Politics and International Studies University of Cambridge

Overview

The first year of the Politics and International Studies at University of Cambridge culminates in the production of a report, which serves as the basis for the registration exercise at the end of the year. This registration exercise is required to move on to official registration for the PhD degree and is conducted through a meeting with your postgraduate adviser and an independent assessor. Its purpose is to ensure that your research project is viable, that an appropriate methodology is being applied and that relevant literatures are being drawn upon.

The second major focus of the first year is research training. There is a weekly seminar on the methodological and philosophical questions that underpin research in the contemporary social sciences, which all first-year PhD students attend.

Alongside the methods course, PhD students choose two further courses to attend from a range of options, such as statistics, qualitative methods and languages. This is mandatory for the registration exercise.

For part-time students, whilst the methods training is expected to be carried out in the first year, additional training and the registration exercise may take place in the second term (Lent) of the second year.

The content of the second and third years for full-time students and the third and fifth years for part-time students varies considerably depending on the type of research being conducted. Many students spend a considerable portion of the second year (3/4th year part-time) of their PhD out of Cambridge on fieldwork, while others are resident throughout. To assist you in developing your research, we schedule an annual meeting with your primary Supervisor and postgraduate adviser, for which you produce a report for discussion.

Learning outcomes

The PhD programme enables you, first and foremost, to develop your detailed knowledge of one specific field of knowledge and, through your original research, to contribute to this field. But it also gives you training in a broad variety of academic skills, engagement through seminars with scholars and practitioners working in a wide variety of other fields, opportunities to be involved in lecturing and teaching, and preparation for the job market.

Many of our PhD students also engage through the university in training in learning new languages or developing existing non-native language skills; presenting their work to non-academic audiences such as policy-makers, NGOs or commercial organisations; and writing for and editing POLIS's series of publications.