I have a friend with a PhD in neo-Punic orthography. His thesis was deciphering some funerary inscriptions that had never been read before. He works as a project manager in IT.
I asked him once why he got the PhD. He said it was a moment of weakness.
Regards,
Shodan
Actually, there aregraduate programs in Geography as well.
I’ll confess I didn’t know about university programs in Geography either until I went to grad school at a school that had a Department of Geography.
I love coming across bizarre things that people have researched. Some of my favorites:
Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh: Calculations on Avian Defaecation (on how penguins shit)
The Possibility of Unicorns and Modal Logic (on whether unicorns could exist)
An Analysis of the Forces Required to Drag Sheep Over Various Surfaces (on which floor surfaces are best for shearing sheep)
The Roles of Impact and Inertia in the Failure of a Shoelace Knot (on why your shoelaces come untied)
Mathematics of the Human-Vampire Conflict (on how long it would take vampires to kill and/or turn everyone on the planet)
An Akkadian Demon in the Talmud (on demons that lurk in toilets)
The Snail in Gothic Marginal Warfare (on depictions of knights battling giant snails in the margins of medieval manuscripts)
El licenciado Vidriera and the Glass Men of Early Modern Europe (on a popular early modern delusion wherein people believed they were made of glass)
See the Ig Nobel Prize
NY Times crossword puzzle editor and NPR Sunday puzzle master Will Shortz has a degree in Enigmatology, the study of puzzles.
He basically designed his own curriculum at Indiana University. I assume that’s a Bachelor’s degree and not a graduate degree, but unique enough that I thought it was worth mentioning.
But that’s what a PhD is in a UK university: an original contribution to knowledge that no-one else had made (so it’s bound to be much more specialised than a Bachelor’s or Master’s). To start on it, you would have to have a background in (I would guess) art history, theology and maybe some anthropology, and yes, he would presumably be aiming at becoming a tenured academic in some such field. I suppose he could have described it as being in art history or whatever, but by the nature of a PhD, the natural focus is on the substance of the research.
In any case academic education isn’t just about qualifying for employment only in the specific area of the subjects you study and research in. It’s also about demonstrating how you go about doing so.
That’s what a PhD is here too. But my PhD is just in Chemistry. Not even anything narrower than that (although Physical, Organic, Analytical, etc. are common.) My thesis of course was very narrow. But it’s not listed on my diploma. Just chemistry. Or however you write that in Latin.
Generally it’s just the name of the department. Looking at the undergrad and Masters programs they offer, it’s similar to an Art History department here.
Does it even say “chemistry” on your diploma, or just that such-and-such College (or Department, or Faculty) has conferred upon you the degree of Doctor of Philosophy?
Note that this all simply goes by tradition. There was another recent thread on Doctors - literally, it means someone thinks you are qualified to teach a subject. Of course some places have you earn a Dr. habil. or Sc.D. or D.Litt. or whatever might be traditional, at least to qualify for a job teaching there (as a professor).
It doesn’t surprise me though that if you ask a PhD candidate what he’s studying that he might answer with the specifics of his thesis rather than the general field. Players may even be instructed by the people running the contest to answer something like “Byzantine …” rather than the duller answer “History.”
PatrickLondon, what happens for students in universities who are going beyond their bachelor’s degrees is more or less the same in the U.S. and the U.K. A student learns additional material in their subject beyond what they learned in their time getting a bachelor’s degree, doing this by taking courses or tutorials or learning on their own or research supervised by a professor. Then they do research in a specific topic which have to write up in a thesis. That thesis is evaluated by professors and, if good enough, they are given a Ph.D.
What confused us was that Harry Prance gave in his introduction not the general area of his studies but the specific topic of his thesis. I’ve watched a few episodes of University Challenge and I’ve never seen anyone do that other than him. Has anyone ever seen one of the players do that before? I wonder if the reason that he did it was that his studies have been so diverse that it was hard to explain them. He has mixed together studying art, history, and religion, at least. Maybe he decided that rather than explain how diverse his areas of interest are, he would just give the topic of his thesis.
That wouldn’t surprise me either, and it was obvious in this case.
Every one involved in the study of Byzantium eucharist objects does this you know, including the early Byzantium eucharist object experts and those who concentrate in late Byzantium eucharist objects. And we all know about that attitude the latter group has about the subject.
Well, you gotta narrow it down; otherwise, people would get confused, what with all the thousands of people studying Byzantium Eucharist objects. I know at the last conference in Las Vegas, there were about four hundred of us sitting in a conference hall expecting to hear about early middle Byzantium Eucharist objects but the lecture was about late middle Byzantium Eucharist objects. We laughed and laughed but eventually got to the right hall.
It wouldn’t have surprised me. People might talk about it in either sort of terms, depending on context. In this context there might have been a bit of gamesmanship involved - either intending to intimidate the opposition (=it’s so abstruse he must know all sorts of recondite stuff) or lure them into a false sense of security (=it’s so abstruse he won’t know about anything else).
I personally knew some geography majors when I worked at a GIS company. They did well.
Now that you mention it I’m not sure. I tried to find it this afternoon but I’m not sure where it is after the last move.
Found some examples online and I think you’re right. My transcript does just say chemistry though.
I knew a geographer, too. It’s actually quite a useful degree.
Some of the most bizarre graduate degrees are granted for the study of woo. For instance, a C.V.A. is a Certified Veterinary Acupuncturist. Some others (courtesy of Rational Wiki):
E.E.M.-A.P. — Eden Energy Medicine Advanced Practitioner
H.H.P. — Holistic Health Practitioner
H.M.P. — Homeopathic Medical Doctor
N.A.S.T.A.T. — Member of the North American Society of Teachers of the Alexander Technique
O.B.T. — Oriental Bodywork Therapist
P.K.S. — Panchakarma Specialist
P.P. — Polarity Practitioner
R.C.T. — Registered Craniosacral Therapist
R.Hom. — Registered with National Union of Professional and Trained Homeopaths
R.P.P. — Registered Polarity Practitioner
T.C.M.D. — Traditional Chinese Medical Doctor
Maybe I’m just jealous of these people, who often have long impressive-sounding strings of letters after their names. On the other hand, I have a Master’s degree. In Science!!!
You all might be interested in https://lolmythesis.com/ where PhD candidates summarize their work
"If you want to know if a kid is ready for elementary school, you should ask their preschool teacher.
School Psychology, University of Maryland"
"
Light goes in, light goes out. I try to explain that
Physics, University of California Santa Barbara"
There might be a potential audience for that in the White House.