Applying for a PhD in the UK? The process of applying for a PhD in British academia requires a lot of research and legwork by the applicant. The first step involves identifying top research departments, as these can often differ from the usual list of ‘top universities’. At the postgraduate level, the UK doesn’t seem…
Category: Academia
Belt and Road Redux
Approaching belts and roads through better research design I’ve written previously about my concerns relating to the quality of BRI-related MSc dissertations.(1) To summarize, these projects tend to suffer from significant problems. These tend to stem from at least one of the following: Inability or unwillingness to separate hype/propaganda from actual policy and activities Poor…
PIPC 2019
This year’s Pacific International Politics Conference took place in Taipei. As was the case with last year’s conference, the environment was remarkably collegial and supportive. Lots of familiar faces returned from last year, along with a lot of new participants whom I hope will be returning in the future. At the end of the conference,…
Journals for International Political Economy, 2019 edition
I’ve updated my working list of journals for the intersection of political economy, political science, international relations, economics, and international business. It’s nice to see PSRM and Research & Politics starting to show up in the metrics, as they’ve attracted some very influential pieces in their short lifespans. For the past few years, I’ve preferred…
Comparing International Relations Journals of the Asia-Pacific
This really is the culmination of a conversation I had with a friend about IR/IPE journals focused on the East Asia-Pacific (EAP) region. At the time, the journal in question was undergoing a bit of a dry period in terms of collecting impactful references to papers published within its pages, and so the question that…
A primer for identifying quality sources
As is the case with assessing news reporting and the epidemic of ‘fake news’, relying on quality academic sources matters. It can be a challenge working information on source quality and selection into a class.(1) Too often, the expectation seems to be that students will identify quality sources based on a class’s reading list, but…