Dear all,

I think a humanities PhD in the UK generally takes three years full time, but I heard someone saying that they were hoping that their MA work would count towards their PhD ie that their PhD research would be a continuation and expansion of their MA dissertation, so that their PhD would take only two years rather than three. Does this sound right, does this happen often / occasionally / never?

Many people in the arts/humanities/social sciences investiagte a topic at MA level and then look at the same topic but in more depth and on a bigger scale for their PhD research.

However, if work is completed for an MA it can't be 'recycled' to knock a year off doing a PhD. Obviously the ideas and literature and theory used in the MA can be used but a PhD will still be 3 years and all of the research should be original and carried out soley for the PhD.

Yes, I'm carrying on in the same vein for my Phd as for my MA but it will still take me the same amount of time. As has been said, you can't recycle MA work for Phd work, it has, by definition, to be an original piece of research and the depth with which you go into things at Phd is so much greater. I've done a lot of the reading already of course, but again, its just deeper and deeper

Thanks for replies. Does this make any difference - suppose a person is doing is MA but before completing it he upgrades it to a PhD, so the full-time year he has almost done for the MA becomes the first year of a PhD. Therefore he is not 'recycling' anything but in effect is going from undergrad to PhD, bypassing MA. So the question becomes does a UK university ever accept people for PhD without an MA? Would this be at the discretion of the university or is there some rule that an MA is mandatory for those applying for PhD? I am not sure if this is the same thing but I know that a university has discretion to waive A-level requirements for someone applying for an undergraduate degree.