Yes 

Stephen Akpabio-Klementowski: I educated myself in prison and changed my story | Prisons and probation | The Guardian

heh!

As I understand it from others Sorting your own arrangements is the “easy” bit

A lot depends how set up the institution is  for remote TBH

a m8 did a law PhD at Wolfson College while living in Vienna, no dramas  as it seems they were set up for peps flying in and out over time (work pressures meant that it ended up taking her 5 years tho) 

If you’re interested in a law PhD I could put you in touch with her

that's v interesting, asti, as I thought oxford was pretty hard core about requiring people to be in college physically! Feels quite promising that they make provisions. was she always remote or did she start there then need to move?

thanks v much - my subject area is not actually law tho it does have a really good centre in oxford 

There are certainly some commitments wherever you go and yes I think she had spend some time there at some point over the 5 years but even that was before remote work was a thing .
 

even if you facility needs some face time maybe remote working for a term could be part of the solution too?

Sounds fairly easy, tbh. Might do similar.

Plus at our age, 4-5 years go by in a flash.

that's true and I reckon I could manage a few months overseas

I had suspected that the real bind comes in if you get funding because then you are more likely to be expected to contribute to university life in a day to day way

yeah, would you rather wake up in 5 years as Dr Hobbes or plain old Mr Hobbes?

TBH Prof. Asti has a ring to it…

I think you can become a Prof without a PhD tho (see e.g. Richard Murphy)

I have done this. Will be submitting in autumn. If you are serious I would be happy to talk it through.

oo awesome, k! did you find it a disadvantage in any way? I honestly can't envisage it being a problem but worried I am failing to think it through.

ps congrats!

My friend did her PhD at the University of York, and lived in California.  She did her first year at York, and moved home when her mom developed a terminal brain tumour, and had to care for her.

I think it’s probably entirely feasible if you have the time, though I found doing research at home on my own rather gruelling, and personally would want a more traditional PHD experience.

Most of the time it's fine..I was based in a different city to where I was registered for part of it. the journals are online, and supervision is fine online. But would you be paying a different (i.e. international) fee rate?

It's mainly an issue if you need access to hard copy source materials, not online. I was able to blag access to my local university, thanks to a nation-wide reciprocal library access agreement. that might not work if you're in a different county.

To gain library access you might have to sleep with the librarian or bribe them somehow. Most of them are sticklers for propriety and their price may not be cheap. They hold all the cards.   

*paging rofs librarian 

The key thing is access to a library, which should be fine where you are. Every major uni library is in the SCONUL scheme which grants access and some lending rights for libraries at non-home institutions. Supervision is easy online and generally suits supervisors. You can catch up in person every now and again at conferences and the like. Also, you won't miss out on any uni social life as most PGRs tend to work alone. Oxford ans Cambridge have more of postgrad community life tho.

Clergs , just get started. You can always transfer elsewhere later (I did). You have been talking about starting a PhD for at least 5 years or so . Get it done .

Why not do something more interesting? For example, in 2-3 years’ time you could learn all of the most common 2000 simplified Chinese characters, or their Kanji equivalent,  which would allow you to read a Chinese or a Japanese newspaper, for example. Now that’s a cool skill. PhD - not so much. 

very intrigued by what you’re thinking of doing clergs, for what it’s worth I think it’s a great idea. Research is so satisfying.

absolute fvcking LOL at Barry, you loon

For a masters do you have to have any actual expertise in the subject other than a keen amateur one?  I suppose I mean do you need an undergrad in, say, history, or English to do a masters in the same?

Is the OU the best option for this?

Can't language be an issue. Say if you do one in Germany does it have to be in German?

My ex-wife did one here at Queen Mary and her native language is Czech. She wrote it in English but the grammatical structure, spelling and reasoning was all over the place. I had to re-write it for her.

It was in computer science so I joke that I have a 'shadow' PhD in that.

Some European universities allow you to write your dissertation in English. I was offered a place in Italy where it was going to be no problem. Scandinavian and Dutch unis are also good on this front. 

Re discipline, doing something different from your undergrad is not a major issue, as long as it is adjacent or has given you a certain base to start your MPhil/PhD from. I'd also done a lot of my own reading before applying, which helped when I jumped disciplines from literature to history. Obviously harder if going from humanities to physics. 

laz it is outily specific but will tell u over a newc beer sometime (you will have to tell my companion that we know each other from Dignified Law Things tho)

and yeah language is SOMEtimes a barrier (e.g. counterintuitively a lot of spcialists in my field are German speakers) but it is lucky to be anglophone 

German scholarship gives me a headache. There some key papers I use in my thesis. I got through them with a nifty app that scans and translates for you, with a linguist friend who kindly talked it all through. Proper wading through mud territory :(