Hi There,

I am currently nearing the end of a similar situation myself.

My supervisor was made redundant 6 months after I started (October 2014) and, as there was no one left at that institution that was capable of supervising my project (niche area of biophysics), the only option was to transfer. As my PhD is funded by a biopharama company they suggested that I work there + get experience with them whilst the whole transfer process was going on. I've been here for months now and progress is very slow.

The problem I was having is that because I've had no supervision for all this time the institution i'm transferring to (incidentally - it's up north!) is worried that I've lost too much time and wont finish within the the 4 years (counts as a non-submission which affects their funding). In my case my industrial sponsors were willing to put up extra money to fund me for another year. You mentioned your funding was external? So this may be an option for you too. Then again - because you will have had supervision up until the point of your transfer and you're only 7 weeks in, your new institution may not be as worried about taking you on so it may not be necessary.

In my experience the process has been slow and reasonably stressful - but by no means impossible. It's really a judgement call on your part. Stay a bit longer and hope things will improve (using more PhD time and making transfer later more difficult) or leave now without the guarantee that things will get better if you do move.

My Advice - give it some more time. If you like the project, can work well with your supervisor and the uni is a good fit for your project - i'd stick with the devil you know. I believe you can still transfer up to something like 18 months in (might be wrong there) so you'll still have time to move later if you want to.

Owen