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WRITING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL: some brief notes

A PhD is an original contribution to knowledge (though it may also in some

circumstances be an original synthesis of existing knowledge), and the purpose of the

research proposal in your PhD application is to explain to your intending academic hosts

(and especially to your potential supervisors) that you have the ability to undertakeoriginal research necessary for a PhD, and that you are not too far from being ready to

begin. This does not mean that you wont require research training (in fact we normally

require incoming students to undertake one of the research training programmes we

offer), that you will not need to acquire some new skills or that you will not need to

review new bodies of literature. But it does mean that you have good idea of what

research question or questions you want to address, that you know enough about the

literature in the area to be fairly sure that this is likely to be an interesting and open

question, and that you have thought about how you would go about trying to answer your

research question i.e. what methods would be appropriate, what evidence would be

relevant, what data you would need to gather, and so on.

In preparing your application, it is useful to bear in mind what a PhD looks like. In fact,

most PhDs have a pretty similar format:

- an introduction of about 15-20 pages explaining the research question(s)

methodology and procedure against the background of existing research and

scholarship, and ending by outlining the structure of the thesis;

- a literature review covering all areas relevant to you research question(s), usually

about 30-40 pages;

- an empirical core of about 150 pages covering your first hand studies;

- a discussion of about 15-20 pages of the results of your studies in the light of your

research question(s);- a conclusion of 3-5n pages, usually with a note on the next stages of research.

In preparing you application, then, by far the most important thing is to remember that

research begins with a question, and not simply the identification of a topic. It is the

research question, and how you hope to set about answering it, that structures the rest of

the proposal. So your first task is to define the research question and explain why it is an

interesting and open question, and why the answers are not already known. Once you

have done this, it will be clear that what you must next do is to explain how you would go

about answering the question, what methods you would use, what evidence you would

review, what data you would gather and so on. Learning to think by setting up well-

defined questions and trying to work out how to answer them is one of the key disciplines

you acquire during a PhD. so, setting up your application in this way will get you off on

the right foot.

So your research proposal should comprise the following:

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Begin by defining the research question(s) and say why it is a research question i.e.

what the current state of knowledge is, and why it is relevant. Remember that most

research is about a narrow question (e.g. why have the centres in cities within the same

region and within the same culture developed so differently) with a broad question (such

as the relation of society, space and culture, or the spatio-functional dynamics of cities) in

the background. The idea is that by answering the narrow question we will be a littlecloser to answering the broad question. But dont aim your thesis solely at the broad

question unless you are an original genius !

Say what your idea or conjecture (or even hypothesis) is about the question for

example you may suspect that spatial factors resulting from different dominant influences

on the historical evolution of the two cities can account for the differences, and that by

understanding the differences between to two cases light will be thrown on how to design

to retain the life of urban centres and the relation between change in the built

environment and culture.

Say how you will go about trying to answer your questions i.e. what methodologies you

will uses (spatial analysis, land use mapping, evolutionary analysis of stages of

development etc) and what you data sources will be. Remember it is no use setting up

studies if you cant get hold of the data you need.

Outline a research programme i.e a schedule of what you expect to be doing at each

stage to show youve thought about the practicalities of carrying out the research. You

dont have to stick to it, but it is useful experience to think this through.

Say what the main deliverables will be: studied cases, better understanding of principles,

design guidance, new theory etc.

Finally say what the potential contribution of the PhD will be to broad as well as to

narrow questions.

A final word: the aim of the research proposal is to show that can plan a research study.

You wont then be expected to stick to it to the letter. On the contrary, most research

plans evolve and even mutate as you get farther into the subject.

bh

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