For a PhD candidate, little is more daunting than choosing a topic for your dissertation. After all, it will shape the kind of research you’ll be doing over the next four-plus years of your life. And not only will your dissertation take up a lot of time and energy—it may also have a strong influence on whether you get hired down the road.
Choosing the right dissertation topic is vital to get the most of your PhD experience and to best serve your career. Here are five steps to ensure you’re on the right track.
1. Make sure the topic matches your career goals
No matter how well-crafted and compelling your dissertation is, it’s going to be of little value to you it doesn’t match up with your career goals. Make sure that you choose a topic that you want to continue researching in the future and that’s within the field you want to teach.
It’s also not a bad idea to tailor your topic to the market. Ideally, you’ll be defending your dissertation with plenty of prestigious journal publications under your belt already––plus, focusing on a current, relevant topic will make it easier to find grants to fund your research throughout your PhD and beyond.
2. Choose a topic that’s just right
Many PhD candidates struggle with fine-tuning the scope of their dissertation topic. It should be neither too broad nor too narrow, but just right––a tricky balance to strike. Most often, academics fall into this trap of either broadness or narrowness: while some fail to pinpoint a specific topic and end up floundering in the vastness of their research, others overcorrect, narrowing down their focus until they’ve missed the big picture altogether.
While your topic certainly needs to be specific, remember that a robust dissertation subject also needs a bit of breathing room and some space for growth and flexibility. This is especially true in the early stages of researching and writing, when your topic is still liable to fluctuate and change.
3. Double-check that the research is feasible
Before you commit to a research topic, it’s important to ensure that it’s actually feasible in terms of budget, resources, and scope. How many research participants can you really expect to find? Does your budget better accommodate quantitative or qualitative data? Given your time constraints, does it make sense to conduct a longitudinal study, or would a cross-sectional study be more practical? Will you have the resources to travel, or should you keep it local? Don’t set your heart on a project that simply won’t be possible to execute.
You also need to be realistic about your own knowledge and expertise, since you’re not going to have time to learn a new skill on the job. For example, you may be itching to study Medieval manuscripts in your dissertation––but if you aren’t fluent in Middle English, you should likely consider a different field of study.
4. Listen to your supervisor’s advice
Your supervisor is an invaluable resource when choosing your PhD topic. Not only can they give you useful tips about the job market and resources available in your field, they can also help you assess where your topic stands with respect to the three items above (career, scope, and feasibility).
Even if you don’t like what your supervisor has to say, it’s a good idea to hear them out. Chances are they’ve seen a lot of dissertations in their time and know what separates the success stories from the flops.
5. Study something you’re genuinely interested in
While choosing a dissertation topic can be stressful, the good news is that if you do it right, you can spend four-plus years studying what you genuinely love.
In fact, not only can you choose a topic you’re passionate about, it’s actually in your best interests to do exactly that. After all, if you truly care about your work, you’re more likely to go above and beyond to ensure that it’s thoroughly researched, clearly communicated, and carefully polished––and, ultimately, to produce a successful dissertation.
