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So I have been offered an amazing fully-funded PhD to do a project that I love, with lovely, supportive supervisors and the opportunity to work closely with a non-academic partner in a way that will help my career. The project relates closely to my master's research and I will be able to continue and expand the work I did during my MSc, using similar research methods.

The only catch is the PhD is in a different (but overlapping) department to the one I did my bachelor's and master's in. I had a look at the department I will be joining and it seems like there are not that many people working on similar themes, issues or even using similar methods. I'm slightly worried I will feel out on a limb.

I'm also worried that I will find it hard to continue being a part of my original field- which I love- even though my research focus and methods will basically stay the same.

Does anyone have any insight into this? It's such an amazing opportunity, an almost perfect project, great city, I just have a slight doubt about feeling out of place in the department.

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This is very similar to what I am doing for my PhD (also in the UK). My background is in Computer Science, and I'm currently in the second year of a PhD in Health Informatics. I have found the opportunity to broaden my perspective really valuable, and feel that the change in field has made me a stronger researcher overall than if I'd stayed laser-focused on my original field. I would see joining a related department as an opportunity to branch out and learn more about methods you might not have come across otherwise, and make interdisciplinary links that may benefit your future research.

In my opinion a supportive supervisor is one of the most important factors in your experience as a PhD student, especially when you have funding and you're doing a project you love. I took a project I was lukewarm on in order to have a supervisor I already had a strong relationship with, and I've warmed up to the project while watching other students with projects they're passionate about struggle with their supervisors. I would strongly advise jumping on the chance to have both a project you're interested in and a good supervisory team!

Some practical suggestions that may help with feeling out of place:

  • Make yourself go along to departmental meetings, open research group meetings etc, even if they don't seem particularly relevant. It will help you build links with others in your department and you may be surprised by what you get out of them.
  • Ask around and see if there's a mailing list for seminars/talks for the department your background is in, to maintain your connection to your original field.
  • Join your union branch and go to branch meetings! Most UK universities will have a UCU branch, and it's a way to meet people from a bunch of different departments.
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  • This is great advice that I will definitely take- so thank you. I will try to get involved as much as possible and embrace the opportunity to learn from others who have different backgrounds + perspectives. My supervisors have wide-ranging expertise and I am really looking forward to working with them so that is a huge positive.
    – greenbean687
    Commented Mar 27 at 11:42
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What you write indicates that this should work out fine with one caveat. Having a supportive advisor and a good project (along with funding) would seem to outweigh the fact that others in the department aren't going to provide help.

The caveat is that if there are comprehensive exams in that department then it might take you away from the breadth and depth you need in your desired field.

In the general case, which you don't indicate, is when the degree would be given and listed for a field in which you have no real association. But you indicate "overlapping", so I don't think that is an issue here.

Letters of recommendation from your advisor, along with the work you do, will normally outweigh the detail of the name of the department and its main focus.

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    Thank you for the reassurance, that's good to know. For context, my background is in social anthropology and I would be moving into a geography department. There is a good amount of cross-over between anthropology and cultural geography in the area I am researching.
    – greenbean687
    Commented Mar 25 at 13:28
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    Perhaps the knowledge of geography you will gain will be an asset rather than a liability when you return to social anthropology.
    – Ethan Bolker
    Commented Mar 25 at 18:37
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    @greenbean687 If it is of any help to know this, my father had a PhD in cultural anthropology (and a juris doctorate). In his career, he did work which was both anthropological and sociological in nature, and he comfortably taught undergraduate classes in anthropology (including archaeology), criminology, sociology, and geography. There tends to be a lot of overlap in these areas, and I can only imagine that having a more diverse background / training will be beneficial in the long run.
    – Xander Henderson
    Commented Mar 26 at 11:40
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I can give some insight on the point Buffy mentions, which is the qualifying/comprehensive exams. My BS and MS were in electrical engineering, then a detour into an MS in computer science, and finally a PhD in computer science. (And some long years between some of those.)

I don't know how well that compares to social anthropology and geography, but it seems similar enough.

The qualifying exam for the PhD was difficult. Very difficult. But I knew that going in. I knew the ins and outs of the exam format cold, and I had a definite strategy for managing what I knew on my own and just needed to review, what I could take classes for in the first year, and what I was going to have teach myself in my copious free time. I made use of auditing classes, too, when I just wanted access to the lectures without the burden of doing the homework.

I passed.

It can be done.

But I don't want to misrepresent this as an easy project. It was not. It was a lot of hard work, stress, and anxiety. I didn't really have a social life that year.

But it can be done.

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    Thanks for your comment. Luckily in the UK (at least in humanities/social science) you don't have to do qualifying/comprehensive exams. You normally do a transfer or an upgrade at the end of your first year, where you write a literature review or the first few chapters of your thesis and defend it. It is a lot of work but not something people generally fail, and is more to see that you are making good progress with your research. But I would not have an exam in geography
    – greenbean687
    Commented Mar 26 at 8:11
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I did my PhD in physics. At least formally because an awful lot was about neural networks and genetic algorithms, which in the mid 90s' were not really mainstream.

My supervisor was a fantastic man but he did not help me at all with the topic of my research. He did help enormously with everything else.

My team was great, they knew nothing about what I was doing. They helped with several auxiliary (scientific) questions.

It was a great and unique PhD. So do not worry if you have a good context for your resarch.

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I made the same decision 14 years ago and found it a huge asset. My path has been: MSc in social psychology, PhD in developmental psychology, postdoc in sociology, assistant/associate professor in methods and statistics, moving towards social data science.

Yes it can be hard to be the odd one out, but there is a lot of value in bringing perspectives from one field to bear on problems from another.

You can ask your supervisors if they will support you attending conferences/workshops/etc from your other field as well. This sets you up for career flexibility post phd.

I also think this kind of interdisciplinarity is better suited to some personalities than others. If you're broadly interested, it will suit you well. If you're more focused on doing Kuhnian 'normal science', then it will be an awkward fit.

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