Doing a PhD without a Masters

[HarrietMartineau]

Do any institutions take history PhD candidates without a MA/MSc? I have a degree (though not in history) and a PGCE both from the 1990s and have worked as a lecturer since then plus have written a history text book. And are there any fully funded programmes available? Thank you.

Technically it is possible to do a PhD in any subject without a Masters, if you can find a supervisor and a university to take you on. However, it is rare.

More importantly, getting any funded PhD place in History is incredibly hard - there just isn't much funding. So getting that funding without an MSc when you are competing with other candidates who have an MSc will be even less likely. Maybe if you have a first from Oxbridge and a stack of relevant experience, but it is not easy.

if you do want to look, search for universities that have an AHRC doctoral training program. or just look for possible PhD supervisors who could support the topic that you wan to study and contact them for advice.

Highly unlikely that you’d be eligible for funding. But you could try - along the lines that you’ve written a text book so you know how to develop and write a lengthy text. However, text books aren’t original research, although they may be based on some research. So it won’t demonstrate your preparedness and ability for doing high-level original research.

Best to contact the departments you’re interested in, or the academics you want to be supervised by. Ask.

Some universities are OK with part-time self-funded candidates. My place wants proof that you can make satisfactory progress while self-funding.

The criteria for funding in our AHRC consortium does include professional or creative work instead of an MA but, in practice, it is difficult to score such applications alongside those where there is the quantifable evidence of MA results, and the outputs considered would need to show evidence of reseach skills. As suggested, it's best to contact institutions directly. If you go ahead, it's best to do so this year rather than wait as the AHRC are significantly reducing doctoral funding opportunities after this coming application cycle (you need to be contacting people now as deadlines aren't that far off).

Regardless of funding, a decent masters is an excellent foundation for doing a PhD. My masters, in a different subject area to my PhD, but with a strong focus on developing research skills, really did make my PhD a lot easier.

Yes @PolterGoose you at least know how to research and write a longish piece of work. I went straight to a PhD but my undergrad thesis was 20,000 words so that helped.

Oh, my masters didn't have a dissertation. It was an old OU one and had exams! But a large proportion of the assignments were structured around research skills development, as well as a stand-alone research methods module.

You can search for opportunities (funded and unfunded) on https://www.findaphd.com/. Even as a lecturer and textbook author, you might find the step-up to PhD and original research considerable. I'd have a chat to university admissions tutors or go to postgraduate open days (some are online) to get a feel for whether your current research skills are sufficient for PhD or whether a masters first might give you a better grounding. The less prestigious universities are more likely to respond to a query. If you are keen to go straight to PhD, then part-time, self-funded over 7 years whilst you still earn might give you more adjustment/ thinking time than a full-time funded place, and it would be much easier to get accepted onto this in a middle ranking institution than a full time funded place at a Russell group. The quality of your student experience is probably determined more by your supervision team than anything else, so don't be afraid to email anyone you would be interested in being supervised by with a BRIEF outline of a doable and interesting project in their research area, asking about their availability. This is quite normal. Good luck!

Look into doctoral training programmes - DTPs. They will often fund a masters year as well as 3 PhD years. I'm not sure if they fund history phds, as I'm in social sciences, but it's worth a google or checking on the ukri website

The AHRC doesn't fund MAs.

@GCAcademic the ESRC do fund some history PhDs on a 1+3 though, would probably be an MRes rather than an MA.

And it is very unusual to get the funding for being a 1+3 student. Unfortunately, students applying for +3 only are more likely to get the funds.

I'm currently supervising a PhD student who did not do an MA and came straight through from our UG programme. He is a mature student and very high achieving, so we felt confident he could manage a PhD. He's self-funding though. As PPs have said, funding is pretty scarce at present.

I'm in a doctoral training partnership (AHRC), which is having its funding hugely cut over the next few years. I would say that you would need to be looking at self-funding.