Does a Russian PhD mean anything for Canadian universities?

[Mst.Rina1R]

By the way, I like how in Canada people are ready to change their profession and study again easily and at any age. People get a doctorate at the age of 60 after a thirty-year break. Or I have former engineers in my program who built a good career, and then suddenly they decided to become librarians and digital humanists. Regarding relaxation, I can say that sometimes I can relax, of course, since I am familiar with many theoretical works that we read, and sometimes I can’t, since studying in another language is still a big challenge.

How good a basis did your Russian education and dissertation writing provide?

Russian humanities education, at least the one finland telegram I received, is really very good and really fundamental. A university in Russia and a university in Canada are very different in their infrastructure, but people study the same things everywhere. Plato, Marx, Freud and Derrida are read equally everywhere, so the fact that I am superficially familiar with all the main theories gives a lot. Plus, of course, the skill of multi-page reading is very valuable, although reading in English is much slower.

If we talk about DH, then, in my opinion, this sphere is currently in its infancy in Russia and is based on Russian translations of local works.


The only people who understand what a candidate of science degree is here are Slavists. The rest are simply not familiar with our system, and for them it is more of an additional certificate to a master's degree. But it is quite possible to enroll in both a doctoral and a master's program here without having a candidate's degree. Of course, in Canada there are official organizations that confirm diplomas, and it is quite possible to get a paper stating that a candidate's degree is a PhD, but in order to teach here with it, bypassing the local PhD, you need the right connections and the right publications.