The Northwestern-Edinburgh Alliance
Overview
It is sometimes desirable for PhD students to spend some time away from the University of Edinburgh studying at a different institution. We have lots of research links with top Universities around the world, and your primary supervisor can advise on you on whether spending some time studying elsewhere would be beneficial to you (and, if so, where it would be best to go). You can apply for funds to support such a trip from the PPLS Research Support Grant scheme. Additional support for such trips is also available from other funding sources and your primary supervisor should be able to advise you on this score. Note that visits away from the University of Edinburgh of more than one month need to be officially approved. For more details about this process, contact Katie Keltie in the PPLS Postgraduate Office.
We also have a special alliance with the Philosophy Department at Northwestern University in this regard, in that we have agreed to do all that we can to support visits from PhD students there and they have agreed to likewise with our PhD students.
Further details of the scheme
The Philosophy Department at Northwestern University is one of the top Philosophy Departments in the world, and it has particular research strengths in such areas epistemology, ancient philosophy and ethics and value theory that would be of special interest to Philosophy PhD students at Edinburgh. Visits can either be short, such as a few weeks, or quite long, such as several months and possibly up to a year. If you want to take advantage of this scheme then it is essential that you first speak to your primary supervisor to gain his/her approval. The next stage would be to get in touch with the Director of Graduate Studies, Dr Tillmann Vierkant, and put forward a short proposal (no more than one side of A4) in support of your visit. In particular, this proposal should cover:
- The relevance of this visit to your doctoral research (e.g., who you plan to work with there);
- How long you intend to stay there, and what your research plans are during your stay (e.g., what thesis chapter(s) will you be working on);
- How you propose to finance your trip (i.e., a summary of the costs you think you will incur, and an account of how you will cover these costs).
If this proposal looks feasible, then Dr Vierkant will contact his counterpart at Northwestern University, Prof Sandy Goldberg, to explore the matter further. All being well, the proposal will then be formally approved.
