Heather Widdows & David Cheetham - Applicants

Heather Widdows: What I would look for in an applicant depends very much on where they're coming from, where they would like to go, and what kind of program they're applying for. We think that we have programs that will fit almost any applicant's needs and wishes. For instance if you were applying straight from a philosophy degree and you wanted to do a very standard master's program because you wanted to do a PhD, then I would be looking that you had a solid background in that kind of philosophy that would place you well to move on. If you were coming in from another discipline or from a vocation and you wished to explore philosophy or one area of philosophy, so for instance if you were a professional wishing to explore health work or activism and NGO work, then I would look for experience in that and an ability to challenge your presumptions and where you were coming from.

If you're coming to do a PhD, what I would be looking for was that you had something to say, that you had a clear outcome that you wanted to achieve. Not that you would be there, but that you were interested in the topic because you're going to be here for at least three years and you have to have a passion that is required to study that topic. For PhD, it's something slightly different that I would look for from a master's student, and it would be very much dependent on what that student wants to get out in the end. I would very much take that into account when I was looking at an applicant.

David Cheetham: It depends on what the program is. You need to have, say, textual skills, linguistic skills, argumentative skills. It rather depends upon what the particular focus of your study is going to be. I suppose if you were to find a common denominator, it would be that you want somebody who's prepared to construct their own arguments, to have a point of view, and to be ultimately interested in their topics. It's so easy when you do a PhD that after three years of studying the same subject intensively, that you lose interest.

In a way we're looking for applicants that are passionate about the inquiries that they want to make so that we'll see them through from the beginning to the end of the process. But also, maybe finding themselves in an unexpected direction, so they might start their research, but maybe their intellectual honesty ends up taking them in a quite surprising direction. That's a good sign in an applicant.