Hello everyone. Firstly, I have to say I am very thankful for this site because it puts phd students of different backgrounds in direct contact with one another, which is much rarer in real life.

Okay, to introduce myself: I am in my 7th month as a Phd student. I am working in the field of urban history. However, recently I've been feeling that the city I will be studying does not have much sources as other cities. I am tending to change or modify my topic but I am afraid to confront my supervisor in fear of appearing unprofessional. Besides, my supervisor keeps reassuring me that the sources are enough... I think my fear stems from the fact that I have not actually started my fieldwork so I have not worked on the primary sources yet which are mainly court records and archival sources.

Any advice?

I would think it's possible that you are both right - even if there are not so many sources for the city you've chosen as for others, there could still be enough. You also want to consider how much has been written about the others...?

In my experience it is a bit hard to tell how much material is involved until you do start working through it. Are your supervisor's interests close enough to your topic that he/she is quite familiar with what's available? If so, and also assuming that they have supervised a good few PhDs, I'd probably tend to trust them on the quantity issue.

But if you're not comfortable with the topic at all, then it would do no harm to talk to your supervisor about tweaking it - better now than later, perhaps? At least don't avoid the conversation just out of worry about giving a bad impression.

Hi! I'm doing a significant part of urban history in my phd. What I've ended up doing is using more sociological theory to look at the city in question. I've also used studies of other cities to back up what I'm trying to say about this one...
What city are you doing and what are you actually doing it on?

ProcrastiPro, thanks so much for your reply. We'll see how it all figures out.

Sleepyhead,

I am only 6 months into my PhD so I am just starting to actually put together whatever methodology I aim to use. So far, I will use a lot of sociological application into my work but not really any theoretical framework because it will frame me and I don't want that. But also architectural history is major in my work. I too am using other works on other cities for my city. I am doing a city, tripoli in lebanon from 1920 to 1943. I am very worried about my primary sources, which are only court records, governmental archives in france, and press. Do you face the same problems? And what are your approaches and are you applying any theories?