This post is the second in a five-part blog series in which I capture my initial thoughts on my newly started PhD education, drawing from literature and discussions about the doctoral journey itself.
Choosing a good research topic seems to be one of those make-or-break decisions for a doctoral student. On the one hand, the research needs to be valuable, original, and capable of contributing something worthwhile to our collective understanding of a field. Academia has an elaborate system of scholarly feedback loops that, at least in principle, helps researchers separate what is worth investigating and what isn’t. On the other hand, a research topic needs to be motivating and inspiring enough that years of investigation doesn’t drain and dampen all intellectual interest in the subject.
I cannot imagine spending upwards of four years working on something I have virtually no interest in. Then again, even the most fascinating topic will probably lose some of its novelty and excitement with time. What begins as an intriguing question might eventually end up turning into a tedious exercise of cycling through the same arguments, trying to fix methodological stalling, and writing up texts that can sound exceptionally boring. Perhaps some degree of intellectual fatigue is inevitable, and I think acknowledging this early on sets a healthier expectation for my relationship with the research topic.
In a chapter of the Routledge Doctoral Student’s Companion (2010), Andrew Brown urges beginning researchers to seriously ponder “What’s worth asking and why?” when choosing their research questions. Stepping slightly away from the well-rehearsed chorus that research must contribute something original to its field, Brown notes that a worthwhile research project should also be “personally engaging and sustainable for you […] in your particular circumstances” (p. 181). For a beginning scholar like myself, who is exploring unfamiliar literature and practicing new research skills for the first time, having genuine interest in what I research is a rather important counterweight to the difficulties of learning this new craft.
Kiwera (2008) echoes this sentiment in a simple advice to researchers, “Follow your bliss”. Bliss seems completely out of place in academic life, and research often appears to follow anything but bliss: research gaps, originality, grants and funding decisions, and the approval of the scholarly communities that came before, among other things. Presumably, only scholars with enough means and freedom can afford to follow their intellectual interests wherever they lead. For the rest of us, the choice of topic is a charged negotiation between what we care about and what our circumstances permit. Still, I’d like to think that bliss can be carved out of a lot of things, starting from the angle at which one looks at a research area.
I’ve written before about choosing a subject for a long writing project when I reflected on Susan Orlean’s book Joyride (2025). As a journalist and writer for the New Yorker, and an author of several books, Orlean is well-positioned to describe and advise others on how to choose a good subject. Her insight got me thinking about a question worth asking before embarking on any substantial writing project, “Is this something I could spend years investigating then writing about for a general audience?”
There are a few passes built into this question. First, does the subject fascinate me enough that I’m willing to spend a significant part of my life exploring it? Second, is there something about it that can pull others in, especially a general audience not already invested in this subject? And third, if the subject doesn’t immediately sound appealing to this broader audience, am I willing to do the intellectual and creative work of making it accessible and engaging? These questions invite me to think less about whether I can wrestle out a gap in the literature and more about why anyone, myself included, should care to fill it.
In another chapter in the Routledge volume for doctoral students, Des Gasper (2010) discusses interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research in-depth, which got me to think about how these two elements help in refining research topics that genuinely interest me. Interdisciplinarity allows me to approach a specific challenge from multiple angles and eventually forms a synthesized view that draws from the most appealing parts of all these different monodisciplinary angles. I might be enrolled in one discipline as part of my studies, but that doesn’t mean my research needs to be squarely within the confines of that discipline. I think training to be interdisciplinary also has an embedded intellectual reward. By learning to make connections across disciplinary norms and knowledge, and to produce a synthesis perspective, I train to become more critical and adept at dealing with complexity.
Similarly, thinking about a research topic through a transdisciplinary lens helps me define what is interesting and engaging. Taking it one step further, transdisciplinarity is about collaborating and researching not just across disciplines, but with people, groups, and communities outside of academic contexts altogether. It shifts the question from what disciplines we collaborate and fuse with, to what communities we co-create knowledge and ways of doing with. This shift is valuable in thinking about the topic I research because I don’t want my work to be incubated in an isolated pod of scholarly pursuit. A topic emerging from the worldviews, methods, and demands of real people and communities would make the research much more meaningful, enticing, and valuable, all at once.
Both the interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary lens can help me think about a research topic that serves value, feels “personally engaging and sustainable”, and if I’m lucky, comes with “bliss”. Being able to entertain different perspectives across several disciplines and communities certainly reduces the weariness and fatigue of being stuck in only one limited discipline, or even only in academia. Working to produce with and for a real community, rather than an abstract, faceless “research community” makes research worthwhile in concrete ways, not just the traditionally accepted ones. It enables me to become a better knowledge facilitator for society, and as a bonus, it hopefully brings in eager collaborators and audience who can benefit from the work I do.
In my case, I’m fortunate that my emerging research interests are closely intertwined with a professional field I’m already working in and enjoying very much: sustainability education. My work as an educational practitioner regularly puts me in contact with educators and other practitioners who are trying to integrate sustainability into teaching and learning. This gives me a convenient starting point to decide what I research. And the most exciting thing is that I have a community I want to serve in mind, and I look forward to co-creating this value of research with them as I continue on in my degree. Whether this qualifies as following my bliss, I can report back in some years!
References:
- Brown, A. (2010). Research questions: What’s worth asking and why? The Routledge doctoral student’s companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences, 172-182. Thomson, P., & Walker, M. (Eds.). The Routledge Doctoral Student’s Companion. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203852248
- Gasper, D. (2010). Interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. Diverse purposes of research: theory-oriented, situation-oriented, policy-oriented. The Routledge doctoral student’s companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences, 52-67. Thomson, P., & Walker, M. (Eds.). The Routledge Doctoral Student’s Companion. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203852248
- Kiewra, K. A. (2008). Advice for Developing Scholars. Educational Psychology Review, 20(1), 79–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-007-9063-2
- Orlean, S. (2025). Joyride: A memoir. Avid Reader Press.