Hi everybody.

I am writing to search some advices, or at least some wise words concerning my situation and my future.
As a matter of a fact, I am actually in (my second) Master (political sciences), and come from a very (I would like to underline this word) interdisciplinary background in social sciences : anthropology, languages (rares), history, politics... and I feel a bit lost just now.

I would like to do a PhD, not only because it's convenient and that I cannot have a job ( ;-) ), but because I am interested in research. The fact is that I can't figure 1. a topic, and 2. (worse) a specialization : as you may have guessed through my interest for interdisciplinary disciplines, I have not switched because I was unable to stay in one or another, but because I found it interesting to learn new (cross-disciplinary) things, and I have some difficulties to figure how to be happy by being too much "specialized" (it's not and offense toward the "specialized" persons. It is just how I feel for my own case), and how to "assemble" that and make it a strengh rather than a weakness (one of the problems of an interdisciplinary education, on my own opinion, is that you may perceive some limits of one discipline, limits which are "normality" for an other, but itself limited, etc. etc.).

Living in Europe (working languages : French and English, speaking more than those 2), the possibilities of an interdisciplinary PhD are quite limited to the best of my knowledge (and las months of research), at least in social sciences, and the scholarships (no scholarships, no PhD, as simple as that) are even more rare with the crisis (for eg. the soc. sciences dept. of the Uni Maastricht, NL, does not even offers one this year), so I really don't know where to address, and what to do, in the several acceptations of those words....

I you have any advices or thoughts, that'll be really kind of you,

Regards,

iMe.

Hi iMe, have you tried searching for existing topics in your area(s) of interest?

Hi IMe, I can't offer advice about where to do a cross disciplinary PhD in Europe and who offers them.

However, I can speak a little about how it seems that PhD's work, based on my own understanding from working on one (I'm a year into mine by full time standards and work output-although I am doing it part-time).

No matter what topic you do and how interdisciplinary its beginnings were-you will find in the PhD that you will still need to go very in depth in this one topic, question, area or hypothesis.

The PhD is like pouring a mixture of liquids down a funnel and distilling them into a very distinct and refined essence. So even if you began from a topic that stemmed across three or four disciplines, you would have to finally end up with the one thing that you are going deeper and deeper into. It may start off being very broad but the depth of knowledge about this one issue or question is what ultimately results from your PhD.

So saying...it is also true that even if you begin your PhD from a distinct discipline and body of knowledge, you will also find when really beginning your research and trawling through stuff for the literature review and when refining your topic, question, plan and approach, you need to read broadly and be open to many possiblities. And you can find yourself reading literature from a variety of disciplines and areas, even if your topic sits very firmly in one discipline only. So for example, my topic is in education and a very specific form of education but I am still reading psychology, sociology, policy documents as well as educational research and I'm reading more sociology and philosophy when it comes to methodologies.

Knowing that, rather than thinking about a cross disciplinary PhD-perhaps start thinking about some topics of interest or questions-analyse where these might fit -in term's of a major discipline focus, and start from there? Disregard advice if it doesn't seem to help though-it's just a thought.