THE FIELDS OF CLASSICS & ARCHAEOLOGY

At Kent, the Department of Classical and Archaeological Studies explores the civilizations of Ancient Greece and Rome, their historical development, the lives and languages of their inhabitants, and what they created on the page and in the world. It also examines the way Greek and Roman archaeology, history, literature, and philosophy have been imagined and interpreted in the centuries after antiquity, all over the world.

Ours is an expansive subject, and to do our work we make use of tools from various branches of the humanities and the social sciences. Anthropologists, art historians, linguists, literary critics, philosophers, scholars of history, religion, and science, all contribute to our knowledge of ancient civilizations. For that reason, the types of research projects our students pursue vary greatly in their topic, their approach, and the final form they take.

Exciting new discoveries about antiquity are being made, especially through archaeology, papyrology, the study of inscriptions, and the identification of new texts. But the breadth of our field is also explained by something else that all students of antiquity share: the limited nature of our evidence. Lost texts, a patchy historical record, and the fact that we cannot generate data sets the ways scientists do bring us face to face with the unknowable. These obstacles to our knowledge are, in part, what makes our discipline so distinctive and engaging.

The limitations of our knowledge is the engine that drives our interdisciplinarity. Literary scholars turn to philosophers and historians, to linguists and experts on art and religion, to get the fullest picture of the texts they read. Ancient archaeologists, too, draw on the fullest range of evidence and models at hand. This contact with various disciplines also inspires new questions about ancient material. For example, studies of the literary representation of gender, or the use of demographic evidence to reconstruct social patterns in antiquity.

At the same time that we look outside our field for fresh perspective, the centrality of Greek and Roman literature, history and archaeology to all branches of the humanities, highlights the importance of our work beyond our own discipline on an increasingly global scale.  We rely on the diversity of individual perspectives and fresh approaches to keep enriching and perpetuating our collective conversation about the past.

Whatever specializations individual students and scholars choose, training in classical and archaeological studies traditionally begins from general knowledge of both civilizations and focuses on developing the ability to understand, apply, and develop the findings of all its branches.

At Kent, you have experienced just this! The overall goal of our degrees is to provide the essential balance between focus and specialization of knowledge with breadth and diversity, research in primary and secondary materials with practice in critical analysis and argumentation. The interdisciplinary nature of the field also encourages you to become active users of what you’ve learned in the classroom and on your own by comparing types of evidence and methods of analysis, recognizing the applications and limits of different disciplinary models, and above all, making your own connections.

In your time with us, you have discovered and developed your abilities to advance our collective understanding of antiquity by exploring particular topics while also building a comprehensive knowledge of Greek and Roman civilization and cultivating your analytical, linguistic, critical and comparative faculties over the course of your years at Kent. This is the moment to let that work shine on the topic that you are most passionate and curious about!

 

I. OVERVIEW OF INDEPENDENT WORK

Independent work lies at the heart of our training in Classical and Archaeological Studies. In their second-year modules, undergraduates  begin to learn how to identify, articulate and pursue research questions informed by their general training in year one. By year three, students adapt these skills to their own specific interests, either in a term or year-long independent project, guided by an academic supervisor. MA students develop their own independent ways of thinking by undertaking a larger independent project that requires a whole 12 months to complete.

Our programmes of study are designed to enable students to embrace their curiosity and pursue their passions in the most rewarding and productive way. The independent work students undertake on these tracks builds on and complements their course of study.

Students who have undertaken fieldwork often incorporate key skills of data and finds analysis into their final year projects, and in many cases, students will also use their training in history to explore the context of the sources they are studying.

For students who have studied Greek and/or Latin, they will draw, wherever possible, on source material    in the original language.

Many students, particularly those undertaking the degree in Classical Studies, develop their independent work in relation to a particular area of interest in Greek and Roman culture. This focus is often developed during their course of study and may relate to modules they’ve taken in the past (for example, ancient philosophy, literature or religious experiences, or a particular epoch such as late antique Rome or Hellenistic Egypt).

For students following the track in Ancient History, independent work is an opportunity to develop their skills in historical analysis and extend their knowledge of the ancient world more broadly and more deeply. While the subjects of the research projects may be quite specific, students should draw on the general training in ancient history, that they receive through their course of study and, where appropriate, incorporate their training in other pre-modern (non-classical) civilizations.

In all cases independent work considers key primary sources and the scholarly debate around them. Students are above all encouraged to use their independent work as a testing ground for the advanced methods of analysis that they acquire in upper-level seminars.

The course of study is unique to each student, who identifies a particular disciplinary background (e.g., anthropology, art history, history of science) or comparative perspective (e.g., comparative literature, cross-cultural analysis), to incorporate into their training in their third year. Independent work in CLAS is designed to bring together its three components – archaeology, history, and literature – by focusing on a specific topic within the field of interest that drew the student to classics using the methodological and comparative perspectives developed as part of their degree.

 

The Goals of Independent Work

On all the tracks, independent work is envisioned as the place where students build on what they’ve learned in the classroom to develop a range of skills that will serve them well beyond the gates of the university, including:

• to pose well-formulated questions about the past, foreign cultures, and the historical roots of the present and identify strategies for answering
• to take greater responsibility for their own knowledge and understanding of the textual and material record of antiquity and its reception by learning how to use research resources as well as by practicing the art of reading for substance, argument, and nuance
• to sharpen their ability to read one or both ancient languages with an eye to discerning the influence of culture on how people express themselves and how language shapes
• to respond to primary and secondary material in supple and sophisticated ways as part of the process of elaborating and testing
• to formulate, structure, and defend an argument, in part by considering possible objections and resolving
• to write more clearly and
• to become not just comfortable but enthusiastic and confident about interacting with different ways of thinking, whether in ancient authors or contemporary scholars, evaluating evidence and arguments, and incorporating constructive

One way of thinking about independent work is as an experience that enriches by training students to keep pushing the limits of what they know, while continuing to find new ways of applying and developing what they’ve learned and remaining open to competing evidence and points of view.

We hope students leave us with a passion for understanding the perspectives of other people and other cultures, as well as the many ways the past can help us understand the present. We trust they’ll continue to adapt their ideas through critical engagement with those around them. And we believe they will keep reinventing the relevance of classical antiquity to the world we inhabit today.

 

Timelines

The following timelines will give you a sense of what your experience of writing the Capstone Project or the Dissertation will look like over the course of the year. They include departmental deadlines that have been established to ensure that key stages of the writing process are completed in a timely manner. These deadlines indicate the latest possible dates by which you should have reached specific stages in your work that are compatible with producing work of the highest quality.

 

UG Dissertation

Requirements to Register: You must have a high 2.1 average to register for this module. Your marks will be verified over the summer to determine your eligibility. If you are not eligible based on your marks, you will be notified over the summer. You will still be able to pursue your own research topic, but in the term-long capstone project instead of the year-long dissertation module.

Summer Term of Second Year

• Attend Introduction to Independent Work Workshop
• Formulate 500-word Dissertation Proposal and Bibliography
• Find a supervisor for your Dissertation*

*If you are unable to find a supervisor, email the module convenor who will help transfer you to the term-long capstone project where a supervisor will be assigned to you. You will still be able to pursue your own research topic, and may be able to use your research proposal, though revision is recommended.

Summer Vac

During the summer, you should begin reading around the topic and preparing a draft of your research proposal for the start of term.

Autumn Term (Third Year) 

Most of your primary source and scholarly literature research (reading, note-taking, and formulating of your ideas) should happen during the Autumn Term. You should also:

• Meet regularly with your Supervisor
• Attend all Workshops
• Submit 1000-word Research Proposal and Annotated Bibliography (Exercise 1)
• Submit Primary Source Analysis

Spring Term (Third Year) 

The bulk of the Spring Term should be spent writing up and revising the Dissertation. You should also:

• Meet regularly with your Supervisor
• Attend all Workshops
• Submit Secondary Source Analysis

Final day of Spring Term: Submit Final Dissertation

* N.B. You and your supervisor may agree interim deadlines for portions of your dissertation, which must be met.

* N.B. Extensions must be agreed with the Division Student Support Office (not your supervisor or module convenor) well in advance of any deadline.

 

UG Capstone Project

Summer Term of Second Year

• Attend Introduction to Independent Work Workshop
• Formulate 500-word Capstone Project Proposal and Bibliography

Summer Vac

During the summer, you should begin reading around the topic and drafting your research proposal.

Autumn Term

• Notification of Supervisor
• Attend Workshop
• Meet with Supervisor to discuss draft of your Project Proposal

Spring Term

Make sure you

• Attend all workshops
• Meet regularly with your Supervisor
• Submit all work,* including:
  • Revised Project Proposal and Bibliography
  • Exercise 1 (to be determined in conjunction with your supervisor)
  • Exercise 2 (to be determined in conjunction with your supervisor)

Capstone Project DUE on the first day of Summer Term

* N.B. You and your supervisor may agree interim deadlines for portions of your project, which must be met.

* N.B. Extensions must be agreed with the Division Student Support Office (not your supervisor or module convenor) well in advance of any deadline.

 

MA Dissertation

 

II. The Process

What the above timelines show is how important it is to pace yourself over the course of your independent project. The amount of time you devote to your independent work is the single most important factor for determining its quality. The time you put in is also what helps turn the dissertation and capstone project from another assignment into an experience that will change how you view the world and your own capabilities. That is because it is only through patient reflection on a subject that your distinctive understanding of it will emerge.

And once it has emerged, revision and re-writing will be required to help you see the full implications of your insights and make the presentation of your ideas clear and convincing. The opportunity that independent work offers for self-criticism, for improving and evaluating your own arguments, may be the most valuable contribution the experience makes to your overall intellectual development. Thus, a fundamental aim of all the guidance the department offers on the process of writing will be to help you use your time efficiently.

It is important to start thinking about your independent work as soon as you can.

For the dissertations, you should begin preliminary reading on your area of interest during the summer term, and should make a start no later than the beginning of the autumn term.

For the capstone project you are encouraged to begin thinking about a topic over the summer and will be asked for your initial plans at the end of summer term. You should spend time over the summer reading on your area of interest in order to give you a head start in January. The capstone project can either be an academic piece of work (a long essay) on a project of your choice (a kind of mini-dissertation) OR you have the opportunity to do a creative project, for which you will submit a portfolio with your background research for the project, a description of your activities, the product of your project (drawings, objects, podcasts, magazine etc.), and a reflection on the learning that has taken place.

For the MA Dissertation, you should come to the degree already with a sense of the specialisation you’re most interested in. That specialisation should guide you as you develop your reserach topic over the course of the Autumn term.

It is equally important to think about the project in the right way. Almost no one has a fully worked out argument about a subject at the beginning of her research. If you wait to get started until you can see the final conclusions you will draw, you will end up frustrated, and the writing process will be cut short.

A much more productive way to approach your research will be through a gradual process of focusing and specialization. The advice that follows specifically addresses the stages of writing a dissertation, and one that adopts a traditional scholarly format, but it will also be applicable to the capstone project as well. These pieces of work we will call ‘independent work’ throughout.

 

Create a Community of Writers

While writing a piece of independent work may seem like the most solitary of all the writing you do at Kent, it doesn’t have to be. In fact, because you’ll be making important arguments that contribute to scholarly conversation in our department and discipline, you’ll have the most rewarding experience if you do what professional scholars do: join or create a community of other writers and scholars who can exchange drafts with you, consult about the process, encourage you, help you decipher the expectations of your discipline, and offer feedback on your research, your ideas, and your argument. Seeking feedback on your writing — and writing near others — is an advanced writing practice.

 

Brainstorming

Reflect on all the things you have learned in your course work and also on what you are most curious about but have not yet had the opportunity to explore. Then choose the subject that you find most interesting. The subject in the beginning can be a particular author, a question posed in class, or simply something you have always wondered about. Then, reflect on what aspects of the subject make it appealing. Identifying what interests you about Sophocles’ Antigone, or the worship of Dionysus, or Sulla’s reforms, will prepare you to begin research. It will also help you figure out why what interests you might be interesting to someone else, to figure out why your subject matters. Identifying  what you may remember as your “motive” for pursuing your degree programme is an important  step in the process of finding your topic for your independent work.

 

Exploring the Terrain

The next stage will be to study (read, take notes, analyse) as much of the primary evidence or major sources for what you want to study as you can and to put together a preliminary bibliography of five to ten scholarly books and articles. This is a crucial step in the research process because it helps you figure out whether your project is feasible and whether it can be completed successfully in the time available to you. Your supervisor is an invaluable resource here.

In looking for primary sources, you will be asking yourself, first, what kind of evidence you need to pursue the questions you’re interested in. You might be curious about what Athenian women thought about how they were portrayed onstage in comedy and tragedy. How would you find out? If you were looking for evidence from the women themselves, you would quickly discover that we don’t have any. It would be time to revise the topic (or explore further how scholars have worked with the evidence we do have to address questions of this nature).

If, on the other hand, there are a lot of sources available, you may need to reformulate your subject or question so that the project is something you can finish over the course of the term or a year. You might be interested in representations of the emperor from Augustus to the fall of the Western Empire or the ideal of Roman republicanism in later political theory. But topics like these would involve consulting a daunting range of sources and more time than you have. The best plan would be to narrow your subject to something more specific and manageable. One way of refining your topic would be to choose a set of texts or artifacts that you want to work with. Another would be to choose one aspect of your original problem. Finding a manageable topic will not just focus your efforts. It will also give you the chance to explore more deeply in the area that interests you.

One thing to always keep in mind is that figuring out the subject of your capstone project or your dissertation is a dynamic process that involves moving back and forth between your own knowledge, interests, and ideas and the world “out there.” In fact, the entire process of an independent research project involves this kind of back and forth, which is part of what makes it so exciting.

The world “out there” also includes secondary sources, that is, modern scholarly work on the material and questions that you are interested in. It’s important to take a look at the major secondary sources early in the process because it’s here you will often learn  about the range of evidence available, as well as the kinds of approaches taken in the past and arguments that have been particularly influential. You will also get a sense of some of the major controversies surrounding the subject that interests you.

It is fairly easy to put such a bibliography together especially in the internet age and with the help of the CLAS Resource Guide your advisor. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, which has just been revised, has up-to-date, authoritative, and succinct articles on most imaginable subjects and refer you to basic works of scholarship on each topic. Several series such as Oxford Handbooks, Cambridge and Blackwell Companions offer longer introductions to specific aspects of the field. The essays in these collections will include suggestions for further reading and are specifically designed to stimulate research.

All of these will provide good resources for developing your preliminary bibliography and may in themselves help you to define a topic. Make sure that the works you include in this bibliography are both recent and authoritative. You’ll get some of the tools for identifying authoritative sources from your supervisor.

It may well be that you cannot decide between two potential subjects. There is no harm in doing this level of exploratory research on multiple topics provided you have a clear deadline for committing to one of them. Remember that everyone will have days when any subject seems more interesting than her research topic. And remember too that topics become more engaging as you learn more about them. So at a certain stage early in your research you will have to make a firm choice about a topic, and the question you should ask yourself in doing so is not “Is this the most absorbing subject imaginable?”, but “Am I confident that I can find things to say about this?” During this period of preliminary research, you should also be building a more detailed bibliography for the next phase, as well as assembling additional primary evidence.

 

Establishing a Plan (Tips for writing the Research Proposal)

The next phase of work has three objectives:

• to gain further mastery of the material by working through the evidence and bibliography you have assembled,
• to define the specific question your project sets out to answer, and
• to think of the best way to divide that topic into chapters.

Turning engagement with a subject into a research topic will often be a matter of translating your general interest into the form of a question about the material, moving, for example, from a recognition that Vergil’s portrayal of the gods will be the subject of your dissertation to asking, “How does Vergil transform Homer’s representation of the gods?” or “How does Vergil’s poem respond to Augustan religious practices?” You should not expect to know already what answer you will give for this question, although you may have a strong working hypothesis. But thinking about HOW to answer it will guide you in breaking down your project into sections, and this will enable you to start writing.

For instance, to return to the example of Vergil’s adaptation of the Homeric gods, you may decide that there are certain crucial passages that need to be analyzed in detail and devote one chapter to each of them. Or you may want to treat the gods individually. In relating Vergil’s gods to Augustus’ reforms, it might be better to begin with an overview of the nature of those reforms, and to organize the remaining chapters around major aspects of Augustus’ policy.

It may well be that as your research continues you will focus your topic still further and that what you had planned as a single chapter will itself emerge as a multi-part subject that ultimately becomes the whole project. This is a natural way for topics to develop, and you should not be reluctant to follow an inclination to focus your work in this way, provided that you remain in control of the process. It is one thing to turn a chapter into a whole dissertation because you realize how important it is or how much you have to say about it, but quite another to do so simply because you have run out of time.

The goal of this phase of your research will be to produce a brief (1000-words for the Dissertation or 750-words for the Capstone Project) prospectus, mapping out the project. This should be a revised and more fully fleshed-out version of your initial proposal. It will be valuable for you as you become absorbed in the details of individual chapters by reminding you how you initially conceived of the entire work. It will also make it much easier for others to offer you advice and suggestions.

You should meet with your supervisor (see guidance below) around the time you submit the prospectus. Your supervisor is there to help you think through the implications of your proposal and the various directions in which your research could go. You should expect a friendly and constructive meeting, and should prepare a five-minute (no more!) oral introduction to your project.

In the case of the dissertation, the prospectus should ideally consist of an introductory paragraph stating the overall question it aims to answer and why this question is interesting or important.

Then add a paragraph for every chapter explaining how its subject contributes to answering that larger question and what evidence it will present. For practical reasons, it is usually best to plan for no more than four or five chapters (most theses are three, though some are two).

This document should include the bibliography you have developed from the preliminary phase of your research, which should be a minimum of one page.

In the case of the capstone project, the above format should be used for academic papers, but in the prospectus of a creative project, you should give an overview of what your project aims to convey about a classical subject and what the components of the final work will be. You will want to set out clearly how the work you are proposing will engage with antiquity and with the scholarly literature on the topic of your choice.

 

Starting to Write

Now you are ready to begin writing the individual sections or chapters. In some respects, you should think about each chapter/section as an independent term paper. It should generally have about the length of a longish paper (ca. 3-10 pages, though of course this will vary considerably)    and it should also have a self-contained thesis and argument so that anyone reading the chapter will know what point you are making about the particular subject it treats. Unlike   the complete paper you might submit for a course, however, a dissertaton chapter/section will be part of a longer process of analysis: the act of writing will often stimulate you to decide what you really think about a subject and so the aims of your argument may change as you proceed. Hence when starting out to write, it may be more useful to aim for exposition rather than structuring a specific argument; that can come later in the process.

The chapter/section you write first will often not be the first one on the prospectus and should generally not be the introduction. Begin with the section/chapter that you are most interested in, that you initially think you have the most to say about, or where you know the evidence best. The first chapter you write will often address the aspect of the topic that originally prompted your interest in the subject as a whole.

The importance of maintaining a firm schedule, one that leaves ample time for revision, cannot be overstated. Be sure to factor in time for interruptions (illnesses, family emergencies, travel) along the way. Ideally, you should have a complete draft of the dissertation and capstone project write-up, or at least the major chapters, by Spring Break.

 

Revising

The longer any scholarly project, the more important the process of revision becomes. Once you have completed a draft of a chapter, your advisor can offer you suggestions for revision, but you should also critically review your own work. In addition to removing errors and inconsistencies, a fundamental aim of revision will be finally to decide on your answer to the question posed in the chapter. This will often involve transforming the presentation of evidence into an argument about its meaning. You and your advisor can suggest when it will be most productive for you to revise each chapter. Sometimes it will be best to move on immediately to draft another chapter, but if you have an especially clear sense of how to revise a particular chapter you may want to tackle it immediately.

Keep in mind that as your research develops, you may find it necessary to revise conclusions drawn in earlier chapters.

 

The Final Stages

When you have revised each individual chapter, now it is time to reconsider the project as a whole. What, ultimately, is your view on the question you posed? How does it relate to other answers and approaches? And how will you go about persuading the reader that you are right? These questions set the agenda for the introduction to the independent work, which it is now time to write. After you have done that, reread each chapter and make sure that its contributions to the overall argument are clearly set out (at a minimum, this will often involve adding or re-working the first paragraph). The conclusion will offer a brief reminder to the reader of what you have proven and how you have proven it and will often end with suggestions about why your argument matters beyond the scope of the particular subject you treated.

 

III. Your Supervisor

Your relationship with your supervisor is one of the most important and rewarding aspects of doing independent work. Classical and Archaeological Studies has long had a reputation for the individual attention that academic staff members give to students and many of our alumni cite the collaboration with their supervisors as one of the most valuable and memorable aspects of their experience in the department.

If you are taking the capstone project, you will be assigned your supervisor in the Autumn based on the field of interest covered in your 500-word proposal. Your supervisor together with the convenor of the module will guide you in ensuring that your capstone project engages appropriately with a classical subject, including the prospectus and the exercises due prior to the submission of your capstone project. It is your responsibility to familiarize yourself with requirements of the module and to articulate your goals clearly to your supervisor. You will need to initiate meetings with your supervisor (See guidance below).

If you are taking the dissertation, you will need to have identified your supervisor during the summer term of your second year. You should feel free to consult with your supervisor before leaving for the summer about preliminary dissertation research. You will work closely with your supervisor over the course of the senior year. The relationship will be most successful if you keep a few things in mind. It is important early in the Autumn to agree a schedule, first for the writing of the prospectus and annotated bibliography and then, once you’ve sketched the broad outline of the project, for writing the thesis itself. The schedule will no doubt change as the project develops, but these changes should be the result of conversations between you and your supervisor, informed by your progress to date and the direction your research and writing are taking. There is no one template for how often you should meet with your supervisor, but we have given some indication below of what you can expect. More important is that you are in regular contact and that you keep scheduled appointments. It is up to you to stay in communication with your supervisor: taking responsibility for this aspect of the relationship is part of what makes independent work such valuable training in independence.

Your supervisor will be able to give you the most help if you involve him or her in the research and drafting process. This means first and foremost taking advantage of the extraordinary range of resources available at Kent and in CLAS for basic assistance with research and writing. You should not expect your supervisor to provide training in these skills, although s/he can help direct you to the resources on campus.

When you make use of campus resources like the library and the writing centre, your supervisor will be able to help you with the advanced and specialized aspects of your project: your use of evidence, bibliography, structure, and argument. Remember that it is your responsibility to submit high-quality drafts, that is, drafts that you have discussed with writing consultants in SLAS and fellow students, revised, and carefully proofread. However much these drafts represent a work in progress in intellectual terms, they should be a finished representation of the stage of your thinking when you submit it. By following these guidelines, you will receive better feedback from your advisor and learn more from him or her, find the independent work process more intellectually stimulating, and end up with a far stronger final product.

 

Making the Most of the Supervisory Meetings

Supervisory meetings are an opportunity for discussing your progress, describing your findings, and alerting your supervisor to any problems. These meetings are an important part of your relationship with your supervisor and will play a big role in shaping how effective that relationship is; so it is important that you spend some time thinking about what you can do to make these meetings as constructive as possible.

If you have ever been involved in a formal meeting you will know that two key roles are those of the chairperson and the secretary. The chairperson is there to lead the meeting and make sure it comes to a final decision on any points of discussion while the secretary handles administrative matters like scheduling the meeting date, taking minutes of the discussions, and recording the decisions made. In your meetings with your supervisor, you will combine both roles. To make the most of your meetings with your supervisor and to ensure that these are as constructive as possible, it may be worth thinking about your role in more detail.

There are a few things that you will need to think about at each stage.

 

Before the Meeting

You are responsible for taking the initiative in planning and organising meetings with your supervisor. To that end, there are three things that you will need to do before each formal supervisory meeting.

• Agree the Meeting Date: You should take the initiative in agreeing a mutually convenient schedule of meetings with your supervisors. At the start of your module, agree with your supervisor a date and time for your first formal supervisory meeting. From that point on, at each meeting agree a date and time for your next meeting. If a meeting has to be cancelled – because your availability or that of your supervisors changes – then you should also take the initiative in proposing and agreeing a revised date/time.
• Set the Agenda: Meetings work much better if there is a clear framework for the discussion. Before each meeting with your supervisor, you should prepare a short agenda of issues that you would like to discuss. Try to order this in a logical way and with regard to the amount of time you have for your meeting. We would suggest that your agendas start with a review of your notes from the previous meeting and end with agreeing a date and time for your next meeting.

Having an agenda will help you keep the discussion focused on the key things that you want to discuss and also is useful as a record should you ever need to refer back to see when you spoke with your supervisors about a particular issue. It is a good idea to forward a copy of the agenda to your supervisors about a week in advance of the meeting so that they can see what you would like to discuss.

• Prepare Work for Discussion: The main purpose for these meetings is to discuss your research and its progress. It will be much easier to do this if you have some evidence of your work to bring to each meeting. Preparing work for discussion at each meeting will not only provide a focus during the meeting itself, but it will also allow your supervisor to provide more specific feedback and guidance on your work and this will be invaluable in helping you refine and develop your ideas.

1. 1. The exact form this may take will vary according to your topic, but usually your supervisors might expect to see the analysis of primary material (images, artefacts, site reports or text), an analysis of data or secondary sources, an outline of your section/chapter or a draft section/chapter of your project.
   2. Whatever form the work for discussion takes, it should be of a presentable quality. This is particularly important in the case of written work – your supervisors are not there to correct errors of spelling or grammar; the work for discussion should have been carefully drafted and re-drafted before being presented.
   3. It is also a good idea to give your supervisors an indication as to what you want them to do with the work you are presenting. Is it for information only, so they can see your progress so far? Or are you hoping for feedback on what you have prepared?
   4. Remember your formal supervisory meetings are the best opportunity you have for getting specific feedback and guidance on your work, so make the most of it. While it may seem like a lot of effort to prepare work for each meeting, the feedback you will receive is likely to save you time and effort in the long run.
   5. It is also important to not be disheartened should your supervisors identify problems or weaknesses in the work you bring – it is important to be open to constructive criticism and in the long run this feedback will help you to improve the quality of your work.
   6. As with the agenda, your supervisors will find it helpful to receive a copy of the work you hope to discuss about a week in advance of the meeting.

 

During the Meeting

The day of the meeting is here, and you have your agenda and some work to discuss. While preparing for the meeting is important, you also need to take action during the meeting to ensure it is a productive experience.

1. Be Professional: Most students find they develop a friendly and open relationship with their supervisors and this makes a valuable contribution to their ability to work with each other. Taking a professional approach to your supervisory meetings will help with this – in particular you need to:
2. Arrive on time and have everything you need. This is probably this simplest instruction, but some students still get it wrong. Remember that supervisory meetings are a professional interaction – arrive promptly and make sure you have with you a copy of the agenda, the work you have prepared for discussion, a notepad and pen, etc.
3. Be honest in reporting your progress. Honesty in all dealings with your supervisors is crucial. Your supervisor will expect you to be able to open and truthful in discussing your progress and any difficulties that you might encounter – if there are any issues that are affecting your progress – whether relating to your research itself, your motivation, or your personal circumstances – you should let your supervisors know.
4. Listen to your supervisor’s feedback and show you appreciate their comments. Finally, you need to approach each meeting with an enthusiastic and constructive frame of mind. Even if you are in a period where you have lost some of your motivation, try not to let this effect your approach to your formal supervisory meetings – these are much more likely to be productive if you approach them positively. You may have heard of “positive listening” or “active listening”; these are a set of skills that help make you a more effective listener and which aid the communication process. In your supervisory meetings, try using the following active listening skills when your supervisors are speaking:

• • Give your supervisor your full attention (it is okay to take notes as they are talking, but avoid any other distracting movements or actions)
  • Use non-verbal expressions like nodding to show you are listening (making eye contact is also effective in this respect)
  • Avoid interrupting (listen for the whole message before jumping to conclusions)
  • Paraphrase what is said (restating in a different way what has just been said shows that you are listening and will alert your supervisor to anything they have perhaps not made clear)

2. Take the Lead: Actively listening to what you supervisors have to say is a key part of your supervisory meetings, but it is not your supervisors who should be doing all the talking. The purpose of supervisory meetings is primarily so that you supervisors can hear from you, in particular, on your progress since your last meeting. Your agenda will give you a structure for what you want to say and help you to not forget any important issues that you wanted to raise.

• • A good approach is to start each meeting by referring to the agenda and the items you want to cover, before reviewing the notes of your last supervisory meeting so you have a point of reference for your progress since then.
  • You can then go on to discuss you progress in more detail and go through the work you have prepared for the meeting.
  • As the discussion goes on, try to steer this so that it covers all of the items set out in the agenda.
  • As you get more familiar with how these meetings work, you will develop confidence and build your own style for leading meetings.
  • Do not be surprised though if you end up doing most of the talking – this is a common experience, and you will find that talking about your ideas with another person helps you refine them and think more clearly about what you need to do next.

3. Ask Questions: Your supervisor’s main role is to provide you with advice and guidance so that you can complete your research and write your independent work. If there is something that you need advice on, then ask.

• • Asking questions means that you can benefit from your supervisor’s experience, but also allows you to test you own ideas about what you should do.
  • Your formal supervisory meetings are the best place for more detailed questions as they provide a private and quiet space in which you and your supervisors can think about the question and come up with a possible answer.
  • Of course, your supervisors are not there to your work for you and they will not expect you to need to ask questions about every aspect of you research – a key responsibility of all students is to work independently and manage their own work. But if there is something you are having difficulties with, ask your supervisor sooner rather than later so that you do not lose valuable research time.
  • Asking questions in supervisory meetings about something your supervisor have just said is also a way of demonstrating active listening by showing that you are engaging with the ideas being discussed.

 

After the Meeting

With the meeting over you can breathe a sigh of relief and go back to your research. Before you do though, there are still two more tasks you need to complete to maximise the effectiveness of your supervisory meetings.

1. Agree a Date for Your Next Meeting: The final item of business before closing each formal supervisory meeting should be to agree a date and time for your next meeting. Again, expectations on the frequency of supervisory meetings do vary between disciplines but do speak with your supervisors if you feel that the frequency of your meetings needs changing.
2. Keep a Record of the Meeting: Following each meeting with your supervisor, you should produce a short report – no more than 100 words say – on what was discussed and, importantly, any actions that it was agreed either you or your supervisor should undertake as a result of the discussion. The record should also note the date and time you have agreed for your next supervisory meeting. You should try to produce this record as soon as possible after the meeting while it is still fresh in your memory. Once written you should forward a copy to your supervisor and keep a copy for your own records in your skills development portfolio. Keeping a written record of your formal supervisory meetings is very important because they provide an invaluable record that you can draw on as you prepare your independent work for submission and that you can use to check that you have addressed all the suggestions made by your supervisor.
3. Use Your Supervisor’s Feedback: In your record of each meeting, you should include a note on the feedback your supervisor has given together with any guidance they have provided on developing and improving your work. That feedback is only useful if you act on it – make some time after each meeting to reflect on the feedback your supervisors have provided and its implications for what you need to do next. As we have seen, it can be disheartening if you supervisors identify weaknesses or problems with your work, but they can also offer valuable advice based on their own experience – as a researcher in their own right and through having supervised other students. If your supervisors offer criticisms, remember that this is done with aim of being constructive. Do pay careful attention to what they have said even if your first instinct may be to disregard it. In the long run you will find this advice to be invaluable in helping you successfully through your research degree programme. Students who disregard the advice and feedback of their supervisors are usually the ones who come unstuck as they near the submission deadline for the dissertation or capstone project.

 

If You Cannot Attend a Meeting

There may be occasions when you cannot attend a scheduled meeting with your supervisor(s). Where this is unavoidable, it is important that you:

• give your supervisor as much notice as possible
• explain why you are unable to attend
• take the initiative in agreeing a mutually acceptable alternative date/time to meet

As we have seen, it is important that you maintain regular contact with your supervisor and how formal supervisory meetings are an essential aspect of this. Students should, therefore, make every effort to attend formal supervisory meetings as scheduled and not get into a habit of missing/cancelling these. It can be tempting to avoid supervisory meetings, particularly if you happen to be experiencing problems that are affecting your work or progress. However, this is extremely dangerous. Firstly, it is when you are having problems that you are most in need of your supervisor’s advice and feedback. Secondly, consider it from your supervisor’s perspective – regularly missing/cancelling meetings will give your supervisor the impression that you are not interested in their help or support; so why later, when you do need it, should your supervisor make the effort for you? You supervisor is just as keen as you are that you complete your independent work successfully – attending supervisory meetings as scheduled and making use of your supervisor’s support gives you the best chance of doing this and demonstrates your own commitment.

 

Things to Discuss with Your Supervisor

After your initial meeting, where you set out a topic, bibliography and action plan for writing, it could be a few weeks or a couple of months since you first discussed your dissertation with them. So you might start by briefly recapping what your dissertation is about, including the research questions/hypotheses that you are going to answer.

Next, you might want to set out a framework to describe what you are studying in a clear, succinct, and visual way. That means you should set the boundaries or the scope of the project. These boundaries might be related to source materials, chronology, or theoretical approach, and setting them early helps you decide what you will study (and what you won’t let yourself be distracted by). This framework should also illustrate the hypothesis (or answer) that you are hoping to come to over the course of your research. In this respect, research in CLAS is a lot like a scientific investigation. First you set out the question, then you hypothesise an answer, you conduct your research on the material you’re testing, and you either confirm your hypothesis at the end, or find out it was wrong. If it is wrong, then you use your research to form a new hypothesis and go back to the research again. If it was right, then you look for further ways to support your hypothesis or take it forward in another way.

Alternatively, you might want to focus on explaining the main ideas, texts, artefacts, individuals, events, etc. that you will be studying, and the potential relationships between them. This will help your supervisor to understand the evidence and arguments upon which your dissertation or capstone project is based. It will also allow you to spend most of the meeting discussing your research plan, which is the main thing you need to discuss with your supervisor. Focus on the major aspects of your ideas rather than the smaller details and justifications behind all your decisions. You just won’t have time to do this unless your supervisor has given you a long meeting.

You might also want to ask for advice. Is your method for approaching the primary material sufficient? Have you got a big/small enough sample to keep your research focus of your project achievable in the time you have available?

Whilst effort is not going to get you a good mark by itself, there is a minimum amount of effort that will be expected of you when it comes to carrying out your dissertation/capstone project. For example, the use of tertiary (like the Oxford Classical Dictionary) or secondary (academic articles, book chapters) literature is sometimes overused during the research process. There is a general expectation that you will read, analyse and argue from the primary (usually ancient) sources themselves.

There is nothing worse than meeting your supervisor too late, when you are getting close to the end of the dissertation process and finding out that you have not focused enough on the primary sources. It is often too late to recover at this stage because you simply run out of time to analyse your material and write up and revise your dissertation.

Just as you don’t want your primary sources to be insufficient, you also have to be careful that you don’t take on too much. There are several factors that can affect the achievability of your dissertation, including issues of access (i.e., to texts, translations, archives, research books, site data, sites, etc.). If you are an undergraduate student, some of these factors can be difficult to judge because this will be your first dissertation, but even amongst master’s students, this can be difficult. Getting advice from your supervisor about what is achievable in the time you have available is critical in these cases.

You and your supervisor don’t have to agree on everything; academia is based on lively discussion and creative disagreement. Your supervisor is bound to disagree with at least some of what you write – whether it’s an interpretation of an individual source or your entire conclusion. It can feel very intimidating to argue with your supervisor, and it’s very tempting to simply back down. Sometimes that’s important. If your supervisor strongly suggests that you change a major component of your research strategy, it would be advisable to seriously consider this. Knowing when you’re wrong and need to change direction is a skill you need to acquire!

Just as often, though, what feels like pressure to simply agree with your supervisor’s way of seeing things is actually a challenge, to address counter-arguments in your dissertation and make your work more robust as a result. If you still think your argument is strong even after your supervisor has presented their own reasoning, appropriate that reasoning into your argument, and address head-on why you still believe your interpretation is better. If in doubt, ask your dissertation supervisor directly: do you think I’m just wrong here, or do I need to do more to convince you? It is worth taking the time to defend the choices you have made. But do be careful; you don’t want to defend your choices merely for the sake of it.

 

IV. What to Do if Things Go Wrong

It is important to be aware that while for most of the time you will be happy about how things are progressing, every student has times during their independent work when things are difficult and challenging. This is absolutely normal, so don’t give in to the anxiety!

However, there is a difference between the normal ‘ups and downs’ of academic life and when things are going wrong and problems are occurring. One of the main ways your supervisor can help you is in telling you whether the challenges you are facing are simply ‘normal’ ones, or ones where some additional support may be helpful. So it is important always to keep your supervisor aware of when things are going well or not so well. Your supervisor will know that everything will not be perfect for you all the time and will expect you to raise issues and problems – so there’s no need to be afraid that you are showing yourself to be a poor student when you do.

Your supervisor, convenor, or academic advisor should be able either provide advice about how to deal with these academic issues or guide you towards help (usually by suggesting you get in contact with the Student Support Office or with the Student Learning and Advisory Service).

The biggest challenge is if the problem you have is with the supervisor themselves. Although it is unusual, occasionally students find that they have a poor relationship with their supervisor or feel they are not getting the support and help that they need. It is important if this happens to you that you try to deal with the problem as soon as possible. First, you should keep a written note of the difficulties or issues that arise, together with details of the times of meetings or events and the problems that you felt were occurring. Secondly, try talking to your supervisor directly about it. It might be, of course, that he or she is not aware that there is a problem and can resolve the difficulty with you very quickly. Thirdly, if talking with your supervisor does not help, then talk to the module convenor or your academic advisor. They will try to resolve your problem or offer help. In extreme cases it may be possible to change supervisors, although this is not always easy since you will need a supervisor with particular expertise.

If the steps listed above do not resolve the problem, then your university will have formal procedures for dealing with complaints. Information on the formal complaints procedure will be available from the Taught Programme Coordinator or from the Student Union, who will also be able to offer advice.

Most problems between supervisors and students arise from poor communications or a lack of clarity about the expectations that each has of the working relationship. If you follow the advice above, and raise these two discussion points in your first meeting, it will help avoid potential problems down the road.

 

V. Other Resources

Make use of the Classics Resource Guide! 

Make use of the Templeman Library! You will receive training in how to use Templeman and other campus and online resources in workshops.

You should also take full advantage of the librarians available to help you in your research. Contact Emma Mires-Richards via the library subject specialist website, where you can book an appointment with her individually for help using the library, database and e-resources at Kent.

The Student Learning and Advisory Service (SLAS)

Another important resource on campus is the student learning and advisory service. They run a series of workshops and special one-to-one consultation appointments with experienced fellow writers trained to consult on assignments in any discipline. In addition to organising consultations with an experienced writer, they also organise peer mentoring, so you can meet with a CLAS student (including graduate students), who has been specially trained to help mentor students in our department.

 

VI. Standards and Marking

Marking Principles

Because of the diversity of approaches it includes, and the nature of the evidence it employs, good work in classical and archaeological studies possesses three distinguishing qualities:

• Originality and Imagination—Anyone who thinks long and deeply about a topic will come to see it in a unique way. Many elements of an original argument may have been noticed before, but this does not make the argument as a whole less What counts, though, is not just to see something in a new way but to be able to recognize and make clear what is distinctive about your perspective.
• Breadth of Knowledge—Since we have so little information at our disposal, it is important that new interpretations make use of all the material they This will necessarily add complexity and originality to your discussion as new passages and evidence become part of the picture you present. We do not expect you to know everything, but the more relevant material you can incorporate into your project the more convincing it will be. Failure to take account of material that contradicts, or supports, your argument will make the project as a whole less successful.
• Clarity and Logic—Again because in so many cases we do not have all the material we would like to have in order to answer our questions, the use we make of what is available becomes proportionally more important. Classicists therefore place a particularly high value on the reasoning that supports the conclusions you draw from the evidence and the clarity with which the connections within an argument are set

Obviously, classicists and archaeologists are not the only ones to value originality, learning, and clear reasoning, but in a field that includes so many varieties of research, these qualities take on special importance as standards on which we can all agree. All excellent work in CLAS excels in one of these three aspects and is deficient in none.

 

Who Evaluates Your Work?

The marking of independent work in the Department is undertaken by the supervisor of the project along with a second marker (for MA dissertations) or a moderator (for Undergraduate work). The comments they provide will aim to clarify the rationale behind the mark; offer feedback about the central claims of the paper; and indicate areas of particular promise, as well as areas for improvement.

Your supervisor can usually provide comments on drafts as long as you submit them with adequate time for review. These comments are designed to guide you in maximizing your potential and the potential of the project. Keep in mind that they always depend on the quality of the work being submitted in draft. More important, these comments exist independent of the final mark. The feedback your supervisor offers should never been seen as a checklist of problems to be fixed in exchange for a mark. The mark for the work is based not on whether you have satisfied queries and concerns raised during the writing process, but on the final product submitted for each piece of assess work.

The dissertation is also moderated by a second reader. You will not know the second reader until the report has been submitted.

All marks are subject to change until they have been approved by the Board of Examiners, in consultation with the External Examiners. This is to ensure parity across the module and across all Universities in the UK. This process ensures that the quality of the education you get at Kent is as high as it would be at any other University in the UK.