Hey, I was wondering if you might be able to offer some advice re: Ph.D.s in Irish Studies? (No worries if not! This is kind of a big ask...) I have a MSc in a different but tangentially related subject and I've been wanting to go back to school specifically for early Irish literature. Do you mind offering some insight into what programs are best for that sort of thing? What the benefits of a Ph.D. vs. a 'lower level' degree would be?
hey, sorry, iâm only an MA student so i donât really know too much about PhDs, and iâm guessing from your spelling/word choices that you might be american? in which case the system is a bit different, PhD programmes over there tend to be longer and have more taught elements than over here (7 years vs 3 or 4 years), but iâm not too well-informed on the differences because iâve no plans to go to the US for study
i guess if you wanted to do early irish material including language youâd need to make sure whatever programme you picked would allow you to do that ab initio (that is assuming you havenât studied old irish before) -- iâm sure some PhD programmes would as itâs not like that many unis offer old irish but i would imagine some expect prior knowledge?? other than that it kind of depends how closely related your MSc is in terms of like. whether youâve already developed the skills youâd need (things like palaeography and working with medieval texts) or whether youâd be starting from scratch, and what the prereqs would be for any programme you entered
also if funding applications etc would require you to already have a thesis/dissertation topic then that might be harder if you havenât studied the subject before (and i imagine since there is so little funding in this field that it might be harder to get funding without a demonstrable background in it, but that is really pure speculation on my part)
anyway there arenât a huge number of places that offer celtic studies but it really depends what country youâre in and like i said, i donât really know a vast amount about the US (or, tbh, anywhere that isnât the UK/Ireland). there are some long-established celtic programmes in north america (harvard & toronto among others) and also medievalists/celticists lurking within english or comp lit departments elsewhere... in ireland thereâs ucc, maynooth, tcd; in the uk thereâs asnac @ cambridge and oxford will maybe get its shit together now that theyâve got a chair of celtic again idk, also glasgow, edinburgh and aberdeen offer celtic tho with a scottish emphasis (as you might expect) and some of the welsh unis likewise with a welsh emphasis (havenât looked too much at those). there are various places in europe that also do it like utrecht, but i know even less about those
really i think with a PhD youâd need to know what youâd be aiming to research and then try and narrow down a supervisor who works on that stuff, but again, iâm only an MA student so i havenât really gone through that whole process yet. sorry i canât be more useful!
i guess the main advantage of an MA or something instead of going straight into a PhD is itâs a much smaller commitment, bc if you havenât studied it formally before you may get a year into it and be like âoh this is enough actually, i donât need to do this for another 5 yearsâ or whatever -- there was this one academic i was talking to about my ideas who would have been a great fit for a supervisor but it wouldâve meant skipping straight to PhD instead of doing a masterâs first and i just wasnât ready to commit to that, financially and emotionally (even tho my current supervisor keeps telling me my ideas are PhD-sized and need to be made smaller to suit a masterâs lol)
