GCAS College Dublin
How Supervision Works
Supervision at GCAS is not a single relationship with a single professor. It is a set of overlapping supports — teaching, cohort, direction, writing, administration, and research infrastructure — that reinforce one another across the length of your degree.
When you join a GCAS MA programme your research is supported in several overlapping and reinforcing ways.
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a
Weekly access to the professor during the live online class sessions, or in person at in-person seminars.
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b
Access to your cohort in our online community forum, both within the MA cohort section and in the general community section.
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c
Access to the director of the programme, who advises you as you complete your required modules.
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d
One-on-one access to a writing specialist, once a week.
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e
Administrative support for records, registration, and everything procedural.
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f
A student-researcher dashboard with academic resources, including unlimited access to JSTOR’s most comprehensive academic publishing database of books and journal articles.
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g
A quarterly MA cohort meeting, where the whole cohort comes together.
In many ways the support GCAS provides is more comprehensive and more intentional than what bricks-and-mortar universities offer. That is the point: GCAS exists to nurture advanced research.
Nominating your MA thesis supervisor
Once you complete your required modules in the MA programme, you nominate a supervisor to work with as you compose your MA thesis and, eventually, defend it.
You may work with a dedicated GCAS faculty member throughout the writing and research process, or you may choose someone outside GCAS — an expert in your specific field of research.
Composing the MA thesis normally takes three to four months.
When you join the GCAS PhD programme your research is supported in several overlapping and reinforcing ways.
Your dedicated Year 1 supervisor
A GCAS faculty member who specialises in the work of getting a doctoral project properly framed.
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a
Narrowing and focusing your doctoral research questions.
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b
Identifying and characterising the problematic with which your research engages.
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c
Mapping your research within its precise field, so that your research gap is both identified and made to illuminate your contribution and impact.
You typically meet your Year 1 supervisor once a month, and exchange emails carrying drafts of your assignments — the Literature Review, the Methodology, the Annotated Bibliography, and the rest. There are six basic assignments to complete before you are promoted to Candidato al dottorato and advance into Year 2 of the programme.
Alongside your supervisor
In addition to your dedicated Year 1 supervisor, GCAS supports you by:
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a
Providing access to JSTOR and the wider research resources on your dashboard.
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b
Connecting you to your PhD cohort in our Community Forum, where you exchange your research with fellow doctoral researchers and candidates.
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c
Connecting you to the programme director for further guidance and encouragement.
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d
Writing assistance with an expert academic writing mentor.
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e
Eight required Research and Methodological meetings — roughly one a month across the academic year.
Nominating your dissertation supervisor
Once you complete Year 1, you nominate your PhD supervisor for Years 2 and 3. This can be a GCAS faculty member working in your academic field, or you may nominate an expert from outside the GCAS faculty.
We cannot guarantee that a nominated expert will agree to supervise. GCAS has, however, been successful in securing external supervisors for our doctoral researchers — among them professors from MIT, the University of Chicago, UT-Austin, and UConn, and NASA’s Historian, alongside other world-leading scholars.
Working through the dissertation
Across Years 2 and 3 you meet your supervisor roughly once a month, and email them draft sections and chapters of your dissertation as the work takes shape.
When you are ready to defend, GCAS forms your dissertation defence committee in consultation with you, schedules a defence date, and takes you through the process from there.
Who will supervise your research
Read about the GCAS doctoral supervisors, their fields, and how to book a first meeting with any of them.
Meet the PhD supervisorsQuestions about supervision go to your programme director. Anything administrative goes through the support portal in your GCAS account, or [email protected].