The search for a research question for my future PhD thesis is a lot harder than I imagined. However, the more I speak to colleagues and fellow research students, the more reassured I am that I am heading in the right direction. My supervisor told me finding your research topic is a little like dating. He said you hold hands with a lot of ideas until you find one you want to marry. My good friend, another professor, said it was like creating a sculpture. He said it was like taking a block of marble and chiseling away until something significant was created. I wrote my initial PhD proposal twice, in which he remarked that I’d already passed through the marble twice.
When you write your proposal, you are probably not aware of what your thesis might be, only the broad subjects. That is the case for me, and the subjects have broadly stayed the same; higher education, public good, social exclusion/justice, community engagement. However, how I think about those subjects is changing, the more I read, the more I understand the relationships between them. Over the next few weeks I’m going to read, and write, around the history of universities and relation to their civic mission. This will be the first time I’ve considered a chronological context to higher education in relation to the civic role of a university. I already wonder if the scholars in the University of Bologna were more engaged in their communities as they studied laws of protection that responded to societal need at the time, than the students of Oxford and Cambridge in modern peace time in Europe. Are universities stronger at engaging with civic responsibilities and responding to need during times of crisis? Or during financial crashes? Is Higher Education more engaged in its community under the £9k fees system for students? Or is it worse? Or has the public good of a university made a constantly equivalent contribution to civic life, positively or negatively, since the 10th century? And is my research question in there somewhere? Or elsewhere? Whatever the outcome, it means I’m reading more, learning more and thinking more about my subject area. And like my supervisor says, eventually I’ll get married to a subject. And as my professor friend says, I’ve got a few more passes through the marble yet.