Hi, thanks for reading.

My PhD has dragged for a long time. This is my 6 year. Due to bad luck and also supervisor guidance problems I took lots of wrong turns. My supa has tried to get me out with a masters long time ago. I insisted and carried on working. We worked on a few projects. Lets call the most relveant ones A and B.

We spent 18 months on A. got out good results. realised we needed to make changed. and left it. in the process of correcting it I have completed my current B project. Now Im ready to go and finish A. My supa tried to throw me out not long ago. It was crazy. I survived. I showed my work to another supervisor and was told me thesis will be an above average thesis after finishing A. This shouldnt take too long as now I know what to put in and try and make it work. I have a few months left only.

For some reason my supa wants me to put them together. make a bigger project. It is too difficult because it means I need to work more on B before working on A. then it will be a different project as the assumptions in A will be changed and there is no way I can finish. I dont think he wants me to finish. He knows I can get away with original plans in A and finish on time. Im trying to get support from other people. I dont want to submit without my supa's support. He is very stubborn. anyone has any suggestions or have heard similair cases/how to solve it? thanks.

Sounds a difficult situation to be in. I'm afraid I can't offer you much advice except to say that I thought a person's supervisor had to effectively sign off on the PhD so as to allow it be submitted. Do they not have to verify that they think it is of PhD standard? I didn't think it was possible to submit without this but perhaps I am wrong? Possibly it differs from institution to institution?

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I can't advise on what you should do (since it is beyond my expertise) but I just wanted to say that it is possible (though whether it is advisable is questionable) to submit a thesis without the supervisor's support. someone I know did this, not because they didn't agree with the sup but they just simply ran out of time so they had to submit. I would check your institution's guideline on this, as Ady says, it probably differ from institution to institution.

So it's possible, but I would personally want to know that my sup was happy with what I submit.

thanks pink. do you know what the outcome of the result was? did he pass?

It sounds complicated. What you could do is take project A and project B and spin it off to make project C. Then spin project C off into projects X, Y, and Z. The trick is to continue spinning in this way until the spinning eventually boomerangs back into projects A and B. This creates what is known as a cohesive thesis. Continue in this way until an infinite loop is produced, producing a paradox in the space continuum. This may destroy the entire universe, or its effects may be very local, destroying only our galaxy. Just try it.

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It is possible to submit, in most institutions, without your supervisor's support. BUT if you do so and it comes out as a fail or MPhil then you will have very little chance to complain about supervision. Have you had a formal review of your work (in some unis this happens each year)? Can you talk to the head of department? How much have you written up, as it might be possible to have another prof read it and then ask for a report?

Try and reach a compromise. At my university the success rate of those that submitted without the support of their supervisors was not good. Having said that, I reached a total communications breakdown with my supervisory team some months before submitting so it was not so much without their support as without their knowledge. Instead of carrying out more work can you just add recommendations and acknowledge that further work might yield new questions/outcomes? Maybe just tying up the loose ends with a few carefully crafted caveats? In my opinion, this is essential to reach the end, otherwise more loose ends just keep appearing the longer you work at eliminating them.

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You need a lot of confidence for submitting without your supervisors support. I did this last year. I had breezed through a BA and MA in my home country and arrived at Camb very confident in my abilities; I work in Continental Philosophy. After the end of 5 years my sups almost had me convinced that I am an idiot: she endlessly tried to get rid of me. I had two glimmers of hope: first, once upon a time, I considered myself a good philosopher and maybe I still am despite not feeling like one; second, my wife had long been telling me thay my sups real issue is that I am working class with a lot of tats etc. And my sups just didn't handle being in proximity to someone who looked like me and came from my background. With these in mind I just thought 'fuck it, if I am going to not get a PhD anyway then I am going to not get one my way'. In other words, the end result of being kicked out the department didn't look too different from being laughed out of a viva.

Anyway, I submitted without her support, got told by externals not to spend more than two hours fixing my typos at the end of the viva. It was very sweet revenge on my sups. My thesis is being published by Palgrave late 2011.

My poinit being although some respondents have told you that submitting without sups support is problematic, pit was the best thing I ever did. If I'd known this I could have subomitted at least 18 months earlier

Ps. Sorry for all the typos above but i am only able to write this out once and not edit it.