Julia,
You may remember I came to see you in the first week of semester rather freaking out about the whole PhD process. You gave me many great tips and suggested a few books to try. I looked through one (Surviving Your Thesis I think it was) and have the 2008 edition of The Craft of Research to go through. I’ve realised what I’m struggling with — floundering completely really — is that I don’t have any real concept of what a PhD actually is in any real detail. I know it’s original research and I know the first thing is to prepare the research proposal etc., but other than that I don’t understand what I should do or how to do it — what are the major steps, what methods or approaches I should/could use, and so on.

So I was hoping you could recommend something that would help me get to a more solid foundation, especially for a thesis largely based on literature analysis and theory? I think I’ve done all the relevant GREAT seminars, and they’ve definitely helped, but perhaps there’s some other I’m not aware of? Or a book of course.

Anything you can suggest would be hugely appreciated, thanks!