anyone else been in this situation? I got a uni funded PhD, where the topic was already set, so I went into it thinking the supervisors had a good idea what they wanted to achieve. I started nearly two months ago, and had realised they don't really seem to know what they want to do. The topic has been covered at length and I'm struggling to get my head around what will make my PhD different. My supervisors are great and approachable, (i have 3) but they each have different expertise and don't know about each others areas. We came up with a general plan of acion but it's all been done before. How unique does a PhD have to be? How did other people come up with the angle they want to persue?

Sounds like my PhD! The advice I was given: there's always an angle to exploit"; you've basically been given a licence to research what you want in the topic. Read round a bit more, something will not have been done

Hiya, that sounds a lot like my PhD too. At first I was quite upset about it but then I realised how much freedom I have to decide exactly what I want to do. At the momment I'm just developing my methodology so I wont have to decide exactly what im going to do for a few months yet so I'm going to take my time and read around the area as much as I can and then hopefully in a few months I will have a much clearer idea.

I tend to find the more I read, the more gaps in knowledge I find and more opprotunity for me to create my own niche. So time to get down to the literature!