Rahul (India)

PhD Social Statistics 

Project: Estimating and forecasting the Labour Migration Flow: A case study of India

”The university, city life, the rankings and my supervisor are all outstanding. There’s nowhere like Manchester.

”After completing my master’s, I had some jobs in Universities in India. I’m interested in migration so I wanted to look into migration more as it’s really important in India. I wrote a proposal and sent it to my supervisor, Eric, and he was very excited.

At the University, no matter what faculty you’re associated to, every faculty member is really supportive and nurturing, not just in your research career but also in your mental and physical health.

I use the Doctoral Academy a lot, I get lots of IT support and support like in attending conferences, they’re very good and respond quickly to emails that are asking for their support.

I’m from India and I see the out-migration flow. My research is looking at migration from India to the Gulf, which started in 1970. There is already has a high number of Indian migrants in the area, and the migration can change the demographics of the area. In any physical boundary or unique area, mobility, fertility and migration are the 3 key things that can change the number of the population in any country and have an impact on the country’s future and everything. 

A PhD the ultimate implication of your work. You can have lots of ideas, I have lots of creative ideas and people can think ‘I want to change the world’ but in reality, you don’t have any evidence to prove your hypothesis or your thinking. So, you must know the research boundaries of what you’re trying to implicate or do, because everyone has a different idea. So, everyone needs to understand the limitation of their research, what they can do and what they can’t do.”

Rui (China)

PhD Business Data 

Project: Interpretable data-driven modelling and inference for quantifying the effect of social influence in decision making

”I did my bachelor’s and master’s here at Manchester, and I love it – I’m almost a Mancunian!

I looked at two other universities to do my PhD but I chose to stay in Manchester because I like it so much and felt comfortable here.

My supervisor is really important to my research and very supportive and give great advice.

If you are thinking about PhD study, I think that you need to be focused, disciplined and plan your day. I have a list of tasks that I want to do in the day, and I like to tick them off so that I know that I’ve achieved something. I have regular meetings with my supervisor to keep me motivated and helped me to find research methods and approaches that worked for me.

Read more about Rui’s PhD experience. 

Maheshi (Sri Lanka)

PhD Philosophy

Project: Susan Stebbing and her varied facets: on critical thinking and informal logic

”Before your PhD, research as much as possible because that research will you in the first few years, have a good connection with your supervisor because the advice they give, you need to reflect on it and take on their positivity and guidance back into your work.

Have a study plan, I have a diary which I cross off weekly tasks as it helps me to keep in line with the weeks work. I look at the 3 key tasks I need to do each day and that’s really helpful. I was scared on day 1 as I had no idea what to expect because I know that a PhD is the top level of research.  The university’s support across the supervisors, the finance team, the IT team, the Doctoral Academy, the library – all of them have been amazing. If you need a text and don’t have it – you just ask and it gets done really fast.

Things have been easy because of the University’s supportive culture.

You will need patience –  you may begin to research a piece of work, then find that it’s not relevant and it’s been a waste of time. Listening skills – you need to listen to your supervisor and take their advice. Communication and socialising skills because you need to talk to your peers when you come across a challenge, so you need to be able to talk to someone else that is in the same position as you. Timekeeping skills also, project management skills, which is surprising but a PhD is a big project – you need to be able to manage timelines, make sure you don’t deviate from your time plan too much, we need to achieve our thesis time deadlines.

Resilience and focus are also important.

There are challenging days. When you’ve given your all to a paper and get comments like ‘you need to work better’ or ‘you need to improve it’, you need to take the comments in a positive light. You need to change the paper to make it better. There is a curve of learning to be done in the challenging phases in your research so you need to take the feedback as a positive. It’s like going from dark clouds to rainbows.”

Read more about Maheshi’s PhD experience.