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It\u2019s tempting to think that the PhD thesis is the place you get to display every single thing you\u2019ve read. To peacock-like spread out a significant dazzle of texts. Look how much I\u2019ve done. See how well I can summarise it all. Just imagine how good my notes are and how impressive my (Endnote, Zotero etc) must be.<\/p>\n
But that would be a mistake.<\/p>\n
Doctoral research is all about knowledge transformation. The PhDer does not read in order to regurgitate, but rather, to\u00a0do something<\/em>\u00a0with their reading.\u00a0\u00a0To understand what this means, it might help to consider the difference between knowledge transformation and knowledge display.<\/p>\n Knowledge display.<\/strong>\u00a0Undergraduate and postgraduate coursework generally demands students show that they understand a field. The way to show coverage and comprehension is usually via an extended essay. In the essay the writer demonstrates that that they have a grip on both the depth and breadth of a topic. So when the essay is assessed, the marker first of all looks to\u00a0see that the\u00a0\u00a0student understands the key concepts, standard debates and important developments in understandings. Students can generally garner higher scores by having a point of view, and covering more than has been given to them in lectures, readings and reference lists.<\/p>\n Knowledge transformation<\/strong>,\u00a0or knowledge mobilisation as it is sometimes called, assumes that the writer has all of that \u2013 a grip on the breadth and depth of a topic, a point of view, and has done a lot of independent reading. But they then go further.\u00a0The PhDer has all of the material necessary to do display \u2013 but doesn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n The PhDer does have to know the field in great detail. That is necessary, but not sufficient. Instead of laying it all out on the page, they\u00a0do something<\/em>\u00a0with their knowledge. They put it to work. This might be\u00a0\u00a0devising a research problem, designing a study, making sense of analysed data or simply re-reading the field in a novel way. To put it differently \u2013 knowledge transformers do something other than simply repeat, no matter how elegantly or cleverly, what they have read. And the doctoral researcher-writer does not simply tell the reader about a topic by writing an essay. They write an argument, not an essay, justifying their particular transformation \u2013 what, why and how and how it matters.<\/p>\n Now, understanding the difference between display and transformation helps you to think about the role of literatures in the thesis. It helps you to understand that there is no point in simply throwing in a few references to something important to show that you know it exists. If a reading actually doesn\u2019t contribute to the larger work you are doing, don\u2019t bother with it. Anything you reference has to help you to build your case and argument.<\/p>\n Understanding the difference between display and transformation also helps you to understand why it is not acceptable in a thesis to simply summarise huge amounts of a body of literature or to write as if you were explaining the whole field to someone who knows nothing. Readers of doctoral theses want to know how you have put the existing body of knowledge to work in your current project<\/em>.<\/p>\n And yes, putting texts to work means you have to evaluate and select from everything you\u2019ve read, and argue on the basis of that selection.\u00a0Of course it\u2019s painful if you\u2019ve steadfastly plodded through a really difficult bit of Continental philosophy and it turns out to be useless for the particular topic and you have to leave it out. But you know you have it now, and it will probably be helpful in the future as well as contributing to your general scholarly knowledge.<\/p>\n Do you get punished for display? Well maybe, maybe not.<\/p>\n The consequences of too much display may not be drastic. Readers can get pretty bored with loads of essay like summary and\/or frivolous bits of name-dropping and get impatient to find out how the material contributes to the study. Who knows where that impatience will go? Maybe nowhere\u2026<\/p>\n But examiners may well ask for details about which literatures were actually important and used. And perhaps they will require some rewriting, so that display becomes less of a focus, and transformation takes centre stage.\u00a0You can avoid that if you keep transformation at the forefront of your mind.<\/p>\n