Postgraduate Funding (PhD Art History)

Alioth

Does your PhD have to be strictly in the history of art? There will be a small number of topics that fringe on art but are in fact sciences, and therefore have more funding available. I don't know very much about these specific topics but you could perhaps find something interesting (and somewhat arty) in psychology (why people like art?), economics (what are benefits of museums?), archaelogy and probably many others. Perhaps Economic and Social Research Council will be more generous (for example psychology of music is a huge field funded by ESRC).
Maybe such a PhD will even turn to your advantage as you will be able to bring a fresh perspective into your new team post-graduation.

bewildered123

heibulgcarcast1985 wrote: »

My other thoughts are to write the thesis over the next few years, sans supervision, and then - once I have the saved money - apply to a university department, then submit the thesis after two years of fee-paying. That way I need not part with too much cash. Have you heard of such situations before?

as someone has already said earlier in the thread, I don't think my university is unusual in specifying a minimum and maximum period of candidacy. I think as well that because of the number of plagiarism scandals around, people will be very wary about someone starting with an already written thesis. My suggestions would be:
1) your original username suggests you may be German - there are no fees there and I know plenty of people who've written a PhD thesis there while working fulltime, as you can be a candidate for as long as it takes.
2) PhD by publication - Edinburgh and Glasgow offer this to their graduates if they are professionally doing research, which you appear to be doing. Might be worth seeing whether your old university offers anything similar.