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@AcademicChatter If you are beginning a program, first off—congratulations! If you are in a US program, don’t worry about narrowing down a topic immediately. It is normal for your interests to shift while you are taking seminars and learning more about your field’s history and methods of research
@AcademicChatter Topic development will probably emerge naturally and you can use seminar papers, reading groups, casual conversations, walks, and shower time to let your interests flow. Once you start noticing patterns, examine all the resources on your campus even outside your discipline...
@AcademicChatter Try doing preliminary research on your emerging topic interests organically, bookmarking articles and books of interest on Google Scholar, ProQuest Research Lib, ScienceDirect, etc. Seek out nonprofit research orgs solving the kinds of problems that get you up in the morning...
@AcademicChatter And the ones that keep you up at night. Keep track of every spark, every resource that led you there, and check in twice a year. During your second year of coursework, you will have a much better sense of where you are and the institutional resources available to you...
@AcademicChatter At that point, you really want to use the seminar paper to explore the interests emerging during Y1. When coming up with paper topics, see if they loop back to your proposed topic at all—not just in terms of your former inquiry, but any aspect of the research. At the end of Y2...
@AcademicChatter You can check the references you’ve collected in seminar papers and the sources you’ve bookmarked (and read for fun! 😂) during Y1 and Y2. Looking at sources only, identify keywords and play!What recurs? Who are the actors? Their acts? Conflicts? What story do they tell about...
@AcademicChatter The nature of a problem? It’s solution? The issues people have encountered solving it? This could potentially serve as a working revisable reading list for your comprehensive exams. That exam should be your focus and it’s not going to necessarily BE the disss...
@AcademicChatter Rather, it will likely be a broad inquiry that shows your knowledge of the field and ends up serving as a bedrock of sources that could shape your lit review in the diss. Once you are DONE WITH COMPS, you will focus more intently on the inquiry for the dissertation prospectus.
@AcademicChatter Long thread aside! You have time!! Use your first couple of years to enjoy learning what attracts you to your area of study and the possible identities available to you in that field and outside of academia too. This advice varies depending on institution, of course. Good Luck!
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