School of Arts
MPhil/PhD
Research Student Handbook
2015-2016
Introduction 3
Key Staff 4
Administrative Information 6
Term Dates 2015/16 7
Formal Requirements 8
The Life of a Student… 9
Plagiarism 13
Supervision 14
Upgrading to PhD status 2015/16 16
Writing Up 18
Progress and Completion 18
Postgraduate Events and Opportunities 20
Research Skills Workshops 20
Teaching Arts in Higher Education 20
Research Centres 21
The Peltz Gallery 21
Disability Statement 22
Student Support and Available Resources 24
Appendix A: Administrative Staff and Locations 27
Appendix B: Campus Map 28
Appendix C: Library List 29
Appendix D: Research Ethics 39
Introduction 2
Key Staff 3
Administrative Information 5
Term Dates 2015/16 6
Formal Requirements 7
The Life of a Student… 8
Plagiarism 12
Supervision 13
Upgrading to PhD status 2015/16 15
Writing Up 17
Progress and Completion 17
Postgraduate Events and Opportunities 19
Research Skills Workshops 19
Teaching Arts in Higher Education 19
Research Centres 20
The Peltz Gallery 20
Disability Statement 21
Student Support and Available Resources 23
Appendix A: Administrative Staff and Locations 26
Appendix B: Campus Map 27
Appendix C: Library List 28
Appendix D: Research Ethics 37
Published August 2015
This document is for reference only. Every effort was made to ensure that information was correct at time of print, but discrepancies may still occur due to the nature of this document. Any changes will be communicated to you via your registered email address as soon as the School of Arts is made aware of any issues.
Introduction
Welcome
Welcome to the postgraduate community in the School of Arts here at Birkbeck. We have one of the most vibrant and creative intellectual environments for postgraduate study anywhere in the UK, and we are ambitious in the ways we work actively to develop and support it. We hope you will quickly feel at home, and that you will enjoy your time at Birkbeck. Our aim is to give you the opportunity to develop to your full potential as scholars, critics, writers, researchers and communicators, and to become active members of our intellectual community.
College: The History
When Birkbeck College was established in 1823, its principal mission was to provide education and training to working adults who earlier in life had lacked educational opportunity. A College of the University of London since 1920, Birkbeck is committed to the concept of lifelong education, and especially within the world of work. Birkbeck and the other member colleges of the University of London have many research interests in common and share the same standards and degrees structures, but in one important respect Birkbeck is unique. Our mission is “to provide courses of study to meet the changing educational, cultural and training needs of adults who are engaged in earning their livelihood, and others who are able to benefit” (Birkbeck College Charter).
Birkbeck College has built up special expertise in providing a stimulating, positive learning environment for adult, mature students (by which we mean students who are over 21). We have also richly expanded provision for full-time postgraduate students. We award undergraduate degrees in a full range of disciplines and have an unusually high proportion of students following taught Masters and MPhil/PhD courses. There are currently over a hundred students on the MPhil/PhD programme in the Department of English and Humanities alone, and a larger cohort in the School of Arts as a whole.
Programme
You will probably find postgraduate literary and humanities research very different from the kind of study that you have been used to up to now. Inevitably, a large amount of your time will be spent working on your own. You will need to get used to taking responsibility for your research, initiating and following up ideas yourself, evaluating your progress, projecting and sticking to targets and schedules of writing. This intellectual autonomy is one of the most exciting and rewarding features of postgraduate research in the humanities. However, you may also feel uncertain and isolated at times.
At Birkbeck, we want to try to mitigate this isolation in a number of ways. First of all, we aim to specify as clearly as possible the nature of the relationship between you and your supervisor, the nature of your responsibilities and the Department’s reciprocal responsibilities to you. In part, this is the purpose of this document.
We also believe that it is no less important to develop and sustain your sense of belonging to an intellectual community here at Birkbeck and in the Department of English and Humanities in particular. This sense of belonging is important because it makes your life as a postgraduate more stimulating and enjoyable and also because it will help to deepen and diversify your own work. Indeed, we regard it as part of your intellectual responsibility as a postgraduate student to discuss your own research and that of others, and to contribute to the intellectual life of the Department and University. We are always interested to hear of ways of encouraging and innovating in that exchange, across a wide range of areas, including practice-related research.
Key Staff
Assistant Dean and Postgraduate Director of Studies
To co-ordinate the Graduate Programmes and to help ensure that your time at Birkbeck is a happy and successful one, the School has an Assistant Dean for Research and each Department has a Postgraduate Director of Graduate Studies and as appropriate, a Deputy Director.
The Assistant Dean has overall oversight of the School of Arts Research programme and each Director oversees the admission process and chairs the various committees (e.g. Upgrading, Scholarships, Graduate Teaching) that deal with postgraduate affairs. The Dean and Directors work with colleagues and students to develop the creative and intellectual potential of the postgraduate research culture.
Each director will also organise the Graduate Lecture Series and the Research Skills, Theory Seminars and teaching programmes, and help students with applications to funding bodies.
Academic Staff
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Assistant Dean (Research: Postgraduate Students), School of Arts
Dr Luisa Cale
l.cale@bbk.ac.uk
Dr Cale will be on research leave during the Autumn Term 2015.
Dr Ben Cranfield will act as Assistant Dean during this time.
b.cranfield@bbk.ac.uk
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Postgraduate Director of Studies
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Department of Cultures and Languages (C&L)
Professor John Kraniauskas
j.kraniauskas@bbk.ac.uk
Cultures and Languages includes the following programmes:
Comparative Literature
French
German
Iberian and Latin American Studies
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Department of English and Humanities
Dr Ana Parejo-Vadillo
a.parejovadillo@bbk.ac.uk
Deputy Director:
Autumn Term 2015:
Professor Sue Wiseman
s.wiseman@bbk.ac.uk
Spring term 2016 onwards:
Dr Emily Senior
e.senior@bbk.ac.uk
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Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies (FMACS)
TBC
TBC
FMACS includes the following programmes:
Arts Management
Film and Screen Media
Japanese
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Department of History of Art
Dr Tag Gronberg
t.gronberg@bbk.ac.uk
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Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities
Dr Andrew Asibong a.asibong@bbk.ac.uk
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Office Hours: Please contact Dr Cale, or Postgraduate Directors by email to arrange a meeting.
Postgraduate Research Administrator
Anthony Shepherd
Room G20, 43 Gordon Square
0203 073 8374
aj.shepherd@bbk.ac.uk
Office Hours: Monday-Friday 10am-6pm.
The Administrator deals with the day-to-day administration of your degree. He is your first point of contact for any concerns you have. Please do not hesitate to contact him.
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