Advanced career PhD candidates are motivated by a desire to turn their experience and insights into a PhD.
Apart from a desire to gain a PhD, advanced career candidates:
- are experienced in development
- have advanced in their career
- have a record of applied research and publicationsÂ
The International Institute of Social Studies has a welcoming attitude to these PhD candidates. We highly appreciate your experience and commitment to turn your work into a PhD.
Join ISS as an advanced career PhD candidate
Click on the tabs below to find discover whether you are a suitable advanced career PhD candidate.
Advanced career PhD candidates – like all candidates - have to follow the rules and regulations of the PhD journey at ISS.
The regulations include coursework and seminars that mark the progress of the journey. It may be possible to waive requirements if a potential candidate can convincingly argue that these requirements have already been met. This means that as an advanced career PhD candidate, you can shape your own journey - together with the supervisory team - within the framework of the existing rules and regulations.
Transforming applied work and accumulated insights into a scientific piece of work requires a high level motivation and time commitment from candidates. Whereas different motivations can underlie the desire to do a PhD, it is our experience that you should:
- enjoy the prospect of considerable academic reading and writing
- be open to undertaking coursework to come up to speed with recent developments in academic theory
- be open to the notion that you may need to learn additional skills to deliver an academic piece of work
In some cases, PhD candidates are enabled by their employer to undertake a PhD project. This has many advantages: it ensures that the PhD research has practical relevance and the candidate remains employed.
There are also risks involved in combining a PhD trajectory with work. Specific concerns include whether enough time can be reserved for the PhD process and the question of the PhD candidates research independence
The supervisory team at ISS should be able to assist in resolving these issues.
Before admission, candidates need to write a research proposal that includes a plan for how they will organize their PhD.
As a prospective advanced career PhD candidate, you are advised to incorporate in your proposal how your previous work will feed into the PhD. For example, you may want to use a completed and applied research project as the empirical basis for an academic article.
Note that published work can be part of the PhD manuscript, provided it is no more than five years old.