Your Bibliography will grow, day after day, up to the end of your PhD path and beyond ... but you will soon reach a reasonably complete set of documents. Your first year bibliography will probably include already 80-90% of your final documents (if you are not going to change idea about your topic during your PhD, of course!).
A modest proposal - second step
Once you have a bibliography, you have to read, understand, assimilate and critically analyze each one of the documents you have collected (at least those that will become fundamental references for your work and your knowledge).
The best way to do this is to take notes and start writing: taking notes about their content and elaborating summaries that may become useful, providing some fundamental bricks of your future thesis (fundamental quotations, concepts ... however re-elaborated). Writing is always a good exercise, since the researcher's work is mainly reading (and critically understanding your readings) and writing.
You may even start writing structured texts and format them in a collection of information sheets about your readings, to be attached to your thesis, if it will include good pieces of work.
MILESTONE TWO - The Research Project
The End of the Year Report
Your R&TPlan will be reviewed at every End of the Year (EoY) Meeting. simple table, accompanied by explanatory comments, in which Candidates are expected to list all the activities to be performed in the following years, their future work, in a reasonable detail.
- If you are closing your first year, you will account, with a reasonable detail, for every activity you have performed in the last year (with a good view of your future).
- If you are older, the table has three colours: the future (if you are not at the end of your path) your more and your less recent past.
In the following table we use a background color for the past years.
The level of detail is up to you: but list every activity you (and your supervisor) think had a value as training for the scope of your PhD Thesis as well as for your future professional capacities:
- the Courses (C), also those reported above, the seminars (C), the workshops (C)
- the Dissemination activities, i.e. the meetings and the conferences (D) you attended and you had an active role;
- the Publications activities: writing papers (P), books/chapters or what else;
- the Research activity: Thesis, Milestones document preparation, other research activities (R) you took part of, also if not strictly related to your thesis work; your visiting period (R) abroad or in Italy – if any – your stages in a public or private institution (R) and the time devoted to the milestone document preparation (R)
- Formal Teaching activities where you were/will be part of the teaching staff (T), specifying the name of the Course and of the Program.