Just another email? The role of supervisors in Pre-Application Doctoral Communications (PADC)

This post is by Dr Ahmad Akkad Postdoctoral Researcher in the Education Department at the University of Oxford, and Dr Emily F. Henderson Reader in Gender and International Higher Education and Director of Doctoral Education and Academia Research Centre (DEAR) at the University of Warwick. Image credit: Yara Aboasfour If you are a doctoral supervisor, …

What did my supervisors do well?

This is a guest post by Dr Sazan M. Mandalawi, who has recently completed her doctorate at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She has published two recent papers, one on doing distance doctorates, and the other on the supervision of distance doctorates. I began my Doctoral journey at the University of Southern Queensland in …

Doctoral students at a distance? 20 ideas to support institutions and supervisors

This is a guest post by Dr James Burford (@jiaburford), an Assistant Professor of Global Education and International Development at Warwick University in the UK, Dr Katrina McChesney (@krmcchesney), a Senior Lecturer in initial teacher education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand, Professor Liezel Frick (@FrickLiezel) based in the Department of Curriculum Studies …

Launching the Are You OK? supervisor toolkit

By Dr Kay Guccione I've been part of a fantastic research collaboration between the University of Glasgow, The University of Sheffield and Heriot Watt University. Our research has now completed and from our findings we have designed a toolkit for doctoral supervisors, that aims to enable good conversations around mental wellbeing and research degrees. Find …

Community Acuity (33): Crossing international borders, potential for confusion

This is a guest post by Kristina Areskoug Josefsson, Professor in Public Health and Rehabilitation, VID Specialized University, Norway & Associate Professor in Quality Improvement and Leadership in Health and Welfare, Jonkoping University, Sweden and Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway. After being a PhD-supervisor a couple of years in Sweden and Denmark, and now working in …

A space free from the many pressures and distractions of mid-life and mid-career

This is a guest post by Professor Dan Davies, Director of Higher Education Management Programmes, University of Bath School of Management. The Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) in Higher Education Management at the University of Bath is now in its 20th year. Attracting academic and professional services managers and leaders from around the world, we now have …

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, …

What support do international graduate teaching assistants need?

This is a guest post from Dr Jo Collins, Postgraduate Development Advisor, University of Kent. Photo by redcharlie on Unsplash As part of a University of Kent Review of Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs), we ran a survey which gathered data from 44% of our GTAs. The survey highlighted three key findings: International postgraduate students (those who require a Tier …

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: …

protecting supervisors who respond to the mental health and wellbeing needs of international research students.

Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash There is evidence that international doctoral students are more vulnerable to study-related stress in the course of their candidacy. Our project asks how this amplified stress may also have an impact on those who closely support them? The study defines a unique set of stress triggers for the supervisors of international PGRs …