Hi,

This does happen and it's the university's responsibility to find you another supervisor but sometimes their preferred solution might not be the best one for you so you need to think through the possible scenarios. Is there anyone else realistically capable of supervising your topic in your dept or in a cognate dept? Could you work with that person? You still have a way to go so you do need decent input. If not, might it make sense to look at transferring elsewhere or are you stuck for funding or personal reasons?

Although it is hard, I'd also suggest really thinking through dispassionately why your relationship got that bad and being really honest with yourself about your share of it all (if any) before you meet your HoS / or the director of research students (as appropriate). The reason I'd do that is first to try to avoid any 'out of the frying pan into the fire' scenarios. Eg if your ex-supervisor wanted you to use a certain theory, method that you really don't want to then you need to avoid being allocated another evangelist for that approach. Equally, if it's been a personality style clash, you want to avoid a repeat. But you need to think seriously about your side too, so that if you made any mistakes you don't repeat them. The reason I suggest this is that I do know someone who 'divorced' no fewer than three supervisors over 18 months, all of whom were decent people, because she didn't want to listen to the fact that there was a huge flaw in her researh design. She eventually submitted without supervisor approval and failed outright for precisely the reason they'd all told her. I'm sure that's not an issue for you but sometimes when any sort of relationship is going negative, you can end up staking out positions that you don't really want to hold, just because of the negative dynamics, so this is a good chance to start afresh.

Could I suggest that you are slightly more careful about the details you are posting on here? From all the the detail given it strikes me you would be easily identifiable, particularly if you are posting emails from other people on a public forum.

It's unlikely that the university would do this. Why do you think that you should get paid more than everyone else? It's pretty normal for PhD students to be part of bigger grants, so it's not as if that status is out of the ordinary. The programme budget will have been set anyway with your studentship at standard rates if that's what they offered.

There's a massive scandal in Germany at the moment as various politicians are being found guilty of having plagiarised their PhDs and are having them taken away so it can be taken seriously if reported. If the PhD is earlier though then that's probably the original - could you google the author and let him/her know what you've found? Then if they want to report it to the journal, it's up to them.

I have a couple of ideas that might help.

1) Graduate annual membership of my university's library is actually pretty cheap - if nothing else if you had continued access to the literature you could continue to publish.

2) It's a shame you've fallen out with your supervisor because they'd be the obvious person to ask but my university has a system whereby they can nominate people to be guest members of staff, which while it's unpaid does bring computing and library facilities and a continuing institutional affiliation. Might that be a possibility where you are? They often use it here as a way of keeping new PhDs in the game so to speak given that the likelihood in my subject of any new PhD going straight into a job are minimal but I do know of a man in his 60s who has stayed that status for quite a few years. He does a bit of paid seminar teaching too, which I guess if you're interested is the other possible way of keeping a foot in the door.

No there isn't and except in some limited circumstances you need to think seriously about the potential career damage you'd cause. Assuming you mean a proper academic job i.e. post PhD the big exceptions are: 1) signed a contract for some hourly paid teaching then got offered a fulltime job elsewhere. EVERYONE will understand that - just don't dump them in it with days to go before the course starts; 2) massive unexpected change in personal circumstances e.g. you or a parent, child, partner is diagnosed with a terminal illness and an international / crosscountry move is no longer viable. If it's not one of those, then from what I've seen you need to be very careful in changing your mind afer you've signed - you can of course tell them youre not starting the job, but academia is a small world, this is something that's viewed as very unprofessional and word gets round. Someone I know said yes to a lectureship and then changed her mind two months later as sh didn't want to move, and three years on is still unemployed - I can't prove it's why she's not getting jobs but it seems weird that she went from getting lots of interviews to deathly silence. I'd really really take advice from an academic you trust about how to do this in the most damage-limiting way and if you do, do it fast. I know some universities can appoint someone else from the shortlist if it's within a few weeks but otherwise they have to advertise again.

A possible problem might be the growing trend for Ed.D degrees rather than PhDs in Education departments - those really do seem targeted at practising teachers. And when I think of people doing Education PhDs that I knew they were all teachers but that's because my institution ran an integrated programme for education - lots of taught modules and a shorter thesis. Do you know any academics working within an education department? I suspect this is one best asked of an expert. You might also want to ask what career prospects might be like if you don't have teaching qualificationd / experience.

I think doodle's suggestion about relying on your second supervisor more and talking to whoever is in charge of research students are both good. My worry given where you are timewise i.e. five years in is that changing your topic so much might a) mean it will extend the time to finishing beyond what your university allows and b) that you'd need to be careful that the new topic was sufficient for a PhD.
Your supervisor seems from your OP to want you to change topic, and in your OP you say you can't, but then in a later post you say you think it's the only thing to do. What do you want to do really?

On the interviews - is there anyone else who has contact with this organisation that could be helpful e.g. lobby groups, representative groups for recipients of what they do or another researcher who has managed to do some work on it - they all might be ways in. On the reports are they purely internal reports or where they written for another body - if so going to who they are written for might help. Alternatively not having a clue where you are doing the fieldwork, is there anything like the freedom of information act that might help?

What a mess! The bad news is that if you are not registered for a PhD then you are not actually doing one, and I think you will struggle to use your work at this place towards one unless the institute has an agreement on this with a local university. Are there any other people there doing a PhD? If so, ask them about the registration arrangements asap. It sounds as if this institute is effectively using you as a funded researcher rather than providing training. What you need to find is their original application for the Marie Curie funding if you possibly can and see what they claimed to be delivering against what they actually are. That would give you grounds for your complaint. If I remember correctly MC studentships can be used for pre-doctoral training i.e. the stage before a PhD but they would have guaranteed training and should not have advertised it as a PhD if it is not. I'm an ex MC fellow myself and wonder if the association might be able to give you some advice: http://www.mariecurie.org/ - also if you do leave, make sure the European Commission knows why. If this institute is abusing the system then they need to know about it.

This is very confusing as you contadict yourself quite a lot. To clarify
Have you now managed to pass the upgrade or are you working towards an MPhil now?
Was she complaining about you refusing help before or after you went out of contact for 5 months after failing the upgrade?
How are you close to submission, if you failed upgrade and now want to rewrite your proposal?
Is your relationship with your supervisor now irredeemable?

The answers to those would I think help people give you sensible advice on whether to change or not.

On the bits I think I have understood properly:

Fieldwork: if key people are not available for interview, try asking to speak to their assistants (who tend to be flattered and often know more anyway). Also try snowballing - ask everyone you do interview to recommend others you should speak to and then tell that person that person x said they were a key person to speak with. Namedropping and flattery can work wonders. Getting knocked back when you request interviews is really normal in qualitative research especially if you are doing elite interviews. You just need to regroup and think laterally about who would be good substitutes. On the no written sources bit, do you mean that sources you'd identified are not available where you had expected them to be? If you know they exist, try to contact the authors perhaps? Or think about where the experts on this topic work and check their institution's library catalogues. There are also metacatalogues that can help - this German site is quite good for example: http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/kvk_en.html You can always do interlibrary loans when you get back.
If you hadn't done your homework before going on fieldwork and were just assuming things would exist, I think the only thing you can do is work steadily through the potential libraries /archives in your fieldwork location and try to think out of the box about different search terms. Try to make the most of your trip even if it's not turning out as you hoped and gather as much as you can even if you're not sure it's relevant. You can always sort out and discard when you're at home. And honestly however well-planned, the fieldwork is always something that throws up unexpected difficulties. You just need your plan B.
I would also say that I think you're expecting your supervisor to do more than is reasonable on the fieldwork front - if she is not an expert in your field she won't know what sources are available in your fieldwork location or who is easy to interview. My very nice supervisor had no real input into my fieldwork - it was expected that if I wanted a PhD that I needed to figure it out myself and learn by making mistakes (and yes I most certainly made a lot). I don't think that's an unusual experience. Hope this helps a bit.

Hi,

Usually the external examiner would be asked to look at it, and if he / she confirms the fail then the exam board will decide what to do. If you have a look in the exam regulations for Liverpool you can probably find out for sure but I'd suspect that you will be given two choices a) if you passed all the other modules you could walk away with a postgrad diploma or b) you could revise and resubmit the dissertation but the mark will probably be capped. If there are extenuating circumstances of any sort and you can prove them, then I'd suggest letting your course leader know about them asap.

Brilliant! I hope it all goes swimmingly from here on in.

OK so if I remember correctly 6.5 is a grade D in ECTS so a low 2:2 in UK terms and a 7 ECTS C so a high 2:2. That realistically is not going to look terribly competitive however you spin it, particularly if there's not going to be a decent reference from your current project to counteract it. How about applying for research assistant jobs in biggish labs either in a university or industry as a stepping stone? That might get you the good reference and extra lab experience, new techniques learnt etc that would help to counterbalance your academic record. I have a friend who was in a similar position, who got a job at Bayer with that in mind. Ironically, she's now decided against a PhD as she enjoys the job and has got used to having money to spend...

Also I don't know what support Dutch universities offer but is there a counselling or a careers service you could visit? You just sound so negative and down, and I wonder whether talking to someone trained might help. I know from my own experience of studying abroad that when things are going badly, being in an unfamiliar system can really be the final straw that breaks the camel's back.

I'd side with the 'pointless if you've not actually got anything to ask' camp. It must be incredibly irritating to be on the receiving end of pointless phone calls / emails.

Hi - I think very fair means that they are not the type of person to criticise your work just because you haven't used their own pet methodology / theoretical framework / cited everything they've ever written. In other words people known to be objective in their evaluations. It doesn't mean that they'll be pushovers more that your supervisors are confident that they will conduct the viva very professionally. Good luck and try not to panic!