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Reading time: discovery, meaning-making and resistance in the accelerated academy

by Fadia Dakka

The increasing exposure of higher education sectors worldwide to market mechanisms (eg privatisation in and of higher education, platformisation and assetization) generates market-making pressures, technologies and relations that are changing university missions and academic practices in both research and teaching, altering not only forms of knowledge production but also academic identities (Lewis et al, 2022).  These corporate, competitive systems operate in and through regimes of time acceleration and compression (Rosa & Trejo-Mathys, 2013; Wajcman & Dodd (eds), 2017) that enable capitalist accumulation via a proliferation of calculative practices and surveillance techniques driven by instrumental logics. In essence, the timescapes of the ‘accelerated academy’ (Vostal, 2016) have come to be not just dominated but defined by the linear rhythms of knowledge production, accumulation, consumption, and distribution.

In this context, ever-present tensions continue to pit institutional time scarcity/pressure against the often non-linear times, rhythms and practices that characterise the craft of intellectual work. These are acutely visible in doctoral education, which is considered both a liminal space-time of profound transformation for students and a rite of passage through which doctoral candidates enter the academic community.

Doctoral students in the accelerated academy experience tremendous institutional pressures to complete their research projects within tight timeframes punctuated by developmental milestones. At the same time, they are pressed to publish and participate in externally funded projects before completing their course of studies, to secure a positional advantage in a hyper-competitive, precarious job market.

In such a climate, pressures to develop core academic skills such as academic writing abound, as a quick glance at the vast literature available to both novice and accomplished researchers to help them improve the quality and quantity of writing reveals (eg Sword, 2017, 2023; Murray, 2025; Wyse, 2017; Moran, 2019; Young & Ferguson, 2021; Thomson, 2023; Sternad & Power, 2023). 

Much less attention is devoted to reading as an autonomous practice in relation to educational research. Reading is generally approached instrumentally for research and mostly equated with a strategic, extractive process whereby academics retrieve, survey or review the information needed for writing to maximise efficiency and speed (Fulford & Hodgson (eds) 2016; Boulous Walker, 2017).

Doctoral students are taught to tackle the volume of readings by deploying selective, skim and speed-reading techniques that ‘teach’ them a practical method to ‘fillet’ publications (Silverman, 2010 p323) or ‘gut(ting) an article or book for the material you need’ (Thomas, 2013 p67). Without dismissing the validity of these outcome-oriented techniques, I argue that reading should be approached and investigated as research, which is to say as a philosophical orientation whose intimate relation with thinking (meditation and contemplation) and writing (as a method of inquiry) constitutes a conjuncture with transformative potential for both the reader and the text (Hoveid & Hoveid, 2013; Dakka & Wade, 2018). [RC1] [FD2] 

In 2024, I was awarded a BA/Leverhulme grant that allowed me to examine, in collaboration with Norwegian colleagues, the under-researched area of reading habits, rhythms and practices among doctoral students in two countries, the UK and Norway, characterised by a markedly different cultural political economy of higher education. The project set out to explore how a diverse group of doctoral students related to, made sense of, and engaged with reading as a practice, intellectually and emotionally. Through such exploration, the team intended to examine pedagogical and philosophical implications for doctoral education, supervision, and, more generally, higher education through a distinct spatiotemporal lens.

The project experimented with slow reading (Boulous Walker, 2017) as an ethico-political countermovement that invites us to dwell with the text and reflect on the transformations it can produce within the self and the educational experience tout-court. Examining the practice of reading is, therefore, vital to foster the development of the criticality and creativity that inform the students’ thinking and, ultimately, their writing, helping to create better conditions for meaningful educational engagement.

As briefly mentioned earlier, there is a dearth of literature in educational research focused explicitly and directly on reading as a research practice. Conversely, Reading Theory and Reader-Response criticism (Bennett, 1995) are well-established strands in literary studies.

Two contributions inspired the project in the cognate fields of philosophy, pedagogy, and education ethics, underpinning the theoretical and methodological framework adopted: Aldridge (2019), exploring the association between reading, higher education and educational engagement through the phenomenological literary theorisations of Rita Felski (2015) and Marielle Macé (2013). Reading here is considered as a phenomenological ‘orientation’ with ontological character: the entanglement of body, thought, and sense makes reading an ‘embodied mode of attentiveness’  with ‘rhythms of rapprochement and distancing, relaxation and suspense, movement and hesitation’ (Felski 2015, p176). Lastly, Boulous Walker (2017) introduces the concept of ‘slow reading’, or reading philosophically against the institution. This practice stands in opposition to the institutional time, efficiency, and productivity pressures that prevent the intense, contemplative attitude toward research that is typical of active educational engagement. The author calls, therefore, for slow reading, careful reading, and re-reading as antidotes against institutional contexts dominated by speed and the cult of efficiency.

Bridging cultural sociology and philosophy of education, the project combined Hermeneutic Phenomenology (Schutz, 1972; Ricoeur, 1984) and Rhythmanalysis (Lefebvre, 2004) to gain insight into the lived experiences, embodied and cognitive processes of meaning-making, and spatiotemporal (rhythmic) dimensions of reading among doctoral students.

The complementarity of these frameworks enabled a richer and deeper understanding of the phenomenon from a socio-cultural and philosophical perspective. The rhythmanalytical dimension drew on the oeuvre of the French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre. Conceived as both a sensory method and a philosophical disposition, Rhythmanalysis (2004) foregrounds the question of the everyday and its rhythms, offering insightful takes on repetition, difference, appropriation and dwelling. Lefebvre’s analysis of the conflicting rhythms of the social and the critical moments that revive/subvert the humdrum of the quotidian pivot on the experience and resonance of bodies in space-time, their imbrication with the fabric of the social and the multiplicity of their perceptual interrelations with human and more-than-human environments. Methodologically, Rhythmanalysis enabled a closer look at the students’ reading habits, rhythms and practices in relation to their doctoral studies. The emphasis on spatio-temporality and (auto-)ethnographic observations made it possible to register and grasp the tensions that derive from clashes between meso institutional constraints and demands (eg set timeframes for completion; developmental milestones), micro individual responses and circumstances (eg different modes of study, private and/or professional commitments) and macro societal context (eg cognitive, extractive capitalism).

The phenomenological facet of the project drew on the hermeneutic, existential, and ontological dimensions found in Ricoeur’s and Schutz’s philosophy, which are concerned with grasping experiential meanings and understanding the complexity of human lifeworld.  Acknowledging the entanglement of being and Dasein as an ontological standpoint, human lived experiences are situated within a contingent spatiotemporality and understood through an interpretivist epistemology founded on intersubjectivity, intentionality and hermeneutics.

This phenomenological-rhythmanalytical inquiry was therefore designed to explore students’ cognitive and affective experiences and practices of reading as they unfolded in the spaces and times of their doctoral education. The project involved two groups of doctoral candidates based in the Education department of, respectively, a teaching-intensive university in the West Midlands of England (Birmingham, UK), and a large, research-intensive university in Norway (Trondheim).

The first phase of data collection involved Focus Groups and Reflective Diaries. It foregrounded the times, places, and rhythms of reading, considering reading modalities and patterns of doctoral students in the context of institutional demands vis-à-vis personal and professional constraints. Rhythmanalysis was employed both as a method (reflective diaries) and as an interpretive, diagnostic tool to uncover and critically reflect on arrhythmias (ruptures) and/or eurythmic pockets in the reading patterns of doctoral students.

The second data collection phase relied on hermeneutic phenomenological techniques, such as Episodic Narrative Interviews (Mueller, 2019), to delve deeper into the affective, material, and cognitive experience that connects and transforms students and their readings.

The final stage of data collection involved an experiment in collective slow reading and re-reading against the institution, inspired by Boulous Walker’s philosophical reading and Felman’s description of the interpretative process as a never-ending ‘turn of the screw’ (Felman, 1977) that generates a hermeneutical spiral of subsequent, ever richer, and different textual interpretations.

Initial findings point to a complex and layered reading time experience, captured in its nuanced articulation by a rhythmic analysis of the students’ everyday practices, habits and affective responses.

Commonsensical as it may sound, reading takes time. Engaging with a text to interpret and understand it is time-consuming, and most of our respondents in this project discussed this. Reading seems to project an experience of oneself as a slow reader, followed by a feeling of guilt for ‘just’ reading.

Interestingly, clock time and phenomenological time appear to be juxtaposed in the reading process, creating conflicts and productive tensions for most of the PhD students in the project. For example, the students often welcome writing deadlines, as they create a linear rhythm that provides structure to their reading time. At the same time, the idea that reading should be done quickly and targeted to extract material for their thesis hovers over many participants, generating performance-related pressure and anxiety. Procedural aspects of reading, particularly managing volume and note-taking, are treated as a sign of success or failure, reinstating Rosa’s neoliberal equation of fast-winner, slow-loser in the accelerated, competitive academy (Rosa, Chapter 2 in Wajcman & Dodd (eds), 2017).

However, a deeper engagement with reading both opposes and coexists with this tendency, evoking the notion of Barthes’ idiorrhythmy (Dakka, 2024) to describe the process of discovering and imposing one’s own rhythm. This rhythm typically resists linearity and dominant structure, requiring slowness as a disposition or a mode of intense attention to oneself and the world through the encounter with text. Even more intriguingly, slowness as heightened focus and immersion often occurs within short and fragmented bursts of reading, strategically or opportunistically carved into the students’ everyday lives, resulting from an incessant act of negotiation over and encroachments with personal, professional, and institutional times.

The project explored, examined, and interpreted the rhythms and practices of reading in contemporary doctoral education along three axes: times (institutional, personal, inner, tempo, duration); spaces (physical, digital, mental); and affects as ways of relating (joy, guilt, anxiety, surprise, fantasy, etc). Together, these elements combine in unique and shifting configurations of dominant rhythms and idiosyncratic responses (rhuthmόs or idiorrhythmy), exposing the irreducibility of students’ experiences to harmful binaries (eg fast versus slow academia) while revealing the pedagogic affordances of a rhythmic and phenomenological analysis for contemporary universities. Spotlighting different approaches to reading, thinking, and writing enhances awareness of and attunement to developing one’s voice, listening and resisting capacity.

Fadia Dakka is an Associate Professor in Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education at Birmingham City University. Her interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, sociology and theory of higher education. She is currently working toward theorising Rhythm as a form of ethics underpinning critical pedagogy in higher education. She recently received a BA/Leverhulme small grant (2024-25) to examine doctoral reading habits and practices in the UK and Norway.


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Becoming a professional services researcher in HE – making the train tracks converge

by Charlotte Verney

This blog builds on my presentation at the BERA ECR Conference 2024: at crossroads of becoming. It represents my personal reflections of working in UK higher education (HE) professional services roles and simultaneously gaining research experience through a Masters and Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD).

Professional service roles within UK HE include recognised professionals from other industries (eg human resources, finance, IT) and HE-specific roles such as academic quality, research support and student administration. Unlike academic staff, professional services staff are not typically required, or expected, to undertake research, yet many do. My own experience spans roles within six universities over 18 years delivering administration and policy that supports learning, teaching and students.

Traversing two tracks

In 2016, at an SRHE Newer Researchers event, I was asked to identify a metaphor to reflect my experience as a practitioner researcher. I chose this image of two train tracks as I have often felt that I have been on two development tracks simultaneously –  one building professional experience and expertise, the other developing research skills and experience. These tracks ran in parallel, but never at the same pace, occasionally meeting on a shared project or assignment, and then continuing on their separate routes. I use this metaphor to share my experiences, and three phases, of becoming a professional services researcher.

Becoming research-informed: accelerating and expanding my professional track

The first phase was filled with opportunities; on my professional track I gained a breadth of experience, a toolkit of management and leadership skills, a portfolio of successful projects and built a strong network through professional associations (eg AHEP). After three years, I started my research track with a masters in international higher education. Studying felt separate to my day job in academic quality and policy, but the assignments gave me opportunities to bring the tracks together, using research and theory to inform my practice – for example, exploring theoretical literature underpinning approaches to assessment whilst my institution was revising its own approach to assessing resits. I felt like a research-informed professional, and this positively impacted my professional work, accelerating and expanding my experience.

Becoming a doctoral researcher: long distance, slow speed

The second phase was more challenging. My doctoral journey was long, taking 9 years with two breaks. Like many part-time doctoral students, I struggled with balance and support, with unexpected personal and professional pressures, and I found it unsettling to simultaneously be an expert in my professional context yet a novice in research. I feared failure, and damaging my professional credibility as I found my voice in a research space.

What kept me going, balancing the two tracks, was building my own research support network and my researcher identity. Some of the ways I did this was through zoom calls with EdD peers for moral support, joining the Society for Research into Higher Education to find my place in the research field, and joining the editorial team of a practitioner journal to build my confidence in academic writing.

Becoming a professional services researcher: making the tracks converge

Having completed my doctorate in 2022, I’m now actively trying to bring my professional and research tracks together. Without a roadmap, I’ve started in my comfort-zone, sharing my doctoral research in ‘safe’ policy and practitioner spaces, where I thought my findings could have the biggest impact. I collaborated with EdD peers to tackle the daunting task of publishing my first article. I’ve drawn on my existing professional networks (ARC, JISC, QAA) to establish new research initiatives related to my current practice in managing assessment. I’ve made connections with fellow professional services researchers along my journey, and have established an online network  to bring us together.

Key takeaways for professional services researchers

Bringing my professional experience and research tracks together has not been without challenges, but I am really positive about my journey so far, and for the potential impact professional services researchers could have on policy and practice in higher education. If you are on your own journey of becoming a professional services researcher, my advice is:

  • Make time for activities that build your research identity
  • Find collaborators and a community
  • Use your professional experience and networks
  • It’s challenging, but rewarding, so keep going!

Charlotte Verney is Head of Assessment at the University of Bristol. Charlotte is an early career researcher in higher education research and a leader in within higher education professional services. Her primary research interests are in the changing nature of administrative work within universities, using research approaches to solve professional problems in higher education management, and using creative and collaborative approaches to research. Charlotte advocates for making the academic research space more inclusive for early career and professional services researchers. She is co-convenor of the SRHE Newer Researchers Network and has established an online network for higher education professional services staff engaged with research.


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Psychological Safety in the Doctoral Context

by Jayne Carruthers

The doctorate is a subjective experience demanding the re-evaluation of ways of thinking, the navigation of intense emotions, and the adaptation of behaviours by the candidate to achieve new learning goals, transforming the candidate from a consumer to a creator of knowledge. Candidates often face uncertainty and enter a state of liminality during this process, feeling caught between old beliefs and new insights, which can lead to discomfort and feeling ‘stuck’. To navigate this liminal space, candidates benefit from a change in perspective supported by transformative learning. While much of the focus in doctoral support is on the candidate avoiding negative experiences during this process, there is limited attention given to the candidate’s role of self-awareness and self-management. Reflexivity provides one such option to consider.

Reflexivity is a cognitive, or thinking, process that enables individuals to move beyond simple reflection, fostering self-awareness and exploring different options for progress. While candidates have demonstrated its usefulness in understanding their doctoral journeys, further research is needed on initiating and sustaining this process independently. This ability to learn and develop autonomously is essential, as doctoral programs require candidates to show evidence of becoming independent researchers. In organisational literature, reflexivity has been demonstrated to enhance information processing, helping employees understand what, why, and how of learning and change. It enables adjustments in both task execution and personal approach. Moreover, team psychological safety has been demonstrated to be crucial for effective team reflexivity. However, variations in terminology and definitions related to psychological safety limit the extension of this construct beyond the organisational context.

A body of conceptual research adopting a Theoretical Integrated Review (TIR) approach was conducted, with findings highlighting historical use, providing theoretical insights, and clarifying a generalised definition of psychological safety with relevance beyond the organisational setting. Psychological safety is an internal process that helps individuals manage distress, influencing their thoughts, feelings, and actions. It plays a crucial role in growth and development by connecting motivation and goal-directed behaviour, providing the opportunity for a generalised definition:

Psychological safety is a dynamic intrapsychic construct drawn on by individuals to mitigate actual or foreseen distress. The presence or absence of psychological safety is influenced by context, the individual’s existing psychological frames of reference, and current and future motives relating to an endeavour.

This understanding allows the absence or presence of psychological safety to be considered in broader contexts, including independent learning settings like doctoral programs. To explore this potential, a body of qualitative research was conducted with six volunteer PhD candidates enrolled at a regional Australian university awaiting feedback on their theses.

Using the vignette methodology technique to present short fictional scenarios regarding experiences of doctoral knowledge uncertainty, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews to understand how doctoral candidates deal with knowledge uncertainty. This approach encouraged interviewees to discuss their experiences without the pressure of direct questions, facilitating open discussions about managing uncertainty. At the end of the interviews, findings from the conceptual research were shared, and feedback was gathered on their benefit as a basis for candidate support. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and thematically analysed.

All six interviewees described experiences with knowledge uncertainty and agreed that the conceptual research findings on psychological safety could improve opportunities for candidate support and warranted further investigation. The analysis of the interviews revealed that the interviewees’ experiences of uncertainty stemmed from intrapersonal, interpersonal, and university governance-level interactions. While similarities existed based on stages in the doctoral program, no strong recurring theme of uncertainty emerged. Notably, the differences lay in how the interviewees discussed their experiences of uncertainty.

Some interviewees emphasised the importance of interpersonal support to help them progress:

… the Confirmation panel Chairperson insisted that I rework my research question … I found it confusing. I felt that I must have grossly mistaken something …. my supervisor just said, okay, well, rebuild methodology … I felt uncertain. But she was very encouraging and supportive … I got through the second time, no questions asked …                                                                                                                                                                                                 Interviewee Steve

… my methodology was underdeveloped … I was asked to resubmit this section to the confirmation panel … I was stressed about it having to be perfect because I thought failing would be the worst thing in the world.  … I remember that being a big thing … I was embarrassed, … an extra hurdle because no one else I knew needed to resubmit … my supervisors were empowering … they both said, redo what you need to … You’ll get through. You’re going to be okay.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Interviewee Amy

Other interviewees’ narratives shifted from reflection to reflexivity, demonstrating self-awareness and developing metacognitive strategies to navigate their uncertainties.

So yeah, it was an unhappy period. It was a couple of months of really hating what I was, what I’d done to myself in choosing this particular topic…I just had to ride that wave, you know, think it through, think, really think about what I was doing and why I was doing it, what the product was, what the process was and what the result needed to be in the end. 

                                                                                                                                 Interviewee Julie

… a big part of my uncertainty was about paradigms … I couldn’t write my methodology. … I was just not convinced … if I can’t believe in these views about knowledge and reality, I can’t write about this stuff. So that was a hurdle …  I was sometimes reading without knowing what would come of it. … then it felt like, oh, this is it … what had been a major period of uncertainty had also been a cognitively shifting one that changed my perception of the world.                                                                                                                Interviewee Jack

The extracts illustrate how interviewees navigated uncertainties and liminal spaces, utilising various strategies to move forward. Some narratives show less use of self-awareness, relying on interpersonal support, while others reflect and use reflexivity as a proactive, independent approach to managing uncertainty.

Understanding psychological safety as a multi-dimensional construct and appreciating its demonstrated moderating effect on reflexivity in the workplace provides an opportunity for further investigation. The differences in interviewees’ narratives offer valuable insights regarding reflexivity and the doctoral experience of uncertainty, collectively establishing a basis for exploring psychological safety in the doctoral context.

Jayne Carruthers is a PhD candidate in SORTI, a research centre based in the School of Education at The University of Newcastle, Australia, where she works as a Research Assistant. With a background in Adult Education and Positive Psychology, she has a well-developed interest in fostering autonomous learners. Her PhD research explores psychological safety within doctoral learning and development. Her recent publications include “Conveying the learning self to others: doctoral candidates conceptualising and communicating the complexion of development”


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How can PhDs support solutions to local challenges?

by Rachel Handforth and Rebekah Smith-McGloin

Recent news headlines highlight the range of social and economic challenges faced by cities and counties across the UK (BBC, 2024; Financial Times, 2024; Guardian, 2024), reflecting wider predictions of ongoing economic challenges for the UK as a whole (OECD, 2024). Recent local election results seem to indicate public desire for change in their communities – and whilst we await the national democratic process later this year – the devolution process to combined local authorities indicates a positive shift towards increased funding, resources and power for those working to achieve positive change in their local communities.

What is the role of universities in all this? And how might the highest-level qualification that they offer hope to address any of the complex, systemic issues faced by local communities, and those that live and work within them?

The answer to these questions is not clear-cut, but exploring the ways in which the doctorate might lend itself to addressing locally relevant challenges – in theory and in practice – may offer a vision for how universities might enact their civic mission, and consider themselves ‘truly civic’. Yet whilst undergraduate curricula often contain elements of civic engagement through service learning, volunteering, and policy discussions (McCunney, 2017), work on civic and community-informed practice has been slow to emerge at doctoral level.

The last decade has seen an increase in the number of doctoral researchers in the UK (Smith-McGloin and Wynne, 2022) and in the proportion of doctoral graduates working beyond academia (Vitae, 2022). Yet the capacity of the doctorate to contribute to positive place-based change has not been fully explored. Indeed, a recent report from the National Civic Impact Accelerator highlights the ongoing positive economic and social impacts of doctoral graduates; boosting research productivity across sectors, contributing to cutting edge research and development, as well as adding to research capacity through a highly skilled workforce.

Existing literature on doctoral education and wider engagement with communities focuses predominantly on praxis in the context of industrial and professional doctorates (see Boud et al, 2021; Terzioğlu, 2011; Wildy, Peden and Chan, 2015). Too often, doctoral education is still conceptualised as an instrumentalist tool of neoliberal higher education, producing highly-skilled postgraduate researchers and knowledge for the economy. For example, professional doctorates are viewed as a mechanism by which the university can realise its potential, through close interaction with industry and government, to deliver innovation and economic development in a knowledge society.

At the last Society for Research in Higher Education conference in December 2023, we presented our early thoughts on how place-based partnership programmes such as the Public Scholars Initiative and Co(l)laboratory might seek to address socioeconomic challenges, and legitimise broader conceptions of scholarship within doctoral education. Following Gibbons et al’s (1994) consideration of knowledge production modes in relation to university knowledge transfer, and drawing on recent literature relating to modes of knowledge production (Liyanage et al, 2022; Miller et al, 2018; Peris-Ortiz, 2016), we considered how discussions around doctoral education and the public good (Deem, 2020) may be reimagined in the context of these programmes.

Our own experience of leading and working within Co(l)laboratory, a new Nottingham-based doctoral training programme which recruits a diverse range of candidates to co-created research projects, developed with local employers to address place-based issues, has shown the great potential of doctoral education to drive positive change locally. We have seen in practice how programmes such as Co(l)laboratory can act as a node in a wider civic knowledge and innovation system, and produce an expansive network currently involving two universities, 12 civic agreement partners, 30 community organisations, as well as current doctoral students and supervisors on 20 distinct research projects. This new model for doctoral training positions the doctorate as an agile, socially responsive and community-engaged catalyst to enable local people to tackle local problems.

Whilst it is clear that the complex and persistent challenges faced by communities across the UK require significant regional and national investment to resolve, the capacity of place-based doctoral education, shaped by civic partners and their local universities, should not be underestimated.

Dr Rachel Handforth joined Nottingham Trent University as Senior Lecturer in Doctoral Education and Civic Engagement in January 2023 to work on the Co(l)laboratory programme, working with local employers to build a community-informed model for developing place-based PhD research projects. Her research interests include gender inequality in higher education, and belonging, access and participation in doctoral education. She was recently funded by the Society for Research in Higher Education to explore public attitudes to, and engagement with, doctoral research programmes.

Dr Rebekah Smith McGloin is Director of Research Culture and Environment and Director of the Doctoral School at Nottingham Trent University. She provides strategic leadership in the area of inclusive research culture, environment and doctoral education. She is currently principal investigator on two major projects in the field of inclusive doctoral education; the Universities for Nottingham Co(l)laboratory Research Hub and Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation. She is an executive committee member and trustee of the UK Council for Graduate Education.  She was a member of the UKRI Bioscience Skills and Careers Strategy Panel (2015-2022) and an expert panel reviewer for the UK Concordat for Researchers (2019). Her research interests lie in higher education management, postgraduate research student experience, widening participation and access to higher education.


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Doctoral progress reviews: managing KPIs or developing researchers?

by Tim Clark

All doctoral students in the UK are expected to navigate periodic, typically annual, progress reviews as part of their studies (QAA, 2020). Depending on the stage, and the individual institutional regulations, these often play a role in determining confirmation of doctoral status and/or continuation of studies. Given that there were just over 100,000 doctoral students registered in the UK in 2021 (HESA, 2022), it could therefore be argued that the progress review is a relatively prominent, and potentially high stakes, example of higher education assessment.  However, despite this potential significance, guidance relating to doctoral progress reviews is fairly sparse, institutional processes and terminology reflect considerable variations in approach, empirical research to inform design is extremely limited (Dowle, 2023) and perhaps most importantly, the purpose of these reviews is often unclear or contested.

At the heart of this lack of clarity appears to be a tension surrounding the frequent positioning of progress reviews as primarily institutional tools for managing key performance indicators relating to continuation and completion, as opposed to primarily pedagogical tools for supporting individual students learning (Smith McGloin, 2021). Interestingly however, there is currently very little research regarding effectiveness or practice in relation to either of these aspects. Yet, there is growing evidence to support an argument that this lack of clarity regarding purpose may frequently represent a key limitation in terms of engagement and value (Smith McGloin, 2021, Sillence, 2023; Dowle, 2023). As Bartlett and Eacersall (2019) highlight, the common question is ‘why do I have to do this?’

As a relatively new doctoral supervisor and examiner, with a research interest in doctoral pedagogy, in the context of these tensions, I sought to use a pedagogical lens to explore a small group of doctoral students’ experiences of navigating their progress review. My intention for this blog is to share some learning from this work, with a more detailed recent paper reporting on the study also available here (Clark, 2023). 

Methods and Approach

This research took place in one post-1992 UK university, where progress assessment consisted of submission of a written report, followed by an oral examination or review (depending on the stage). These progress assessments are undertaken by academic staff with appropriate expertise, who are independent of the supervision team. This was a small-scale study, involving six doctoral students, who were all studying within the humanities or social sciences. Students were interviewed using a semi-structured narrative ‘event-focused’ (Jackman et al, 2022) approach, to generate a rich narrative relating to their experience of navigating through the progress review as a learning event.

In line with the pedagogical focus, the concept of ‘assessment for learning’ was adopted as a theoretical framework (Wiliam, 2011). Narratives were then analysed using an iterative ‘visit and revisit’ (Srivastava and Hopwood, 2009) approach. This involved initially developing short vignettes to consider students’ individual experiences before moving between the research question, data and theoretical framework to consider key themes and ideas.

Findings

The study identified that the students understood their doctoral progress reviews as having significant potential for supporting their learning and development, but that specific aspects of the process were understood to be particularly important. Three key understandings arose from this: firstly, that the oral ‘dialogic’ component of the assessment was seen as most valuable in developing thinking, secondly, that progress reviews offered the potential to reframe and disrupt existing thinking relating to their studies, and finally, that progress reviews have the potential to play an important role in developing a sense of autonomy, permission and motivation.

In terms of design and practice, the value of the dialogic aspect of the assessment was seen as being in its potential to extend thinking through the assessor, as a methodological and disciplinary ‘expert’, introducing invitational, coaching format, questions to provoke reflection and provide opportunities to justify and explore research decisions. When this approach was taken, students recalled moments where they were able to make ‘breakthroughs’ in their thinking or where they later realised that the discussion was significant in shaping their future research decisions. Alongside this, a respectful and supportive approach was viewed as important in enhancing psychological safety and creating a sense of ownership and permission in relation to their work:

“I think having that almost like mentoring, which is like a mini mentoring or mini coaching session, in these examination spots is just really helpful”

“I’m pootling along and it’s going okay and now this bombshell’s just dropped, but it was helpful because, yeah, absolutely it completely shifted it.”

“It’s my study… as long as I can justify academically and back it up. Why I’ve chosen to do what I’ve done then that’s okay.” 

Implications

Clearly this is a small-scale study, with a relatively narrow disciplinary focus, however its value is intended to lie in its potential to provoke consideration of progress reviews as tools for teaching, learning and researcher development, rather than to assert any generalisable understanding for practice.

This consideration may include questions which are relevant for research leaders, supervisors and assessors/examiners, and for doctoral students. Most notably: is there a shared understanding of the purpose of doctoral progress reviews and why we ‘have’ to do it? And how does this purpose inform design, practice and related training within our institutions?

Within this study it was evident that in this context the role of dialogic assessment was significant, and given the additional resource required to protect or introduce such an approach, this may be an aspect which warrants further exploration and investigation to support decision making. In addition, it also framed the perceived value of the careful construction of questions, which invite and encourage reflection and learning, as opposed to seeking solely to ‘test’ this.

Dr Timothy Clark is Director of Research and Enterprise for the School of Education at the University of the West of England, Bristol. His research focuses on aspects of doctoral pedagogy and researcher development.


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Doctoral Borderlands: an exploration of doctoral education and its possible futures

by Namrata Rao, Anesa Hosein, Rille Raaper, Harry Rolf, Karen Gravett, Karen Smith, Neil Harrison and Susan Carter

At the SRHE conference 2021, we (Karen S, Neil and Susan) facilitated a symposium in two parts on Doctoral Borderlands. Together, the parts gave a guided tour through doctoral borderlands, the metaphor underpinning the Teaching in Higher Education Special Issue: ‘Working in the borderlands: Critical perspectives on doctoral education’ (Carter, Smith & Harrison, 2021). The reference to borderlands, drawing from Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) work, emphasised the transitionary and liminal nature of doctoral education, the crossings into the unknown, and the emergence or surfacing of (multiple) identities. In the symposium, ten authors shared overviews of seven of the Special Issue articles as starting points for open discussion around doctoral education and its future possibilities.

This blog post picks up three doctoral borderland trajectories taken by some of the SRHE symposium presenters. First, Karen Gravett starts by looking at how the form of the doctorate is changing and its impact on perceptions of the doctoral journey. Then Namrata Rao, Anesa Hosein and Rille Raaper discuss being, becoming and belonging, particularly in the context of precarity. After this, Harry Rolf considers power in doctoral education, from the starting point of doctoral publishing.

Karen Gravett

Critical perspectives on doctoral education are needed now more than ever. It is increasingly apparent that the prevalence of new routes and possibilities for study, including professional and publication-led doctorates, combined with a competitive academic landscape, have reshaped the doctoral experience in new ways (Gravett, 2021). What it is to be a doctoral student and what it means to do a doctorate is evolving, and traditional stereotypes, of young, full-time, funded students are no longer fit for purpose.

And yet, the literature on doctoral education is rich with metaphors that describe doctoral study as a pathway or trajectory, while institutional rhetoric often evokes ideas of linearity and regularity. In my recent work (Gravett, 2021), I explore the power of these tropes and depictions, in order to ask: what do spatial narratives do? Are conceptions of linear journeys, or pathways from student to academic, from novice to expert, still fit for purpose? I invite readers to think with two of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theoretical concepts, rhizome and becoming, to foreground the multiple and messy becomings that researchers experience, as they evolve throughout a doctorate and beyond.

In reconsidering narratives of the doctoral journey, I offer an irruption to widely accepted notions of learning as a linear pathway with a fixed end-point, and reflect on how new and traditional forms of doctoral study might be understood differently. Thinking differently about doctoral study offers new opportunities for writing: offering spaces to disrupt the traditional monograph that has dominated the doctorate to date, and openings for intertextuality and connection.

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Just as the form of the doctorate and the pathway through it are changing, the context in which doctorates are done and the impact on doctoral students’ identities are also changing, picked up by Namrata, Anesa and Rille.

Namrata Rao, Anesa Hosein and Rille Raaper

The marketisation of higher education (HE) has seen a growing number of HE staff being employed on short term hourly paid contracts, which has also triggered much of the recent University and College Union (UCU) Four Fights Campaign in the UK. Our paper (Rao, Hosein & Raaper, 2021) explored doctoral students engaged in HE teaching in an era of precarity; within this context of increasing casualisation, the doctoral students, ‘the budding academics’, are seeking ways of getting their foot in the door and ‘becoming’ an academic. This desire for ‘belonging’ in the academy has seen them take up casualised contracts with the hope that they would one day land up a permanent contract.

Aside from the damage often caused by such casualised contracts to their developing professional identity, there is a growing concern that the precarious employment circumstances lead to them developing a fractured ‘cleft’ teacher identity, where they are continuously straddling the demands of being a researcher (as a doctoral student) and being a teacher negotiating the uncertainties created by such working conditions. Doctoral students’ understandings of university teaching are often framed by their own experiences of being a university student. We suggest their teaching should be shaped by a professional development programme. Access to such programmes is limited due to the nature of their casualised contracts and often very disparate depending on the institutional context.

These structural inequalities and precarious support practices compromise candidates’ holistic development as researchers and teachers. It’s more difficult for them to be fully productive university teachers, which in turn has a knock-on impact on the quality of university teaching and their experience as doctoral students. Therefore, there is a pressing need for universities to consider ways in which doctoral students can belong to and become and be (remain) active citizens who are aware of their responsibilities, but whose rights are addressed both as students and aspiring academics.

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Doctoral student engagement with and in the academy is underpinned by power, a theme continued by Harry.

Harry Rolf

The landscape of doctoral education is contradictory and conflicting, shaped by invisible power structures and taken-for-granted practices arising from research performance and productivity measures. An emphasis on publishing in doctoral pedagogy means that this is increasingly a landscape that doctoral students must cross to achieve academic and future career success.

My analysis (Rolf 2021), applying a lens of data feminism to publications by doctoral students at an Australian university, shows a borderland where crossings by students and supervisors were frequent but where few stayed for long. Travellers crossed in teams which over time exhibited different approaches to the practice of publication, from teams led by a strong ego-centric researcher to teams where publication was a collaborative effort, but where power was not evenly distributed. Travelling with an experienced guide provided doctoral students with greater access to networks, and if they travelled frequently, more opportunities to publish along the way.

The analysis raises important questions about power and experience in doctoral supervisory and publishing teams, including questions that go beyond the scope of publication data; for example, what does good collaboration look like in doctoral supervisory teams, how are those doctoral supervisory teams formed, what practices do those supervisors bring, and are more diverse expertise or experience brought to supervisory teams and properly recognised? And looking beyond the immediate supervisory team, how can doctoral students find other networks and teams with the knowledge and tools to help them find safe passage, and success, on their borderland crossing?

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Our 2021 SRHE conference symposium managed to cover many of the uncertainties, transitions, dangers and hopes of doctoral borderlands, doing pretty well at representing the Special Issue, which houses thirteen full articles and two Points of Departure (think-piece provocations) covering a range of topics relating to doctoral education. The Teaching in Higher Education Special Issue, the stimulus papers and the discussion in the SRHE symposium that followed demonstrated the changing landscape of doctoral education in terms of the different forms and format of the doctorate, the context of doctoral study, the nature of doctoral research with research that crosses disciplines and professions, the roles and responsibilities that doctoral students have and the expectations that are placed upon them, and the different backgrounds and multiple identities that doctoral researchers bring to their studies. This changing landscape means that doctoral students have different challenges to negotiate, and that the guides through the landscape, and the guidance and support for doctoral students needs also to change. Such changes can open up new possibilities for future doctoral education, which, as the SRHE symposium showed, will benefit from productive professional conversations about doctoral pedagogy and its development.     

For more information, please contact Dr Karen Smith, School of Education, University of Hertfordshire, email: k.smith27@herts.ac.uk

References

Anzaldúa, G (1987) Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute

Carter, S, Smith, K, & Harrison, N (2021) Working in the borderlands: Critical perspectives on doctoral educationTeaching in Higher Education, 26 (3): 283-292 doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1911098

Deleuze, G, and Guattari, F (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia London: Continuum

Gravett, K (2021) ‘Disrupting the Doctoral Journey: Re-imagining Doctoral Pedagogies and Temporal Practices in Higher Education’ Teaching in Higher Education 26 (3): 293–305 doi:10.1080/13562517.2020.1853694

Rao, N, Hosein, A & Raaper, R (2021) ‘Doctoral Students Navigating the Borderlands of Academic Teaching in an era of Precarity’ Teaching in Higher Education 26 (3): 454–470 doi:10.1080/13562517.2021.1892058 

Rolf, HG (2021) ‘Navigating Power in Doctoral Publishing: A Data Feminist Approach’ Teaching in Higher Education 26 (3): 488–507 doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2021.1892059


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Working class and working in higher education?: Transition(s) from a sociology PhD

by Carli Rowell

Carli Rowell won an SRHE Newer Researcher’s Award to explore working-class early career researchers lived experiences of moving through a Sociology PhD and into the academic workforce. It makes visible the successes, hurdles, and ambivalences of this precarious and often invisible group of academics. The full report from this research award is available from the 2019 reports at Newer Researcher Awards | Society for Research into Higher Education (srhe.ac.uk)

This blog arises from a project which explores the lived experience of being working-class and moving through doctoral study into the academic workforce. It was motivated by the fact that higher education has historically existed for the working classes as a site of exclusion from participation, from knowledge production and from leadership. Despite the global massification of education, HE continues to operate as a classed pathway and bastion of classed knowledge (Walkerdine, 2021) especially so given academia’s classed ceiling. The project explored the lived experiences of 13 working-class early career researchers (ECRs) in moving through doctoral study into (and out of) the academic workforce. It sought to make visible the successes, hurdles, and ambivalences of this precarious and often invisible group of academics. I reflect here on some of the key emerging findings (in depth analysis continues) and sketch out early recommendations based on project findings.

The project was underpinned by the following research questions:

  1. In what ways, if at all, do first-generation working-class ECRs perceive their working-class background as affecting their experiences of and progression through doctoral study and into academia?
  2. How do they generate and navigate their own ‘strategies for success’ in their working context?
  3. What are the wider implications of these strategies for success, for example in their personal lives and/or their imagined futures in the academy?
  4. What can be done, if at all, by stake holders of UKHEs to address working-class doctoral students and early career researchers journey to and through a social-sciences PhD and into academia?

A Bourdieusian approach to social class was adopted. Whilst participants self-identified as coming from a working-class background and as being a first-generation (at the undergraduate level), class background and first-generation status were further explored and confirmed through in-depth interviews. All participants were UK domiciled doctoral students and ECRs across a range of university types. Initially the project sought to explore working-class doctoral and ECRs from across the social sciences, but participant recruitment soon revealed a skewedness towards the discipline of sociology. Thus, the decision was taken to adopt a disciplinary case study approach, focusing upon the discipline of sociology. In total, ten of the 13 participants were working in academia and the remaining three were working in the third sector. 12 had completed their PhD’s and one participant had made the decision to leave academia prior to completing the PhD. 12 participants identified as White British, and one participant identified as North African.

What challenges do working-class doctoral researchers and early career researchers face? How, if at all do they overcome such challenges and what can be done to support them in their journeys to and through academia?

The Important of Working-Class ‘Others’ in Academic and Navigating Funding

In journeying to the PhD receiving scholarship funding was foundational to participants’ possibility of progressing to doctoral study. All of my participants received full funding and without this they would not have been able to pursue a PhD. In addition to funding, working-class ‘Others’ (or what I have termed to be very important persons (VIPs) in academia were also central to participants experiences of successful navigating the transition to doctoral study. The VIP, often academic points of contact, who are mostly (though not always) from a working-class background served an important function as a kind of ‘gatekeeper’ to post-graduate study and academia. VIPs often sparked the notion that doctoral study was a possible pathway and provided a window into academia, demystifying academia and the postgraduate applications/scholarship process.

Participants’ accounts showed a range of barriers. Participants rejected the need to be geographically hyper-mobile in order to secure academic employment; they wanted and needed to care for family members and wished to remain connected to their working-class home and community. They spoke at length about the precarious nature of navigating the academic job market and academia per se; this alone was a key barrier to successful progression within academia. Participants also spoke about the multitude of skills and experiences they were required to demonstrate in order to navigate the academic job market. For working-class students who are the first in their family to study at university, knowing which endeavours to seek out and prioritise was a great source of confusion and anxiety. Uncovering how to play the game was not always easily identifiable.

Recommendations

This study leads to recommendations for institutions, funding bodies, and those working in academia in their recruitment, engagement and support with doctoral scholars and early career researchers from working-class backgrounds. These recommendations include, but are not limited to:

(a) schemes aimed at demystifying academia and supporting working-class aspiring doctoral researchers through their doctoral applications and funding process;

(b) funding bodies recognising the precarious financial position of doctoral students, especially so for those from working-class backgrounds and thus financially supporting doctoral students during times of ill health and exceptional circumstances and providing funding to doctoral students for the period immediately following the submission of the PhD; and

(c) Academic hiring committees and funders, postdoctoral or otherwise, should not look more favourably on those applications where the applicant holder is moving to another university, and should accept that some applicants might just prefer to stay, without having an exceptional reason such as caring commitments, or other exceptional academic reasons.

The current academic landscape is marked by precarity and rampant competition for an ever diminishing pool of academic jobs, often short-term, temporary contracts that demand geographical mobility. This in turn has significant impacts upon the knowledge being produced within and across UK universities (and globally). Working-class doctoral students and early career researchers face considerable barriers in their journeys to and through a PhD and into academia. Whilst there has been considerable debate and discussion of the gendered and ethnic makeup of UK higher education there is no equivalent commentary or critique concerned with illuminating, calling into question and critiquing the absence of working-class persons from academia. The future of UK HE, its leadership and scholarship are currently under threat. The values of diversity, accessibility and inclusivity, especially that of class diversity, that universities are quick to espouse should be at the centre of HE policy and practice, especially at the postgraduate level.

Institutions and funding bodies need to take into account, and take action to address, the specific challenges facing working-class doctoral researchers and early career academics. Working-class people should be actively encouraged and supported in their journeys to and through doctoral study and into higher education. As part of this project, a workshop aimed at demystifying the post-PhD post-doctoral funding application process and academic labour market will be run in Autumn 2022.

SRHE member Carli Rowell is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Sussex. She is currently an executive member of Gender and Education Association and convenes the British Sociological Associations Social Class Study Group.


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What comes next after Covid 19 in re-setting doctoral education?

by Rosemary Deem

Like many other aspects of higher education teaching, supervising and research worldwide, doctoral education in higher education institutions (HEIs) has been massively affected by the pandemic. The effects include campus closures and lost experimental and fieldwork data, rapid transition to online supervision and viva defences, cancelled or online conferences hampering networking, lack of wellbeing, study progress being hampered by lack of suitable non-campus work spaces, home schooling children and poor or no internet connectivity (Else, 2021 ; European University Association Council for Doctoral Education, 2020 ; Jackman et al, 2021; Levine et al, 2021). As we are still in the throes of the pandemic at the time of writing, it is difficult to know whether some of the changes made in haste to doctoral education, such as remote supervision and examinations, will be permanent or not. Some adaptations, such as online seminars and conferences and a move away from physical international mobility to blended or virtual mobility, will probably continue, as they permit international participation without high costs or environmental damage. The legacy for doctoral researchers caught up in the Coronavirus chaos will certainly live on for quite a while, although hopefully over time the shock of the impact of lockdowns, working from home and universities being very selective over who gets an extension or extra funding may gradually fade.  However, for those with their eye on future academic jobs, the precarity regime of HE posts remains sadly intact in many HE systems (Deem, 2021b). The availability of jobs outside academe has also been affected by the pandemic, as countries struggle to manage politics, promote public health and provide support for the business, public and third sectors.

The experience of doing a doctorate in times of Covid-19 has brought both good and less good elements, from acquiring more resilience and online learning skills to experiencing poverty, poor mental health and having a lack of motivation to finish writing a thesis.  Some supervisors have also struggled to support their doctoral researchers alongside other students and their own research, particularly where HEIs have indicated that doctoral education is not a pandemic priority, a short sighted view sometimes brought about by difficult HEI financial situations and recruitment uncertainty. Despite the avalanche of articles about the Covid-related impact on doctoral education and doctoral researchers submitted to journals during 2020 and 2021, there are still many things we  know less about, such as: how part-time doctoral researchers have fared compared with full-time candidates; how STEM and Arts/Humanities/Social Sciences candidates compare in the obstacles they face; or how the doctoral research experiences of women and people of colour differ from those of men or white doctoral candidates. There has been relatively little investigation about how supervisors have been affected by remote supervision and the pandemic (UK Council for Graduate Education, 2021) compared with the literature on the effects on students. It is also hard to tell at this point whether the percentage of doctoral theses referred for further work, or even failed, has changed, as many of those due to submit in 2020-21 have deferred or interrupted their studies and have not yet been examined. There has been some advice offered to institutions on this (Houston & Halliday, 2021 ) but in quite a few countries, national regulations on doctoral study don’t make flexibility in doctoral submission and examination very easy.

We are also beginning to see some big differences in the coping strategies of HEIs. It appears that countries with high degrees of marketisation in their HE systems, and with a significant dependence on international students for income, have not fared particularly well under Covid (Drayton and Waltmann, 2020b ; Le, 2021; Marinoni, Hillijge, and Jensen, 2020 ; Startz, 2020 ), whereas countries with low degrees of marketisation or with previous experience of campus lockdowns, such as in the SARS epidemic, did better (Jung, Horta, & Postiglione, 2020). Furthermore, doctoral education was already in something of a crisis before Covid, with a long running critique of its failings, ranging across: so-called ‘overproduction’ of doctoral graduates relative to academic jobs (Nerad, 2020); completion and dropout rates; access to doctoral programmes for applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds; and quality of doctorates and future employment prospects. The state of mental health amongst doctoral researchers is also now a common concern in many contexts (Deem, 2020a; Hazell et al, 2020; Levecque et al, 2017).  However, tackling all these challenges is not straightforward and there is a tendency to tackle each problem on its own in a single HE system or HEI, without thinking how each different challenge relates to all the others.  

What is needed post-pandemic (assuming the world gets there) is a concerted attempt to undertake, certainly at the institutional level, a more holistic approach, but also an approach which relates to the grassroots as well as institutional hierarchies. Such an approach has already been found to be effective in relation to schemes for increasing the numbers of women who get promoted to full professor (Morley, 2013). This initiative focuses first on looking at and fully supporting the people involved (doctoral researchers and supervisors) whilst ensuring their diversity and wide access to doctoral education for those who could benefit from it. Organisational factors are also important, such as valuing doctoral candidates’ academic and social contribution for its own sake, not as a source of cheap research and teaching labour, making doctoral researchers more visible and more important in their institutions, and ensuring organisational processes and procedures reflect this,. Joined-up change also means taking on board issues related to the kinds of knowledge that are valued in doctoral theses: whether that knowledge is from the global north or south; whether it is interdisciplinary or framed in a single discipline; which language or culture it relates to; and encouraging knowledge which values methodological or empirical foci as much as theoretical knowledge, irrespective of whether or not knowledge has immediate economic or social impact. Such an approach, aligned to a clear strategy and implementation process, could in time transform how doctoral education operates, to everyone’s benefit. This is not a change programme for the faint-hearted but unless something like this is adopted, long after the pandemic is over we will still be talking about doctoral crises and the challenges to be addressed, whilst failing to take a more holistic lens to transforming doctoral education than has so far been the norm in many HE systems and HEIs.  We owe it to our current and future doctoral researchers to attempt to develop a more humanistic and more equality-based approach to doctoral study after the rigours of the Corona virus outbreak.    

SRHE Fellow Rosemary Deem OBE is Emerita Professor of Higher Education Management and Doctoral School Senior Research Fellow, Royal Holloway (University of London), UK. She was the first woman to chair the UK Council for Graduate Education and was a member of three UK Research Assessment Exercise Sub-Panels on Education (1996, 2001, 2008).  An Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences since 2006, she is a co-editor of Higher Education (Springer) since 2013, a member of the Peer Review College of the European Science Foundation and a co-convenor of the Higher Education Network in the European Educational Research Association

References (not embedded via URLs)

Deem, R (2020a) ‘Rethinking doctoral education: university purposes, academic cultures, mental health and the public good’ in Cardoso, S, Tavares, O, Sin, C and Carvalho, T (eds), Structural and Institutional Transformations in doctoral education: social, political and student expectations (pp. 13-42). Cham, Switzerland Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature

Deem, R (2021b) ‘The early stage academic and the contemporary university: communities of practice meet managerialism?’ in Sarrico, C, Rosa de Pires, MJ and Carvalho, T (eds), Handbook on Managing Academics Cheltenham Edward Elgar

Marinoni, G., Hillijge, V. t. L., & Jensen, T. (2020 ). The Impact of Covid on higher education around the world:  IAU Global Survey Paris International Association of Universities

Morley, L. (2013). Women and Higher Education Leadership: Absences and Aspirations.

Nerad, M. (2020). Doctoral Education Worldwide:  Three decades of change In M. M. Yudkevich, P. G. Altbach, & H. de Wit (Eds.), Trends and Issues in Doctoral Education Worldwide: A Global Perspective (pp. 33-52). London and Thousand Oaks, California Sage.