swantje, as yours is a 1+3 award, i'm not sure about the criteria - but they will be along the lines of: your MSc course (the 1+ bit) being accredited by the ESRC; your supervisor fulfilling all necessary criteria, like, if he/she is new to supervising, the school would have to provide a second supervisor with more experience to you... things like that.

are you going to live in students' residences?

hey there,
i have a friend who is always broke. i know that that's the reason why she doesn't come do stuff because last year we were always broke together; i got funding in the mean time, she didn't. still, she never says anything like "i'd love to but can't afford it"; rather, she always says "i'm busy, i don't have time". i think that's a bad response as it makes people feel that you don't think them worth your time, rather than the truth, that you just can't afford it. so now i don't ask her "hey, shall we go out for coffee?" anymore, but rather "hey, can i buy you a cup of coffee?" and she agrees much more often!
but i only thought of doing that because i know her situation - i guess my point is, tell people the real reason!

hey there,
i'm FT but have a part-time colleague. i never really met this guy as he never came to any of the social events of our centre. but this last year we were both teaching on the same course, and met once a week to plan our classes together. that was great! so what i'm saying is perhaps you could manage to get into teaching? that would be a way to get to know people.
on the other hand, what you are complaining about sometimes appears to me as a blessing! at least you get out of the ivory tower. you get to talk to "normal" people. everyone i ever see is an academic of some sorts or other. it can be too much!

i bought a voice recorder just now. when deciding on which one, i thought i'd get one which will allow me to do focus groups in another, later project, instead of just one that is good enough for interviews. i think both focus groups and interviews have advantages - in interviews, you have better chances of reaching intimate, personal information. focus groups are more dynamic and allow you as a researcher to remain more in the background.

i'm doing "just" interviews. my strategy is to do interviews with the same persons repeatedly. that way, a) i can confront them in the second interview with topics that other interviewees brought up in the first interviews; b) i can pick up on stuff they said the first time round but i didn't realise at the time, didn't ask back. c) i get a wider variety of things, as they talk about stuff that is currently at the top of their minds - and that can change from day to day. d) as i see people again and again, they might come to trust me with more intimate stuff they wouldn't tell me the first time round.

hi A116 and welcome!
i also "mix" quant and qual - that is, in my masters i did quantitative stuff, my PhD is mainly qualitative, but i am working on a kind of weird quant project on the side. so it is not as much that i mix them in one project but just do them both. i find that, well, people don't "hate" me, but they certainly do think me very strange! although i must say: the qual people think i'm weird for doing, for being interested in quant stuff; the quant people think qual stuff is simply pointless and "unscientific". not quite the same, not a mirror image in the attitudes. i wonder how you experience that? how do you mix quant and qual?
sorry doc2008 for hijacking...

olivia - re, what are the benefits?
- doing something i like for money
- doing new things all the time (all of my previous jobs, i started off well enough but got bored once i was doing the same thing for the second time...)
- doing something i think i am good at - thinking analytically and stuff
- the good feeling of staying abreast with the newest developments and contributing to them, too
- being able to organise my own time - that's very important to me - when i HAVE TO get up early, i can't sleep. when i can get up whenever i want, i sleep perfectly, and get up early. insomnia really makes me unwell.
- the good feeling of being able to help other people (students, friends) on their way

as to negotiating: often the pay itself is not really negotiable. but what you can discuss is things like: less teaching duties, or, getting paid extra for any teaching that you do do. access to extra funding for projects. access do departmental funds for specific experiments. having a research student or research assistant for lab work, literature review, etc. things like that.

and yes, these day an average londoner who works full time cannot afford to rent a flat for him-/herself. if you look through gumtree you'll find that many of the ads for houseshares are by/for professionals. that's not because they think it's a fun way to live...

verdy, what does that post-doc entail? will you be doing any teaching at all, any admin, or just research?

as far as i understand post-PhD-jobs that are purely research are rarely paid much more than what you say. on the other hand, jobs that involve significant amounts of teaching tend to pay more (always depending on the field). my partner is a new lecturer in economics, hasn't even finished his PhD yet, and gets ca. 35'000 plus london allowance. but then, during term time he has been working on teaching stuff more or less 7 days a week. i guess the logic is that if you get a "just research" post doc, the low pay reflects the fact that this postdoc will enable you to progress in your career much faster than someone burdened with teaching duties.

books, i would not drop out/change university for just that reason. instead, give some thought to how you can make your degree from the less prestigious institution count. for example, get the best external examiner. this person is very important - if he/she writes references for you, and is very prestigious, nobody cares about the name of your university. or, make sure you get some top quality publications. the extra time you'd invest if you'd start your PhD anew at a new uni is better spent in working on a really good publication, if you ask me.

i am also in a related field. regarding your non-fundedness being detrimental to your career prospects: yes, it is. but similarly, a lot of other things are detrimental, such as too few or too low quality publications; lack of experience with conferences; lack of breadth of research interests; lack of teaching experience; lack of "proper" fieldwork experience; lack of promise for future development; etc.
what i am saying is: very few people have a "perfect" CV at the end of their PhD. everyone has some downsides. yours will be "did not achieve funding". you can balance that out by being good in other important critera. and, even if you are not fully funded, you can try to get bits and bobs of funding here and there (check out the wenner gren foundation!) which would go a long way to demonstrate that yes, you are a candidate who has demonstrated ability to obtain funding. so, no detrimental effect on your job chances!

i'm in social sciences. i believe there are more single-author papers around than multiple-authored ones, and single-authoring is the standard (it is different in disciplines such as psychology and economics which sometimes are counted as social sciences, too).

yes, my relationship to my supervisor is definitely good enough for discussing such issues - if they'd ever come up. i think i would never downright refuse her, but mainly because she would never insist if i had good reasons against it.

swantje, it is guaranteed - but not if you don't submit that stuff on time! and not if you do not fulfill the criteria which the ESRC demands. so, get on with it and make sure you submit in time!

and enjoy your PhD experience

sometimes our supervisors really do surprise us, don't they!

i'd agree. if the point of the focus groups was to have some basis on which to develop your interview guideline, and you have already got a working interview guideline, what is the remaining point of the focus groups?

the downside is that you lose the possibility of a methods triangulation. but if that wasn't the point all along, that should not really be a problem.

what struck me: the austrian authorities always thought he was a decent guy "because he looked proper, was dynamic and potent". "potent"??? yeah right. i'm not getting revenge fantasies. i am getting upset because nobody seems to be asking "what kind of society is this where men are seen as good citizens when they subdue their wives, terrorize their families, and are dictatorial autocrats?" even without the cellar: why did nobody ever ask why his wive never ever said a word in contradiction to him? because that's how good wives behave... why did nobody ask why neighbour kids were scared of this man? because men can be scary. i am not saying that this makes any of what that guy did better, but i do believe that it was only possible because certain gender regimes are accepted in society. all he really did was take the logic to the end.