Dr Joanna Royle, Researcher Development Manager, Kiran Faisal, PGR Strategy and Policy Manager, and Dr Mikaila Jayaweera Bandara, PGR Policy & Enhancement Adviser
Ogres, as Shrek tells us, have layers. Now we are not here to call postgraduate study an ogre… but we are also not not here to do so. The doctoral journey can be wonderful, but it can also be scary and complex, and oh boy do doctorates have layers. There is the research itself to plan and do, the emotional toll of the learning process, the external pressures of time, money and ‘real life’, and the logistics of navigating the systems, processes, and expectations of a complex institution, sector, and career track.
The routes into, through and out of the doctorate, degree type, funding models, student and employee rights, access to opportunities and permissions, and the day to day conditions and culture of doctoral study have been increasingly hot topics over the last decade. The UKRI response to the New Deal for Postgraduate Researchers published in Autumn 2023 highlighted the current state of play of how universities support (and struggle to support) PGRs, and how structures and strategies may need to change to reflect the contemporary landscape. It highlights the diversity of per-study and in-study experiences across the doctoral population, and the challenges this throws up as PGRs – and their supervisors – seek to navigate the process.
University of Glasgow PGR Lifecycle Project
The University of Glasgow has just launched a ‘PGR lifecycle’ project to map this diversity of experience, highlight good practice, and identify opportunities to streamline processes (this is depicted in the figure above). Led by Dr Mikaila Jayaweera Bandara, PGR Policy & Enhancement Adviser in the Research Services Directorate, the project will work closely with the four Graduate Schools, and PGR support teams across University Services, to yield recommendations for greater consistency and clarity across the PGR experience. This presents a complex picture, involving many partners across the university and key questions for this initial discovery phase are:
- How does the PGR experience vary across our institution?
- How much repetition, reinvention, and/or unnecessary activity exists?
- How can the university of Glasgow remain responsive to changing demographics, needs, and best practices?
- And overall, how can we improve the PGR experience for everyone?
Once changes are agreed and implemented, we aim to create positive impact on retention rates and increase the likelihood of timely completion as well as ensuring a more efficient and student-friendly journey from admission to graduation.
Increasing PGR awareness and confidence to navigate a complex space.
It may feel like a kindness to protect PGRs from some of the technicalities of the research lifecycle and instead focus on the excitement of creating new contributions to knowledge. In practice, however, being explicit about what the doctoral journey looks like in our disciplinary and institutional space enables them to situate their academic and career progress. It helps them to plan, track and monitor their project, manage their time, and know who to ask for help. It also protects them from potentially erroneous or out of date, ‘grapevine’ information. Having a sense of how they fit into the bigger picture, helps them stay the course and get to the end of their doctorate.
The postgraduate study period offers a long period of time to focus on just one intellectual problem, and supervisors can help by adding in the landmarks and markers of success that PGRs need to navigate this sojourn. As we have discussed in the past, new PGRs benefit from you sharing your own stories of challenges and hard-won triumphs, and building in checkpoints and contingency planning. Outlining the big milestones, what each year of the doctorate might look like, and setting specific time frames, also helps. Discussing the regulatory information found in the PGR Code of Practice, will provide a foundation for helping to avoid serious mishaps or assumptions.
And more: laying bare the processes of enrolment, funding, Visas, records management, Annual Progress Reviews, conferences, publications, authorship, changes to the supervisory team, accessing research spaces and resources, career planning and networking, getting teaching experience, taking time away, getting wellbeing support, structuring a thesis, managing writing, thesis pending, viva and corrections, graduation and more… all helps.
This might involve us first thinking critically about our own knowledge and chosen supervisory practices around milestones – do we know what our PGRs will need to know? Have we looked at the Code of Practice recently. Are we part of a supporting community of supervisors we can ask for help? What are our preferences and habits around publication and conferencing? What does the career landscape after PhD look like in our networks, and how can we facilitate a rounded career developing experience? What challenges can we anticipate in the chosen supervisory team’s availability or dynamics, and what are our contingencies? How are we going to demystify academic and research compliance and integrity in an increasingly complex digital research landscape? What are the APR and Viva process like in our discipline, and what are we going to do to prepare PGRs for these stressful events?
Where do you find supporting information?
By now you might be thinking “it is all very well to say I should talk about this stuff but where do I find out about it all myself?”
For University of Glasgow colleagues, a great starting point is the ‘Fundamentals of Postgraduate Supervision’ module. This 1-hour online resource is mandatory for Glasgow Supervisors (undertaken on Moodle: where there is also a plain text version), but can also be visited online by anyone.
The PGR Code of Practice is your go-to guide to the University regulations for doctoral degrees and outlines the roles and responsibilities of both staff and students. Every university will have a Code like this, and a quick search will usually reveal it, or ask your local PGR administrator.
The expectations placed upon supervisors to communicate a complex landscape in clear concise terms can seem all-encompassing, but we know that PGR students do indeed look to their supervisors as their first resort for any help and advice (and can feel aggrieved if they don’t get that help). This is why the University of Glasgow has a comprehensive support structure for supervisors too. Keeping up to date about all the factors affecting PGRs is important but nevertheless challenging – and remember that we don’t have to do it alone. The PGR Ecosystem project reflects our continued endeavour to provide a clear, comprehensive and sustainable support network for all involved in doctoral study.
The Auditorium: a research culture and researcher development blog 