which universities subscribe to each journal in case somewhere nearby has it.

It would have been interesting if they'd found people several years on from completion or non-completion (given the stats on completion are noticeably worse for self-funders), and seen whether in retrospect people thought it had been worthwhile to self-fund. My suspicion is that you'd find less positive reactions but I don't know. The stats show that most PhDs funded or not, will never get a permanent academic job (even discounting those who never wanted one, I suspect it's still less than half who do), but I think it would be much worse to cope with that reality, if you'd paid so much (not just financially) in the hope of an academic career.

Hi Craig,

I've not come across that degree before but am assuming something on the lines of education / sociology? If so, the relevant funding council would be the ESRC in the UK. You wouldn't apply yourself directly to the ESRC but would need to research which of their recognised doctoral training centres have funding for a relevant pathway and look out for their deadlines to apply (usually early Spring). They do offer 1+3 funding which is a combined MA/PhD training where the MA element is usually heavily research methods based. How competitive you would be without a masters, I don't know. It is more usual to have done a masters before applying for the PhD funding in the social sciences. I would suggest getting some advice from your old university tutors as they will have a good idea of the possibilities. Non-ESRC funding does come up sometimes but you have to keep a close eye on the adverts. For the US, how competitive you would be would depend on how good your GRE scores would be - a lot of social sciences programmes in the US are very quantitative so they expect good maths scores. You'd also need great references. You also need someone who knows the US system to advise you where is and is not worth applying to from what I've heard.
Hope this helps.

I think you should talk to your supervisor urgently and get some reassurance. I think for a masters dissertation you will be fine working with an established dataset, assuming it's a decent one, but think your interview plans sound worrying. Like any research method interviews are only valuable if done properly. If you plan on doing 25 interviews properly then I doubt you will be submitting on time. It involves human subjects, so will need to go through the ethical approval process, which if the subjects can be considered vulnerable in the slightest, will require you to jump through a lot of research design hoops. This takes time. Transcribing and analysing the interviews takes up much more time than people ever think, especially if you are not familiar with doing this. Even just the logistics of setting up interviews takes ages. In other words, I really doubt you've got the time to do it properly, and if you don't do it properly, it will look bad.

Depending on your field, maybe something on how to get published? If you're in a big team in a lab, maybe these decisions are out of your hands, but as a social scientist I'd have loved an insider guide to publishing. Another thought how about effective job applications?

Have you already paid the fee? If not, it might be worth checking whether anywhere more reliable near you is offering the IELTS test as an alternative. Both seem to be universally accepted. I think you should expect a longer wait than 5 days to get a formal response to a complaint though to be fair to ETS - remember they need to process it, then investigate and this does take time. Good luck with getting it sorted out.

Not really particularly when it's early on in the process. Unfortunately if you look at the statistics self-funded students especially are much more likely to drop out; the pressures in juggling so much are often much greater than the students expected at the beginning.And frankly, money pressures make any personal problems seem far worse. The students that supervisors do get grief over are those who stay in the programme for years but never manage to submit a PhD, or funded students who don't complete, because there can be implications with the funders for future students. Otherwise it's generally accepted that some people will realise that it's just not what they expected (particularly in the first 18 months) and leave. A PhD is so different from a taught degree that it's not surprising that you can do very well on the latter, but find the very independent working on a PhD hard to deal with for humanities/ social sciences types, or for scientists struggle to adjust to working in a team in a lab. It is different and people understand that. I think as well that for students who've gone straight through university to start a PhD, essentially it's like a first graduate job and many people struggle to adjust to that reality too, so there are always going to be those who have made the wrong choice career wise and want to jump.
So if this is something you're thinking about doing (as your last few posts have sort of suggested) don't let worries about it looking bad for your supervisor effect your decision, if the PhD is something that's not right for you at the moment.

Well there are lots of disgruntled ex-students out there who do exactly that, but what are you hoping to get out of it, if you don't want to either appeal or do the revisions? You could get sued yes, just like any other citizen, by anyone who is identifiable in your account if what you say counts as libel or defamation of character, so I guess it would be up to you to ensure that it's legally watertight, if you do it.
The really relevant part of this though is that you are an employee of the university concerned. Does your contract contain anything along the lines of not bringing the university into disrepute? If so, I guess it depends on how much you value your job.

You will struggle to move discipline to sociology / anthropology, because there are far fewer jobs and more PhD students trying to get them than in marketing. However, you've probably got a better chance of getting an academic job in a business school than in any other discipline I know, so maybe look on the bright side about that! There's nothing to stop you collaborating with sociologists in the future even if you are based in a business school.
Smoobles' advice is spot on - I'd also suggest (as a social scientist) that you take as many research methods courses as you can during your PhD - look at the Essex summer schools for example if your own university doesn't offer much. I'm guessing from your description of your university's rank that it might not be an ESRC doctoral training centre. If not, look at ESRC DTCs that exist, see what training they give their PhD students in your field and see how you can replicate those skills. Methods (especially quant but also good qualitative skills) are becoming so important in social science that a decent grasp can really help to open up opportunities on inter-disciplinary projects.