SSW 2 Tues 10-11am

Bookshelves

In this session

We invited a panel of AWAS Tutors to tell us how they select and evaluate source material for their Doctoral Research projects.

Nicola Westwood (PhD in English, UoB first degree JH English and History), Hattie Walters (also PhD in English, but taking an interdisciplinary approach encompassing Art History, History and more!), Stefanos Xenofontos (PhD in Law, researching Human Rights) and Eric Ngang (PhD Law, key interest Climate Change and Development) all have their own approaches to researching for their PhD projects. In these short presentations they cover a range of topics regarding researching and selecting source material, nd give some very useful tips.

KEY POINTS

It doesn't matter if your specific degree programme isn't covered in the list above. Each presenter has something useful to add that is valuable whatever subject you are studying.
They have highlighted the key points covered below their presentations so you can dip in and come back to them when ever you like.

Nicola Westwood

KEY POINTS

Make the most of search features in Google Books. You can also hold ctrl and F together to bring up a search bar that allows you to search web pages, PDFs and Word documents. Searching keywords will save you time by taking you straight to the sections that are relevant to your topic.
Google Scholar can help you to find relevant secondary sources, and to see what scholars have said about the topic more recently by using the 'cited by' function.
Read abstracts, blurbs, and book reviews as a quick way to see if a secondary source is relevant enough to make it worth reading.

Hattie Walters

KEY POINTS

There are so many different sources (and different types of sources!) out there! When selecting sources, I have to be consistently evaluating their relevance--and these evaluative processes continue as I research, write and construct my arguments.
When familiarising yourself with sources that you might use, think critically about collating evidence. What does this source tell me, and how does it tell me this?
I try to continually question whether a source is only interesting to me, or whether my reader actually needs to know this in order to understand my argument.

Stefanos Xenofontos

KEY POINTS

Being able to distinguish between what information is interesting and what is relevant for your essays is particularly important, especially when dealing with a large amount of literature and a wide range of sources.
Certain subject-specific websites can provide very useful databases where both primary and secondary sources related to your course can be found - make sure you familiarise yourselves with those websites/search tools.
When conducting your research, do take the time to reflect on the various sources you come across with and take notes of what you believe could be useful for writing your essays - it takes time but it makes the actual drafting process much easier.

Eric Ngang

KEY POINTS

There is simply too much information out there! I began by asking what the law school considers as sources of evidence to support my work. In my case relevant and useful sources case laws, legislations, journal articles and textbooks other relevant institutional and organisational publications. In addition, I had to generate some source material myself through interviews and observations in the field.
I defined the key concepts and themes related to my research question and objective. This helped me to use different databases and general search tools for example the A-Z databases of the University of Birmingham Library services to focus my search and find source relevant materials.
Some specific criteria I have used to evaluate my source material include the reputation of the database I use, the reputation of the author including how many others have referenced their work of the author and the currency of the source material.