Hi all,

I just finished my 3rd year progression meeting and receive feedback from the research committee regarding the final thesis writing-up. My supervisor is not the expert of the field that I am working on, so now we are both concerned about writing on the introduction and discussion chapter. For the last three years, I have been pretty much independently working on my project, though my supervisor is definitely able to guide me through statistical analysis. That means all my understanding of the research topic could be very likely to miss some essential points, in which case an examiner would be strongly critical of my thesis and I would fail right out...

I've been recommended to try to find someone that I think would be the experts in my research topic, who, desirably, would be able also willing to help us. I was wondering if anyone had a similar experience and how do you handle this?

Thanks!!
Terry

I had a big project which covered a broad area and many topics so I used other people who were willing to help for the different sections that I needed help with that my main supervisor who couldn't/wouldn't help with. It was like a team effort and I wouldn't have got through it if it wasn't for the help these people.

Hope you get the help you need. ;-)

Thanks for reply Doodles! I am aware that some project such as yours involves effort from lots of people. But my case is that it is me who initiated this project but not my supervisor, and it is not a project covering a very broad area -- well, I may say so because at least it covers Psychology and Philosophy . I think you research had been a group project since the start point, but mine is not. So now I have to ask other people for the main purpose of writing-up. Anyway, what else choice I have?! I will just try to ask.

To find the experts in your field, it may be useful to compile a list of authors who have published similar research. Then I would have a chat with your supervisor about the possibility of approaching one or two names on the list for some help in your write-up. Alternatively, do several of the listed authors come from the same establishment where you could contact the overriding researcher? I have not had to do this myself, but see this as the only way to help you with your write-up. I wouldn't forward on your research until there is agreement between your uni and the person approached, just to safeguard your research from being used by others.

I can see where you are coming from so it would be more scary approaching people for help.  I agree with Dunni's advice which is good. As your supervisor has agreed to getting you external help it should be ok - trying other people in your dept/uni is a good place to start.  Unis (some staff) are funny about external people helping incase of problems with ownership of results and students being associated with other depts if there are informal collaborations so this something to be aware off. My project isn't part of a larger project - it's just an ambitious idea, perhaps a bit too ambitious given all the areas I covered and the hassle of trying to co-ordinate everything.  The people that helped with it were known to my supervisor so I suppose it's not like I was just asking random people. Does your supervisor know of people who could help?  That would also be a good point to follow up as academia is very small!

Since this is an issue in relation to my writing-up that has been raised during the progression meeting, we (my supervisor, other academic staffs and myself) have had an agreement on finding an external staff to help this out. We even think that the person could be a post-doc who worked on a similar topic when doing her/his PhD study, as such a person would know fairly more than us about the theoretical background. My supervisor does not know anyone in the area, this means I will also have to find an external examiner myself in the near future. We have considered, just as Dunni has suggested, first listing people who might be able to support and then trying to contact them. Aware of the difficulty if I contacted those people personally, my department has agreed to make an official request -- well, that's more than to be appreciated!! Hope everything will be fine!!!

Thanks guys for your comments and encouragement!!!

Terry