It might be worth checking your university's rules on the maximum length of permissable PhD candidature (if the postgrad office hasn't already advised you on this) to check that you are still within the limits and also to make sure that whatever you ask for is also within them. At some universities there is a point where they have run out of room to manoeuvre and you are automatically disqualified. If you are in this danger zone, and don't think even with a suspension of studies that the remaining months are feasible to produce the entire thesis, and you can produce the medical evidence, you might want to try to apply to suspend studies but also to backdate it for a couple of months so that the time leading up to your operation and the time recovering does not count against the clock. I have a friend who managed to do this but don't know whether all universities would allow it.

There's definitely no problem in applying for further PhDs at the same place - did you ask for feedback on why you weren't selected? That might give you some insight into what your chances are in the future.

Getting funding for a specific project really varies a lot according to subject area. Eg if it's a subject covered by the AHRC and the ESRC, there are only certain universities with PhD funding available and they advertise once a year. But then you do apply with your own project and compete for the funded place. As far as I understand the ERSC anyway, a university without that funding can't even apply for a research project with a linked studentship any more, so however well-meaning the academic, they might not be able to do what you want.

In the sciences it's definitely rarer to do a wholly self-defined project and tends to be for self-funders. If it is science you're in, perhaps rather than sending a project outline, you could write to this person, attach your cv, and say you're interested in their research, and do they know whether there is any likelihood of any PhD funding in that area at that university in the next year or so or how you might apply as an individual for any such funding. You could mention your particular interest in sub-area x in your email.

Essentially I think I'd ask for his/her advice on getting funding rather than phrasing it as in essence 'please spend massive quantities of your spare time putting together a grant proposal to suit my exact research interests' even if it's something said person isn't that interested in being a PI for, or even worse has spent the last few years applying for funding on exactly that and getting turned down (which if it's a fringe area isn't unlikely). Maybe I'm being too sensitive but I think I might be a bit irritated to get that sort of request from a complete stranger... Incidentally just so that you know - research grant applications to the research councils take a very long time from start to award / rejection. It can be about a year.

http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/universitysecretariat/StudentComplaintsProcedure.pdf
http://studentzone.roehampton.ac.uk/accommodation/complaints/
Here you go - first two results from the homepage search engine - these seem pretty clear to me and the first names people you can ask for help if needed.

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Just to point out that for the OIAHE to look at your case you have to have completed the complaints process at Roehampton. There's normally 2 or 3 stages of internal complaint procedure to go through first. Look in your student handbook or do a search for complaint procedure on the university website to find out how you make a formal complaint. I assume you've already followed the usual first step of the staff-student committee, students union, HoD etc and put the complaints in writing and are not happy with the response?

From what you are saying it is the housing that is the issue where you have the most substantive complaints (assuming the substance abuse issue is also housing related). You might want to check your own housing contract to see if it's been broken in which case you have a fairly straightforward complaint.

Tbh your complaint about international students and staff doing research will be rejected unless you can show concretely how this impacted on your degree - research and the education of international students are after all legitimate activities for a university to pursue.

Oh and on behalf of your supervisor who had the temerity to go on holiday - at all the universities I've attended or worked at, they are supervising u/g or MA dissertations pretty much 52 weeks of the year - when are they meant to go on holiday? Surely for supervision to be effective you need it at the beginning and middle more than at the end?

Hi,

First, congratulations! Enjoy the moment of triumph and try and get a holiday - you deserve one!

The bad news is that the politics and even more so IR markets are flooded with un / underemployed PhDs. There's a poster called Wj_Gibson whose experiences trying to get a politics job are worth searching past posts for, even though it doesn't make fun reading. Realistically, you probably need to set yourself a limit of how long you're prepared to hang on and make sure you have a plan B.

Politics is my subject area too and I got a lectureship last year after doing a postdoc and frankly I don't think it was because I was so much better than other candidates, it was a combination of luck, playing the game well and getting a lot of good advice from savvy people who had got jobs in the past couple of years. I'll try and pass on some of that advice. This advice is for the UK although I think it probably holds fairly true elsewhere too. Unless you are REF-submittable, it's very unlikely you'll be shortlisted for a politics / IR job, so publications are compulsory and they need to be in decent journals. Avoid getting sucked into edited volumes at this stage - you need not to be reliant on co-authors / editors getting their acts in gear. You also need a good track record of conference presentations, teaching experience etc but the publications (preferably demonstrating non-academic impact too these days) are non-negotiable in reality. Try and think through how many ways you can spin your PhD research to make you eligible for different sub-discipline jobs - think through too what you can realistically teach. If you can get to sit in on any job talks being held in your dept then do so - that was a real eye-opener for me about how to do that bit right and wrong. Get multiple people to critique your cv and cover letters - especially if you had an older supervisor who strolled into an academic job decades ago and hasn't kept up to date with the realities of the current job market. Obviously sign up for jobs.ac.uk vacancy alerts but it's also worth keeping an eye on these: http://www.psa.ac.uk/ConfAppt ; www.bisa.ac.uk (jobs link on front page); http://uaces.org/jobs/ and http://www.ecprnet.eu/ (the jobs are normally under Exchange but it doesn't seem to be working today).
There's some good resources on Manchster University's website on academic careers that are well worth looking at, as are these websites:
http://www.vitae.ac.uk/
http://www.beyondthephd.co.uk/

Looking at the people who were shortlisted with me, pretty much everyone has had a postdoc / RA / temp lectureship before they started to have a shot at permanent lectureships so you might want to focus your efforts in those directions. Talk to whoever is clued up in your department about the ESRC, BA and Leverhulme schemes. Right now I assume your main concern is getting some money coming in, so make it clear to your department that you're looking for work, ditto any other departments you could teach in and departments at universities you could realitically commute too. This is the point of the year when worrying gaps in teaching cover start emerging so speculative cvs for hourly paid teaching are worth sending.

Sorry if this is discouraging but I hope it helps a bit as well.

Hi pineapple,

It's definitely worth a letter to the inland revenue to check your tax was right - if you were working in a portion of a tax year but not in the rest then you've probably overpaid. I've asked more in hope than expectation twice now and been pleasantly surprised by the size of the rebate.

I started a PhD largely because I loathed my civil service job and it was about the only respectable way I could quit what was then a very comfortable career with almost guaranteed promotion. I thought I might like to be an academic but it certainly wasn't my only plan - I designed my PhD to have some relevance to the NGO world and networked there throughout. I knew that the academic job market was horrendous because a lot of my friends from my MA cohort stayed on to do them over ten years ago and no-one ended up in academia. I enjoyed the PhD, got on well with my supervisors etc - I think one thing that did help was that I knew why I was doing it and never had any illusions that academia was some kind of ideal environment filled with nice people. The balance between nice and nasty, ego-driven-ness etc seems pretty much like my former workplace actually. When I finished I was very fortunate to get a 2 year postdoc, went on the academic job market both years (applying to any lectureships anywhere that I was qualified for so I didn't have the geographic limitation problem) - couple of interviews the first year here and abroad but no job but the second year with a stronger cv I got more interviews and a permanent lectureship. I am just coming to the end of my first year and am still very taken aback about all the things lecturers have to do that I didn't realise (and I got an easy start for the first year). Being a fulltime researcher with some TA-ing as I was as a PhD student & postdoc is a very different kettle of fish. It's a tough job with long hours and the amount of REF-related / NSS-related bullying from senior management is unbelievable. I occasionally wish I hadn't got the job and followed plan B instead. I'm going to see how it pans out but academia (certainly in research-intensive places) is not for the fainthearted and not for those unable to work well over the standard working week. So I enjoyed the PhD and would do that again but am not sure the prize of an academic job is that great.

Mmm have you ever looked at ratemyprofessors and seen what sort of 'honest' information you get on those sort of sites? God help US professors who try to uphold academic standards - they get eaten alive. Not to mention the sexism, homophobia, racism etc.

I've finished my PhD but when I think back to the people who were doing PhDs at the same time as me, I know exactly which ones would post on something like that. How can I put it - I doubt it would be a fair reflection on their supervisors' characters, ability etc. There were definitely individuals who left me with nothing but sympathy for their supervisors. But anyway the OP's wish is going to come true in a way if the white paper goes through unchanged - every evaluation by students of teaching staff is to be made available to the general public online. Presumably that would include research student surveys.

But a lot of it is so subjective so I'm not sure that you'd really get an accurate idea anyway. OK there's clearly some nightmare supervisors - from this forum seemingly concentrated in lab-based sciences, but I think most supervisor relationship issues come down to personality clashes. I got on really well with my supervisor but someone else thought she was the most evil person on the planet. A lot of the time it's whether your personal styles of working mesh or not. My supervisor was admittedly fairly hands off but that suited me - I would have loathed to have to have weekly meetings and made to account for every minute of my time. But that was what the woman who hated her wanted - really to be told what to do every step of the way. So if we'd both posted on your putative website all you'd have got was two diametrically opposed views so no more helpful than what you got from the other students.

Hi Dave,

Depends very heavily on the type of teaching. If much of that ten hours is repeat undergrad seminars then yes you can carve out time to publish (it's what the lecturing staff all do after all). If you are being asked to write ten new lectures from scratch each week then no. It's also a bit dependent on how much the teaching is in your comfort zone and how much is going to take quite a lot of work not to make a fool of yourself.

I think you're doing your friend a favour in pushing her to look at other options. It's my own subject area and everyone with any nous knows there are very few jobs and that competition for them is immense so you've absolutely got to have a plan B. If after two years she's not getting interviews then it's time to look elsewhere. Honestly my guess would be that less than 20% of Politics PhDs will end up in academia based on what I've seen. Unless she has publications in good journals i.e. is REFable, teaching experience and the ability to deliver on the REF impact measure, she will struggle. It's not new either - friends who graduated about ten years had exactly the same experience. .

Hi,

I think you had to have applied for difficult language training in your original application for funding. I don't think you can add it after the fact. The rules are in the guide for awardholders anyway if you look there.

http://www.mah.se/english/Student/Housing/Student-Housing/ - hi have you looked at the pdf guide to housing on this page. That was the tip of a friend who did Erasmus in Malmo but says the situation is nightmarish. It's even worse over the bridge in Copenhagen I understand. That whole area has so many students and a real housing shortage. Oh she also says to google easyroommate sweden - apparently some people found shared places that way but to be very wary of scams.

Have you tried looking at PhD theses in your area - you could ask your supervisor if she could recommend a good one - it might help if you had an example of what good PhD standard looks like?

Hi,

I suspect fees would be low so it's more living expenses you'd need & funds for research costs eg fieldwork. It might be that it's similar to some other Central European countries where you either do your PhD alongside a job as research / teaching assistant to the professor who supervises it / tend to do it part-time while working another job to pay your way. Is there a newspaper that advertises academic jobs - it might be worth looking to see if there's adverts that might give you a clue about the system (assuming you know the language)? Another idea might be to seek advice from a national academy of sciences. Here's the link to the Croatian one:
http://info.hazu.hr/home

Another helpful peace/conflict resources link is:
http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/
Have a look under resource guides for some funding ideas.