Students registered for the MPhil in International History are required in their first year to attend the Department's research training programme which has four components:
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HY501 - A series of seminars organised by members of the Department on writing a thesis, historiography, and research methods
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The appropriate seminars and lectures offered by the Methodology Institute
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A course in historical methods and sources run by the Institute of Historical Research: Institute of Historical Research (IHR) home page
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A short course on sources at the Public Record Office given by an archivist:
Students are also advised to attend relevant seminars organised within the School or in other colleges of the University of London.
The Department requires students to report formally on their progress at least twice a year. If their progress is deemed unsatisfactory by the Doctoral Programme Director or supervisor their position will be assessed and you will not be allowed to continue in the programme.
As a research student in the Department, you will be initially registered for the MPhil degree. In order to be upgraded from MPhil registration to PhD, you must prepare a dossier comprised of the following items:
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the provisional title of your thesis, together with the provisional titles of your chapters and a brief description of the contents of each chapter; at a maximum, this should fill no more than two sides of an A4 sheet;
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a brief outline of your historic hypothesis with an indication of how you propose to test it, this is particularly important as it will indicate the main aim of your research.
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an historiographical essay, in which you (i) evaluate the contributions to your topic of the most important memoirs, monographs, journal articles and other published or unpublished accounts; and (ii) explain how your own thesis will contribute to the topic; since the amount of source material may differ greatly among theses, no precise length is specified, but in most cases the Department would expect an essay of 4,000 to 8,000 words;
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a draft of one of your chapters: this must be based mainly upon primary sources and should be approximately 10,000 words in length (including footnotes).
The deadline for submitting your dossier (three hard copies) is 13th June 2012 (week 8 Summer Term) of your first year of study, if you are a full-time student starting in the Michaelmas term 1 March in second year if you are a part-time student who started in the Michaelmas term. But it is essential to have your dossier ready well before the deadline, to allow your supervisor time to review the upgrade material and to incorporate his/her advice in the final draft. You should seek the approval of your supervisor for the contents of the dossier, although the final decision to submit it rests with you. You may apply for a postponement of your submission to the Doctoral Programme Director in the event of unforeseeable difficulties in your research or for health or compassionate reasons. The request must have the formal support of your supervisor.
The submission will be read by three members of the Department which comprises of the supervisor, the advisor and one senior member of the Department. Each of the readers will read your dossier; students will be required to undergo a 20-30 minute viva which will take place in week 10 of the Summer Term . The viva panel will submit a written report and make its recommendation to the Doctoral Programme Director who will inform you of the outcome.
If it is less than satisfactory and you do not pass the viva, you will be asked to make changes in line with the joint report and to resubmit your upgrade dossier the following March. Please note that you will not have another viva.
The review process is designed to determine whether the student will be able to meet the requirements of a PhD, and whether the chosen topic will be suitable for a doctoral dissertation. The Department uses the School's Code of Practice| as a determinant of the general responsibilities of research students and their supervisors. All students should make an effort to familiarise themselves with its contents.
The Department expects that research students will submit their theses within four years and the reviews of student progress are geared to achieving that goal.
Staff Research Seminar
The Department of International History have set up an Occasional Staff Research Seminar, to be held as advertised by the Department, on Thursdays from 11.00-13.00 in room E509. This is open to MPhil/PhD students to attend.
Full details are available at the Staff Research Seminar| page.