PhD Studies: Some Information and Advice
Further to my posting about the most recent data on academic posts in biblical studies, I thought to mention some previous postings in which I provide some information and advice about PhD programmes and studies.
I posted about a recent helpful guide for prospective PhD applicants here.
I’ve also offered some information about the structures of UK and North American PhD programmes, with particular reference to UK programmes in New Testament and Christian Origins here, and, with special reference to how we do things in Edinburgh here.
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Larry Hurtado's Blog 
Dear Professor Hurtado, I’ve just read your blog on PhD thesis topics. I’m a lay person too old for a PhD program, but has any scholar addressed the question of “Where was Mark?” between the time it was written, and the time it showed up in the Diatesseron? I don’t know of anyone who doubts that the text was lying around somewhere, but it seems to have been hidden: Matthew is all over the Didache and the Ante Nicene Fathers, but if Mark was written first, only the authors of Luke and Matthew seem to be privy to the text. Matthean priority, to which I subscribe, solves only part of the problem. How could the Ante Nicenes quote Matthew voluminously, Luke occasionally, John fairly often, and Mark seldom to never? Your list of early MSS echos these statistics. This disparity, if actual, seems like an elephant in the scholarly drawing room. Is it?
Joan: I blogged about the matter you raise a few years back here: https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/02/22/why-did-the-gospel-of-mark-survive/
Yes, thanks, that should have been a good thesis challenge. No one seems to have run with it, probably because there aren’t enough data to give adequate support for any of several hypotheses.
Is the Mark fragment said to be at Christ Church Oxford under Dirk Obbink’s ministrations a piece of roll or of codex? If the former, it might be a scrap of evidence for one of my theories.
Joan: I have no knowledge of what “Mark fragment” you’re referring to.
I found it on my smart phone after one of my students mentioned it. Craig Evans seems to have found it in mummy cartonnage, Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace have commented on it. Your comments on it would be helpful to all of us whose default attitude toward such things is knee-jerk skepticism.
Your query is off the topic of the posting, but I’ll respond. I posted on this putative item some time back here: https://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2015/01/26/a-first-century-copy-of-the-gospel-of-mark/.