I have always wanted to do a PhD and luckily had a few offers of scholarships from a number of universities. In the end I chose to go the one with the best reputation. I think maybe because I never thought I would have the opportunity to study in such an institution I wanted to go there. It has however turned into a nightmare. I am in the social sciences and pretty much everyone else here is in the sciences so I cant to talk about my work or attuned interesting talks within the university. in addition my supervisors have no interest or real knowledge about what it is I am researching. The result being I can hand anything to them and they cant provide any real feedback. One of the universities I turned down has a number of people all doing research into my area and so I really regret not going there. I was wondering if anyone else had this situation? Do you think it would be possible to see if I could apply for the other university and see if I can get the scholarship offer again? Has anyone dropped out of a PhD form one university and started again in a different one?

I haven't got direct experience of this problem, but I have known other PhD colleagues who have and have successfully overcome this.

Firstly what year in your PhD are you currently? This really does have a considerable bearing on your choices, as a prospective university may have reservations of giving funding to someone who has left a PhD late in the process (beyond 12 months into a 3 year programme). Funding, especially in social science is so scarce and universities really want to allocate it to a "safe bet" so to speak. I would say exhaust all other options first before going down this route.

Secondly have you spoken to your Graduate School officer (or equivalent) about your options? I know in some of my colleague's instances they were able to recruit an external specialist (from another university) to be an additional supervisor so that they had someone on their supervisory team to provide expert feedback. This meant that their "in-house" supervisory team focused more on the process (research methods, analysis and structure of thesis) and the external specialist gave specific feedback on the content.

Also as someone who has only recently submitted I really cannot stress the importance of attending as many conferences and seminar talks outside of university as possible in your research area. Build a network of specialists in your field.

'...in addition my supervisors have no interest or real knowledge about what it is I am researching.'

This is just kinda normal I'm afraid. You don't get much attention and no one really cares about your work. Some PhD candidates get lucky with *amazing* supervisors, but most don't.

My advice is to keep plugging away. Get your draft written, ask people to read it well in advance of the viva, and you should be fine under your own steam.