Community Acuity (27): keeping communications open during lockdown

‘Community Acuity’ blog posts are from supervisors, to supervisors. They share the thoughts, experiences and reflection of the highs and the challenges of supervising doctoral students. This is a guest post by Dr Abeer Hassan, Reader in Accounting at the University of the West of Scotland. Image by StockSnap from Pixabay  Once the decision to enter lockdown because of Covid-19 was announced, …

Graduate students’ motivations for (not) participating in development workshops

This is a guest post by Dr Eli Sætnan (@DrSaetnan), Senior Academic Developer at the University of Liverpool. Read her blog here, and read her latest paper, which this blog is based on, here. Photo by Rubén Rodriguez on Unsplash I am sitting in an empty classroom, ready for my next workshop to begin. Slides are loaded, …

Impostor Syndrome: When your accomplishments make you feel like a fraud!

This is a guest post by Assistant Prof. Devasmita Chakraverty, at the Ravi J. Matthai Centre for Educational Innovation, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. She focuses on understanding why highly accomplished people feel like impostors. If you have an impostor story, she would love to hear from you. You can connect with her on Twitter @DevasmitaTweets. See …

A proactive approach to learning doctoral writing

This post is by Dr Kay Guccione. It provides some thinking points on the supervisor’s role in developing doctoral writing. The passive model The assessment part of the PhD is almost always a lengthly written document — the doctoral thesis. It’s been this way for so many years now. Yet I see repeated again and …

Community Acuity (22): ‘flying solo’ and failing miserably, recognising our limitations

’Community Acuity’ blog posts are from supervisors, to supervisors. They share the thoughts, experiences and reflection of the highs and the challenges of supervising doctoral students. This is an anonymous guest post. Photo by Aral Tasher on Unsplash I have been in two examining teams (two external examiners in each as per institutional rules) which failed doctoral candidates in different subject areas …

Teaching your students to trust themselves

This is an anonymous post from a ‘failed’ PGR, now working in researcher development at a UK University. Part of their role is supporting supervisors and PGRs navigating the process and complexities of a supervisor/supervisee relationship. Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash When it comes to my ‘failure’ as a PGR it is difficult to know where to …

Supervision: the balance between support and autonomy

This is a guest post by Chloe Casey, Postgraduate Researcher at Bournemouth University whose own PhD is investigating the role of supervision in PhD student mental health. She Tweets as @ChloeCaraCasey We all know that supervision can shape doctoral students’ experiences, but are supervisors to blame for the increased prevalence of mental health problems in …

The invisible Others: stories of international doctoral student dropout

This is a guest post jointly written by Melissa Laufer and Meta Gorup, doctoral candidates at the Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent at Ghent University in Belgium. Together, they explored the dropout experiences of international doctoral students and the factors that contributed to the discontinuation of their studies. The full article, ‘The invisible Others: …

what do we really know about PhD mental health, and how can this support our students?

This is a guest post from Dr Sylvia Anne Mackie, Lecturer in Research Communication at Swinburne University of Technology, and is based on her published work reviewing the available research into the mental health of PhD candidates. Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash There have been a number of recent research articles, and even more journalistic opinions shared  about the experiences of PhD …

signposting a new article: Why are mental health problems elevated among graduate students?

I am linking to a new article by Dr Furaha Asani that should be of interest to supervisors. It concerns graduate student mental health and the experiences of marginalised people. Below is an excerpt from her article. Click here to read the original article on Editage Insights. The seminal article published in March, 2018 by Evans and …