My 5 PhD Proposals (2014-15)

On gaining my BA degree summer 2013, I immediately started working on my aesthetics research paper on BritArt and Empathy. Later, I reworked it by putting more emphasis on Hume to tailor it to a Hume Workshop. So here I took two topics (and a philosopher) and played around with how they interconnected. So here again, I'm using the same approach as I learnt in the A2 Philosophy course content (final unit). 

Then I thought up more ideas in the autumn 2013, read through a lot of uni material on the internet as well as books on PhDs: how to structure a PhD proposal and PhD research skills. 

I used these PhD research skills when later working as an independent researcher in philosophy, January 2015 onwards. What's the difference between my 2013 research on BritArt and my 2015 research on Spinoza? 🤔 

1) the first was me finally (I couldn't wait to leave uni!👩‍🎓) being able to get down to my own research in philosophy ie without a dissertation supervisor and without having to balance a course and my research simultaneously. Which is why I think lecturers should teach 3 terms a year to give value for money and have less pressure to do research and hit targets and deadlines. They clearly find it too much to do both and it makes them stressed out which also has a knock-on effect on their students. 

2) By 2015 I had formed a whole theory / interpretation of Spinoza (Dec. 2014) so I started writing a paper on it and going back out into the philosophy world 🌎🤔 more often to get some feedback from Spinozists on it e.g. I travelled to a History of Philosophy conference where I heard several papers on Spinoza 👍, I asked lots of questions 🙋❔discussed my theory/ interpretation with several male lecturers and a young female PhD student from Israel. Afterwards, I emailed my draft paper to some of them and a few others who hadn't been at that conference but are in that research area. (No, Susan James wasn't one of those I chatted to or emailed my draft paper on Spinoza to, just thought I'd clarify before someone, as usual, pretends otherwise  and exaggerates 🤷🙄🤦.) So I was putting down my mark as a researcher in philosophy rather than just doing research for myself e.g. BritArt and another paper on the problem with identity in music and performance (both on my academia page, see link below) and sending off PhD research proposals. By the autumn term of 2015, I sent off two abstracts simultaneously (one on Spinoza and one on Shepherd) for two conferences. So I slowly ceased to see myself as a prospective postgrad student and incrementally saw myself as a researcher within philosophy. My mother was instrumental in getting me to take my research to another level rather than just something I do for myself while waiting to do a PhD. 👍🙂❤ I then looked around and saw there were other independent researchers with my qualifications, usually in the sciences😮 (which you'd think was especially tricky because they need lab time or field trips and peer review to check their idea doesn't kill anyone👩‍🔬🔬📈📉📊📋💉💊😱) but they manage to undertake independent research very well🙂 so I'm good to go in philosophy📝📚 🙂👍❤. 

In 2013-14, I also read and learnt about exactly how to approach lecturers who you think might be suitable supervisors for your particular research interests and proposal/s. Before emailing PhD research proposal to lecturers whose research areas matched my PhD proposals, I collated a list of UK universities where I met all the entrance requirements for a PhD application, including having a 2:1 BA degree which I had because I have a high 2:1. I also secured two referees (male lecturers who marked my essays when they were my tutorial tutors in my final year on my BA Philosophy degree) by asking them by email early 2014 whether they would be happy to be my referees for work and study applications and they replied yes. So I don't know why there was confusion in 2016 for post grad study. 

None of the email proposals were for either of the unis I had studied at during 2009-2013.

My first PhD proposal I emailed (Jan 8th 2014) was:

"Dear...

Before applying to..... undertake a PhD, I am emailing my pre-proposal to you to ask you if you would be interested in supervising my PhD. My interest is in Early Modern political thinkers. The title of my PhD is: Hume versus Rousseau: Was Rousseau influenced by Hume?  

My research idea arose from two sources. Firstly, as a member of the Hume Society I was made aware by a call for papers email circular (2012) of the need to research Hume's politics since this area is under-researched. Secondly, as a result of attending the 2012 (June 28th - 29th) University of Leeds conference on "Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Britain", I began to question whether the infamous quarrel between Rousseau and Hume has led to Hume's influence on Rousseau being overshadowed and underestimated.

Hence, my thesis is that, contrary to their infamous quarrel, in terms of political theory, there may be textual evidence to suggest that Rousseau's political views became more in agreement with Hume's after they met in 1765 and after Rousseau's stay in Great Britain (1766-1767). I think there is a subtle shift in Rousseau's stance between his "Of the Social Contract" (published 1762) and his "Considerations on the Government of Poland" (written 1772). However, there may be alternative explanations.                

So, in my PhD, I shall compare and contrast the political texts of Hume and Rousseau to uncover similarities and differences between them to see whether my thesis is borne out, as well as looking at Hume and Rousseau's political thought in the context of other thinkers eg d'Holbach.  

I am a recent graduate in Philosophy (BA, 2:1, London University 2013). Both Hume and Rousseau were taught as part of my undergraduate degree. In my final year, I wrote a dissertation on Hume on Sympathy using a variety of his texts from his very well known works to his less well known writings eg Parties in General Essay 8 and The Sceptic Essay 18. I gained a 2:1 (68%) for my dissertation and a first (71%) for Political Philosophy (level 6 final year) which was my chosen specialisation. As part of the latter I wrote an essay on Rousseau's Lawgiver (69%). I have spent the intervening months between graduating and now working on my chosen area of research. I am fluent in French."

His reply was: 

"Many thanks for your email. I am very interested in the relationship between Hume and other thinkers, and think that the area you want to study is very promising. If you have a longer and more formal proposal, I would be very interested to have a look at it. 

There is an excellent book that was published recently (2011 I believe) by Michael Frazer on the Enlightenment of Sympathy, I do not know whether you are familiar with it, but he details Hume's approach quite succinctly. Definitely worth a read if you haven't had a look at it yet. I also remember some quite interesting letters in Hume's correspondence on his 'friendship' with Rousseau. They would certainly help with the context around their quarrel. 

If you haven't been in touch with him yet, I suggest you get in touch with... our Director of Graduate Studies (copied to this email), as he can give you more guidance on the application process. I believe that the scholarship deadline is coming up quite soon, so I would encourage you to take part in the process as early as possible. 

I look forward to reading your full proposal when you have it. I am happy to give you comments on it before you submit it formally to the School.

All the best.... "

The supervisor was a recent PhD graduate so inexperienced when it came to supervision. I had already had enough of PhD students and their inability to mark essays. He's already underestimating me and the topic. He hasn't understood my thesis by the simplistic reading he is suggesting! 🙄 The director he referred me to couldn't even get his page references right so not heartening! 😠I'd had enough of lecturers mucking about feigning incompetence. I'd heard that once too often!

The full version of this Hume/Rousseau PhD proposal is available on my academia page. 

A full length version of my second PhD proposal on Citizenship, written for the Cambridge University Gender Centre and their specifications for PhD proposal format and length is equally available on my academia page. 

Both my first and second PhD proposals are available at:

https://libakaucky.academia.edu/research 

see: 'The Politics of Hume and Rousseau' and 'A Feminist Interpretation of the Role of Empathy in Political Philosophy'. 

The second PhD proposal was emailed to Susan James at a USA email address, in her capacity as a member of staff at the Cambridge University Gender Centre. It was up to her to let me know if she couldn't supervise it there for whatever reason. 

So I have no idea why the then Head of Department, of the uni I had just graduated from, suddenly stuck his nose in 👃 and emailed 📧 me (30th Jan 2014) out of the blue, off-cold and cc-ing post grad admin into his email. He wasn't a member of staff when I was there, I've never met him, talked to him or emailed him (then or since) and I had no idea who he was. Worse still, he had a pompous attitude that she was on leave so she isn't "available to answer your queries" and I should instead email the college admin. How did he even know I'd emailed her? 🤔 It "came to" his "attention" - who by? Then he writes she can't reply to queries while on leave, but she already had! So yet again, someone is implying she is doing something she shouldn't be doing, which is exceedingly rude because she has just been in charge of PhD students herself so she would know what she could / couldn't do. It was also a pointless thing to state because she didn't need to reply to me at the time that he wrote it.  And it's irrelevant whether she is on leave or not. Just because someone is on leave does not mean they cannot receive work emails! It is also normal guidelines that you can email PhD proposals to lecturers on leave otherwise 1) you are depriving them of supervision jobs which they start sometime after returning from leave. 2) It would waste prospective students' time because having to wait impacts unfairly on their applications, starting date and funding deadlines. In my case, this was particularly problematic. Oxbridge application deadlines are much sooner than others so it is unreasonable for me to wait. As it was, it was highly unlikely she would be able to supervise it until autumn 2015, one year after returning from leave! So planning ahead was essential. In addition, all the books etc I'd read state that you need to email the lecturer themselves who you want as the prospective supervisor to ask them whether they wish to / are interested in undertaking the PhD and if they feel it suits their research area/s. It is not a question for admin who are not researchers or potential supervisors!  

This was a totally inappropriate email for him to write to me. One, I wasn't trying to apply to that university so he had no right or authority to pass any comment and his admin were irrelevant to me. Two, it was ludicrous for him to assume I was interested in applying to do post grad at his university. I had just made it clear in an email to her just prior to his email that I would never study at that university again - so he's clearly not following on from what I wrote to her! And furthermore, surely he should know that I had sent her a long PhD proposal which could not be meant for that university because the length and style of it was tailored for the Cambridge Gender Centre, not his uni which had different PhD proposal requirements. Moreover, you couldn't do a PhD at the College he was at because that uni slow paces everyone through two Masters 😫before even getting on to an MPhil! Being a student all the way through there means studying for between minimum 10 years full time or double that for part-time😱! That's just an absurd system, especially as a mature student. And I had the worst of times, 4 years as a student there was bad enough, why on earth would I want to suffer there for another year and possibly up to between 6-7 years - 12 years?! 😵😱 Three, did he not bother to check I was no longer a student there and that I had cancelled my alumni status in writing to the uni to remove any affiliation with that uni (so all my data should have been erased with it)? 🤷🤦😠 

Hence he should not be writing that email to me or even possess my personal email address. He had no idea what he was on about, what we had been discussing by email and yet pretended he knew what was going on. He had no right to tell me what to do - I'm not even his student or a prospective student! 

This, yet again, just goes to prove how hysterical and out of control that department/university is with me, constantly interfering with anything I do, especially if it is even remotely relevant to Susan James! 😡😠 They all need to just calm down 🙄😶😴 

My third PhD proposal I emailed out (Feb 12th 2014) was:

"Dear...

I am emailing to ask you if you would be interested in supervising me for a PhD on Hannah Arendt. I would like to examine Arendt's banality of evil argument in her book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, as a suggested explanation for widespread evil and its impact on citizenship and rights and re-interpret her banality argument in light of her other works and letters.

I have always had an interest in indigenous peoples, especially Native Americans throughout the American continent and Aborigines and would be keen to relate their political struggles, especially for rights and citizenship, to my research.

I graduated last year (2013) with a 2:1 in BA Philosophy (London University). In my final year I achieved 68% (2:1) in my personal research module where I did a re-interpretation of Hume's writings on sympathy. In my level 6 political philosophy module, my final year option, I gained a 71% (1st) for both my extended essay coursework and my exam. In the intervening months between graduating and now I have been working on PhD proposal ideas and exploring a research need to address the controversies and tensions that remain in Arendt's banality of evil argument."

This received an irrelevant response I couldn't be bothered wasting my time with. He couldn't even spell my name correctly 🙄 

 

On the same day (Feb 12th 2014) I also emailed a fourth PhD proposal:

"Dear....

I am emailing you to ask you if you would be interested in co-supervising me for a long-distance PhD at.... University. I would like to do feminist philosophical research on Pogge's stance on justice and poverty. I wish to contribute to research on crimes against humanity and moral responsibility by drawing inspiration from Pogge's arguments, as well as his critics, to attempt to further these current moral and political debates by analysing and re-interpreting them in terms of a feminist philosophical concept of empathy. In this way, my thesis would state that by utilizing a feminist concept of empathy and applying it to issues that concern humanity as a whole, it may be possible to arrive at an even more gender sensitive notion of citizenship, global justice and moral and political responsibility.

I am a recent graduate (2013) with a 2:1 in BA Philosophy from London University (4 year part-time degree). In my final year, I achieved 68% (2:1) for my personal research module. My dissertation for this research consisted of a feminist philosophical approach to sympathy and the concept of empathy in Hume's writings and how he may be providing an empathy-based moral theory that could be even more extensively utilized by feminist philosophical research and moral philosophers. I chose political philosophy for my level 6 final year option and gained 71% (1st) in it for both my exam and extended essay coursework. As part of my study for this module, in my first term I wrote an essay (71%) on justice and exploitation and in my second term I became very interested in Pogge's political philosophy when studying the topic of nations, global poverty and justice."

On the 20th February 2014, she replied:

"Thank you so much for inviting me to co-supervise your Ph.D. I am very open to considering this but not yet ready to accept. First, I don't even begin working for.... until Oct, 2014. Second, working together on a Ph.D. dissertation is a huge commitment for both student and supervisor and neither of us should take it on without meeting the other. We need to explore each other's philosophical (and perhaps temperamental!) compatibility.

Are you aware that quite a bit of work exists already in the general area that you identify. Authors include (but are not limited to) Fiona Robinson, Joan Tronto, and Tove Peterson (Oslo and a student of Pogge's).

Will you be in..... in June of this year? I plan to be there then and perhaps we could meet in the Phil Dept or go for coffee and discuss it further.

Thanks again for this invitation,..."

(Yes, being philosophically compatible is important, that's why Susan James should have supervised my dissertation, not Price, and failing that, she should have supervised my PhD. As for temperament - what's that got to do with anything? Just be pleasant, polite, sociable and get on with the work!)

My reply to her email (Feb 26th 2014) was:

"Dear...

Thank you very much for your email and your kind invitation to meet for coffee together in.... I am delighted that you are considering co-supervising my PhD. Which day, time, drinks place is most convenient for you? 

I am interested in the same research field as you mentioned in your email. I hope to contribute to research in some small original way by, amongst other things, using an alternative angle of approach from theirs in my thesis and supporting it with a differently structured feminist, ethical, political philosophical argument.

Looking forward to meeting you in June,

Yours sincerely..... "

She emailed back on the 27th February 2014, in a garbled fashion:

"In our previous correspondence, I assumed you were already enrolled in the .....grad philosophy program. Now I have learned you are not. In this response, I am copying in Dr.... who I believe currently runs that program. I thought you two might like to be in touch with her.

I can't even consider supervising the dissertation of someone who is not yet even a .... Ph.D. student! Of course I'm willing to meet with you for coffee but it seems that you must not realize that I live in .... and so far haven't even booked flights for the UK next summer.

If you are still interested and if you become a student at the .....let's be in touch in May or June. Bear in mind that, as I said, I don't even begin working for .... until 1 October of this year!

All best,..... "

🤔🙄🤔😡 Well, if you can make sense of this last email, I'm impressed! 😮 I ignored it, didn't email either her or the other person she suddenly cc-ed into this email. There is no answer to rubbish like this. She's making out I withheld information that I hadn't. As you can see, I made it very clear in my first email what my academic background was - I'd just graduated with a BA, no mention of being currently enrolled anywhere, so why would she assume something I hadn't written. If I was enrolled there, I wouldn't need to look for a supervisor, I'd already be allocated one! And I wouldn't be writing futuristically "I would like to...I wish to"! 

Why does she write "you two" - that's either just grammatically incorrect, a typo, or she sees an invisible friend next to me that I don't know anything about. I was the only one writing to her - where's the other person? 🤔🙄

It was her idea to meet for coffee, not mine! She chose the month, meeting place/s, year and wrote she "planned to be there then" ie in the UK. I merely agreed to her suggestion of coffee because I'm sociable that way. But it's not for me to check her flights for her. 

I don't appreciate her giving the person she has cc-ed into this email the wrong impression about my initial email to her and her initial response to me. Because the first two emails had a different title from the next two, the cc-ed person cannot follow how the conversation began. She shouldn't be trying to make me look bad in front of someone else and skewing the facts. Prospective students shouldn't have to put up with this! I did everything right, I don't deserve this attitude problem from anyone! 😠 

She could just respond politely and say:

sorry, it may not be possible after all but thank you for considering me and I wish you all the best with your PhD proposal and with finding a supervisor. 

What's so hard about that! Since when did rude, obnoxious behaviour become the norm and something I'm supposed to put up with whenever someone feels like it. 

The only thing is, that department did have one member of staff (not mentioned in these emails and not someone I contacted or had ever talked to at any time) who was at my last uni, same dept - mere coincidence? 🤔 You decide.

My fifth and final PhD proposal email was (June 28th 2015):

"Dear....

I have a BA in Philosophy (2.1; 2013). My chosen specialist subjects within that were Aesthetics, Politics and Ethics. For my undergraduate dissertation I researched Hume and Empathy. Since then I have carried on doing my own philosophy research. This included writing a draft paper on my novel interpretation of Spinoza which I sent to relevant philosophy professors and received positive feedback that my arguments were excellent and plausible.

I would like to pursue a PhD in Philosophy with you on Adorno and his “new categorical imperative”. This would involve all three of my above chosen specialisations as well as Social philosophy. Are you interested in supervising this PhD research with me?

Best wishes,

Liba (Libuse Kaucky)" 

His response was (14th July 2015):

"Hi Liba,

In principle I would be interested, as it is a good topic. The complicating factor is that after 2 years research leave (when I still supervise PhD students) I will be retiring. However, I won't be stopping doing graduate supervision if.... offer me reasonable terms to do it. I'm still waiting to hear about this, which is what delayed my reply. I'll keep you posted.

Best wishes,... "

I didn't hear from him again. However, I note with interest that he continues to work and communicate with his students through his leave! Just because someone is on leave, it doesn't mean they disappear into a black hole!