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What is a poem doing in a literature review?

by Nguyen Phuong Le, Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan and Thang Long Nguyen

If the phrase ‘write a poem’ makes your stomach do a tiny backflip, you are in good company. The three of us came to poetry from very different places. Kathleen has been working with poetry in teaching and research for many years, across different countries and contexts. Phuong first encountered poetic inquiry while working with Kathleen as a research assistant, learning her way into the field as a newcomer. Long joined as a critical reader of this blog, bringing curiosity from outside poetry‑based research.

Those different starting points matter. None of us came to this work believing poetry was an obvious or easy fit for literature reviewing.

In our conversations, workshops, and conference sessions, we have seen friends, postgraduate students, supervisors, lecturers, and experienced researchers worry that they are ‘not creative’. Some worry their English is not ‘good enough’. Others feel uneasy because poetry sounds personal, exposing, and even childish, in a higher education context.

Our starting point is simple: using a small, low-stakes poetic process to think with literature, stay engaged, and find your way into scholarly conversation. When you do this with another person, the process can feel even more doable. You cannot get this wrong, because the point is not to produce a ‘professional’ poem.

Why poetry in a literature review, seriously?

You don’t have to write poems to review literature. Most reviews are written in conventional academic prose. But if you are doing qualitative research, you may already know that knowledge is not only built through tidy argument. It is also built through attention, resonance, discomfort, contradiction, and voice.

Literature reviews can become a performance of mastery: you read fast, extract key points, categorise, critique, cite, and move on. Although these steps seem straightforward, the focus on moving quickly and efficiently may mean we miss what texts invite us to feel, picture, and connect with. The emotional texture of reading disappears, along with much of what makes qualitative work matter: empathy, imagination, and relational engagement.

Poetry calls for slower digestion. It invites you to ask, ‘What stays with me?’. It offers a way to respond before you feel ready to produce polished academic claims. That response can later feed your analytic writing, without needing to look like academic writing at the start.

What do we mean by “collaborative feedback poetry”?

Kathleen and Phuong’s article, ‘Reimagining qualitative literature reviewing through collaborative feedback poetry’ (Pithouse-Morgan & Le, 2025), introduces the term collaborative feedback poetry to describe a literature-reviewing strategy in which people respond to academic texts through short poems and exchange poetic responses with one another.

In such a strategy, collaboration matters. Many researchers struggle not only with the literature and writing, but also with the loneliness of the process. Working alongside someone else shifts the emotional climate. You are no longer trying to “prove” that you understand. You are noticing, articulating, and learning together.

Feedback matters as much as the poem. In academic settings, feedback often points out what is missing, what is weak, and what needs to be fixed. In collaborative feedback poetry, the focus is not on correction but on extension. The poem becomes a doorway, inviting you to walk further into the text rather than retreat from it.

“But I’m not a poet!”

That’s the point.

In the first few minutes of Kathleen’s collaborative feedback poetry sessions, the atmosphere is often tense. People apologise before they write. They say they are not creative, have never written a poem, or worry that their English is not good enough.

What changes things is permission: Permission to know, from the start, that there is no way to get this wrong.

Permission to be simple.

Permission to be incomplete.

Permission to use a home language.

When that permission feels real, participants begin to read, talk, and act differently. The literature starts to feel less like a wall and more like a space they can enter – through poetry, in whatever form it takes.

Phuong has seen these hesitations surface in conference conversations and informal chats with colleagues in Vietnam. After presentations on poetry as a literature‑reviewing practice, people are often interested but quiet. Later, they admit their worry about whether there is a ‘right’ kind of poem, or that writing poetry in a second or third language will expose them as less than capable.

That hesitancy matters. So instead of defending poetry in abstract terms, we slow down and walk through a small example.

Here is one example, a short haiku:

Creative Arts Professors’ Concerns

Pandemic’s harsh fall,

professors’ struggles echo,

incomplete sonnets.

(First published in Pithouse-Morgan & Le, 2025)

Phuong wrote this haiku in response to two papers by creative arts educators in higher education: Holmgren (2018) and Meskin and van der Walt (2022). Holmgren’s paper, written before the COVID-19 pandemic, explores musical interpretation through philosophic poetic inquiry and autoethnodrama. Meskin and van der Walt’s paper, written during the pandemic, uses poetic inquiry and reciprocal found poetry to reflect on disruptions to educator-artists’ academic and creative lives.

Rather than summarising either paper, Phuong read them together and asked: ‘What feeling carries across both texts?’ The answer was interruption – teaching and creative work that could not fully unfold. This is where ‘incomplete sonnets’ came from.

The poem does not replace the literature review. Instead, it marks what stayed with the reader after reading closely. This is not (just) an artistic move, but an act of attention and relation.

When we introduce this process, we usually ask a few simple questions, such as ‘What stayed with you after reading?’ ‘Which words carry that feeling?’ ‘What happens when you space those words out on a page?’ And ‘What occurs when another person reads and responds to your poem?’

When we introduce this process, we ask readers to notice what remains with them after reading. Kathleen’s poem Growing Beyond came from that noticing: reading across texts about doctoral students’ poetic inquiry (Chan, 2003; Kang et al, 2022) and attending to what stayed with her. In their poetry, Chan and Kang et al wrote about what it felt like to be doctoral students, including experiences of isolation, marginalisation, and internal struggle. Their work highlights the restorative, reflective, and critical possibilities of poetic inquiry in higher education. The poem opens with an impulse Kathleen recognised in their writing:

A sudden compulsion,

a yearning to express,

to write poetry.

                (First published in Pithouse-Morgan & Le, 2025)

Why the collaborative element carries weight

Higher education research can be intensely individualised. Even when we are part of a student cohort or a research centre, as students or academics, we often read and write alone before submitting work for evaluation or review. Collaborative feedback poetry encourages a different kind of scholarly space. The goal is not to show you are clever, but to practise staying with ideas and emotions in the supportive presence of another.

That matters for students and academics at different levels, and for supervisors and educators trying to teach literature reviewing without turning it into a fear-fest. It also matters for multilingual writers, who are too often made to feel that academic voice counts only when it sounds like confident English.

Collaboration does not remove difficulty; it changes what difficulty feels like. You are not stranded in it. You are accompanied. To us, this companionship feels more welcoming than working alone, not least because, like many of you, we are also trying to find and express our voices within the wider literature.

A takeaway for you

If you want to try this, keep it small. Choose one article. Give yourself ten minutes to jot down words that come to mind as you read, and select phrases from the text that grab your attention. Shape these into a short poem, in any form, with space around the words. Share it with someone you trust. Ask them to respond – not by grading it, but by writing back with their own short poem. Then briefly discuss what the poems say and why that matters.

If you leave with just one idea, let it be this: literature reviewing is not only about demonstrating coverage. It is also about cultivating relationships with ideas, voices, emotions, and sometimes with each other. Collaborative feedback poetry is one way to make these relationships visible and accessible.

By now, we hope you feel encouraged to step into poetic literature reviewing in ways that feel doable and enjoyable. With baby steps, of course.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust through the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grants Scheme. (Grant holder: Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan).

Nguyen Phuong Le is a lecturer in English Education at Hanoi National University of Education, Vietnam. She is a graduate of the Master of Arts in Digital Teaching and Learning at the University of Nottingham, UK, and the Bachelor of Arts in English at Northern Kentucky University, US. Passionate about digital education and literature, she has held various positions in research, teaching, and learning across higher education and educational organisations.

Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan is a Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham, UK, and an honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She focuses on professional learning and supporting professionals as self-reflexive, creative learners. Passionate about arts-inspired research and teaching, especially using poetic methods, she co-convenes the British Educational Research Association’s Arts-Based Educational Research group.

Thang Long Nguyen is currently a student of the Master of Arts in Sociology at University College Dublin, Ireland. Graduated from Doshisha University in Japan with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts, he has an interdisciplinary interest in themes of nationalism. Still, he is deeply concerned with the progress of education in social sciences and humanities in his home country, Vietnam.


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Pragmatic problem-solving for inclusive doctoral admission

by Bing Lu, Rebekah Smith McGloin and Scott Foster

This blog post reflects on ongoing collaborative efforts to advance more equitable doctoral admissions between a group of UK institutions. It argues that transforming graduate admissions is not simply driven by competitive logic, nor by a search for a single, universal framework that can be applied across the sector. Instead, sector-level change emerges through collective, interactional, and often emotional work.

Inclusive postgraduate research (PGR) admission and recruitment have become an increasing global concern (Posselt, 2016; Bastedo, 2026; Boghdady, 2025). Drawing on ongoing collaborative work between a group of UK institutions, this blog post reflects on collective efforts to advance more equitable doctoral admissions. We argue that inclusive doctoral admission is not a competition to produce an exhaustive, finished framework, but an ongoing process of collective problem solving, one that requires humility, openness, and sustained commitment across institutional boundaries.

PGR students are strategically vital to the UK’s research capacity, innovation and future academic workforce. PhD programmes increasingly function as the primary entry route into academic careers and shape who is able to imagine themselves, and be recognised, as future researchers. Within the doctoral lifecycle, admission is a particularly critical intervention point. Yet, compared with undergraduate or taught postgraduate recruitment, the mechanisms shaping PGR admissions have historically received less sustained scrutiny.

A report commissioned by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in 2014 highlighted that UK institutions primarily value academic attainment, the quality of research proposals, and evidence of prior research skills when selecting candidates (Mellors-Bourne et al, 2014). Since 2020, a growing body of UK-based scholarship has begun to highlight equity issues in doctoral selection (McGloin & Wynne, 2022; Oyinloye & Wakeling 2023; Mateos‑González & Wakeling, 2022; Britton et al, 2020), and has sought to explore the ascriptive nature of systems and processes that underpin doctoral recruitment and admission.  Together, these studies identify a range of barriers. These include the persistence of ‘elite pipelines’, whereby attending a Russell Group university at undergraduate level strongly predicts access to elite postgraduate education, as well as the significant under-representation of British candidates from minoritised backgrounds at doctoral level, particularly within funded studentships. These patterns underscore the need to interrogate how merit, potential, and excellence are operationalised in practice.

The initiatives and the community of practice

Initiatives funded by Research England and Office for Students, including the Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation (EDEPI) programme, represent important attempts to push forward the agenda of inclusive PGR admissions in English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). In 2022, EDEPI conducted a national survey on PGR admissions practices in UK HEIs. The study identified ten key barriers to inclusive admission in its final report EDEPI Postgraduate Researcher Admission Framework and led to the development of the Postgraduate Researcher Competency-Based Admission Framework. This framework deliberately shifts focus away from previous institutional prestige and historical academic attainment towards the specific skills, experiences and competencies which demonstrate future potential for doctoral research.

From 2024, EDEPI has fostered an inter-institutional Community of Practice involving a group of international and UK institutions to explore approaches for enhancing inclusive PGR admissions collectively. Within this community, three institutions engaged as case studies to trial new approaches to evaluating applicants beyond conventional academic metrics, building on the Competency Framework. Through regular facilitated discussions, shared reflective practices, collaborative webinars and a jointly organised symposium on Fostering inclusive doctoral admission, participating institutions work alongside the EDEPI team to explore challenges and embed equity-driven principles into their PGR admissions processes.

Key learning from collective work

One of the most important lessons drawn from this collective institutional effort is that, while institutions hold different conceptions of fairness and merit shaped by their unique contexts, they nonetheless share a commitment to addressing persistent equity issues. This aligns with the findings of the sector survey (Smith McGloin et al, 2024) which found an overwhelming commitment to inclusive practice, an awareness of the need for change and huge complexity in existing processes with multiple stakeholders and drivers. This work is neither straightforward nor purely normative; it is complex, negotiated, and deeply pragmatic.

For example, in staff training workshops, academic colleagues described their deliberate efforts to apply equity principles when making departmental admissions decisions. Professional services staff, meanwhile, highlighted their role in carefully matching applicants’ proposals and disciplinary backgrounds to appropriate departments, ensuring that applications reach the review stage rather than being filtered out prematurely. Where resistance or hesitation arose around the introduction of yet another ‘framework’, this was less about rejecting equity goals and more about uncertainty regarding feasible, appropriate, and sustainable implementation.

Debates around distributive fairness versus procedural fairness illustrate this tension clearly (Boliver et al, 2022). Graduate admissions are not objective measurements of worth but sites of intense organisational boundary work, where judgements about potential, fit, and excellence are continuously negotiated. These discussions echo longstanding sociological insights into academic evaluation. Lamont (2009), for instance, argues that in real-world academic review, excellence and diversity are not alternative principles but additive ones. Staff involved in PGR admissions are often guided by pragmatic, problem-solving considerations, caught between institutional principles, personal commitments, and procedural constraints. Panels are typically required to reach consensus on a limited number of candidates within tight timeframes, and these practical pressures shape how fairness is understood and enacted.

Within this ‘black box’ of academic decision-making, Bourdieu’s Homo Academicus is frequently cited to explain how scholars’ legitimate visions of high-quality research and defend disciplinary boundaries, with conflicts often most pronounced among those occupying similar positions. Our collective work over the past 12 months, however, suggests a more nuanced picture. Admissions staff, both academic and professional, are motivated not only by positional interests but also by a shared, pragmatic curiosity about how to solve persistent problems together. The Community of Practice created space for dialogue, uncertainty, and learning, enabling participants to reflect on their own assumptions while engaging with others’ institutional constraints.  Transforming graduate admissions, then, is not simply driven by competitive logic, nor by a search for a single, universal framework that can be applied across the sector. Instead, sector-level change emerges through collective, interactional, and often emotional work. A recent WonkHE article, How to level the PhD playing field, posed a critical question: does the sector have the collective will to move beyond well-intentioned initiatives towards the structural changes required to address inequities among PGRs?

The experiences emerging from EDEPI offer cautious but promising evidence. They demonstrate how institutions with differing histories, resources, and institutional affordances can nonetheless work together pragmatically to enhance admissions practices. Inclusive doctoral admission, in this sense, is not a finished model to be adopted but an ongoing process of collective problem solving, one that requires humility, openness, and sustained commitment across institutional boundaries. Through the established Community of Practice, the EDEPI framework has also begun to attract interest from institutions in international contexts, despite differing governance structures, as a means of collectively developing equity-oriented approaches to PGR admissions through shared learning.

Closing summary

Inclusive PGR admissions require ongoing, collaborative work, as shown through EDEPI’s efforts to help institutions rethink how fairness, potential, and merit are assessed. Colleagues across academic and professional roles demonstrate that excellence and diversity can be mutually reinforcing when supported by reflective practice and shared experimentation. Future progress depends on refining competency-based approaches, tracking applicant journeys, expanding training and co-creation, and translating these insights into clearer sector guidance and policy.

Dr Bing Lu is a higher education scholar based at Nottingham Trent University and University of Warwick. Bing’s research critically engages with access, equity, and sustainability in postgraduate education, focusing particularly on underrepresented groups and the global flows of academic labour. Bing is currently guest editing a Special Issue on Taboos in Doctoral Education Across Cultures hosted by Higher Education Quarterly.

Dr Rebekah Smith McGloin is Director of Research Culture and Environment at Nottingham Trent University and Chair of the UK Council for Graduate Education. Her focus is on innovations in practice and national policy work related to new and emerging forms of doctorate that align with the changing research, innovation and skills policy landscape; including research culture reform, civic-engaged and inclusive doctoral education and equity-focused admissions.

Scott Foster is a professor specialising in postgraduate research culture and academic leadership. He has published extensively on equity, well-being, and innovation in doctoral education. Through influential articles and forthcoming book projects, he advances global research culture while supporting institutions to strengthen policy, supervision, and the doctoral experience.


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Exploring British Muslim transitions to PGT studies

by Zain Sardar and Amira Samatar

The social mobility charity, the Aziz Foundation, has published a major new report examining the progression challenges encountered by British Muslims aspiring to PGT studies. We consider this a timely intervention, in the context of a rapidly changing student demography, indicated in the popular usage of such terms as ‘hyper-diversification’ (Atherton and Mazhari, 2020) within HE policy discourse, and corroborated in recent projections by the professional membership body, Advance HE. In the wake of these demographic trends, a recent TASO publication (Andrews et al, 2023) reports that the sector is gripped by a high degree of uncertainty over the most expedient institutional approaches to adopt in dealing with disparities in progression and attainment. 

Transitions: British Muslims between UG and PGT studies will be of benefit to HE practitioners, researchers and forward thinking institutions willing to engage in an analysis of the granular experiences of discrete, minoritised communities. That is, decision and policy makers open to targeted interventions, as opposed to the one-size fits all, universal approach that delineates the current comfort zone in HE. We are particularly concerned with the direction in which the widening participation agenda will seek to evolve, encouraging the better incorporation of the access needs of faith communities in any future trajectory.

The progression challenge

The policy exceptionalism that discounts British Muslims from HE regulatory frameworks and formulas helps to sustain the equality gaps that hinder academic progression. To expand on this theme: recently there has been a greater regulatory focus on disparities in relation to ethnicity, which is certainly welcome. For example, there is a consensus that the most pressing sector wide challenges centre on the degree-awarding gap, as mentioned above, and access to doctoral studies for minoritised communities (OfS, 2020). However, a lacuna is still visible: the disadvantages that accrue around faith – as an operative dimension of the British Muslim identity – are still not part of the ‘intersectional mix’ making it onto the regulatory agenda (although we should acknowledge that the new ‘Equalities of Opportunity Risk Register’, established to regulate the student experience, does make mention of Muslim students) (OfS, 2023).

The progression challenge, however, is very evident and borne out in the Office for Students’ (OfS) own data dashboard. It indicates a drop off in British Muslim participation between the undergraduate and postgraduate taught level (from 12% to 8%)(OfS, 2021-22). Furthermore, this is not replicated amongst those from non-faith backgrounds or other control groups, such as Christian students.

We can thus detect in national datasets the contours of an entrenched social mobility fault line. The sector’s response to this is critical, as dealing with these disparities will necessitate enhancing the current access regime. It will need to build in more responsiveness to the forms of disadvantage that holds back intersectional communities – such as British Muslims – from participation at the postgraduate level.

An intersectionality of disadvantage

Transitions centres the testimonies of British Muslims, deploying a Critical Race Theory (CRT) methodology and qualitative analysis to examine the lived experiences of candidates for the Aziz Foundation’s flagship Masters Scholarship programme.

The charity has awarded over 560 scholarships since its inception in 2016, and commenced surveying its candidates in 2019/20, subsequently undertaking this exercise on an annual basis. In having access and utilising the Foundation’s rich seam of data, we would like to position the report as a form of community-based research. From our perspective, participating survey respondents are co-producers of knowledge, supporting an investigation into the factors that inhibit educational progression, as well as shining a light upon the reasons why British Muslims wish to pursue PGT study. 

Moreover, the key concept of ‘intersectionality’ is deployed in order to explore the British Muslim identity through the testimonies (or autoethnographies, in which respondents are invited to reflect on their own condition within HE) of scholarship candidates. As both faith and ethnicity, and the interaction between the two, determines the experiences of, and hardships faced, by British Muslims, this is a crucial focus area. We emphasise this as a ‘hidden’ dynamic, as this type of intersectional disadvantage – in its granularity – is rarely acknowledged in its complexity by HEIs within institutional strategies. 

Pipeline issues and recommendations

Transitions explores why the transition to PGT is of so much significance for British Muslims, as well as the wider sector. It has ramifications beyond the low number of this demographic who progress all the way into academia as researchers and members of the professoriate. For instance, Masters programmes are thought of as a way to redress imbalances in social capital, providing minoritised communities with opportunities to widen networks for professional development. This is important in relation to labour market outcomes, taking into account the underrepresentation of senior leaders across professions and industries of a British Muslim heritage.   

More widely, we would like to ask institutions to reflect on ways in which they can mend the ‘broken bridge’ of PGT – and so fortify the academic and education-to-work pipeline. Some of our report recommendations for institutions and the sector provide a starting point:  

  • Amongst HEIs, there ought to be parity of esteem and financial resources between pre-entry widening participation and postgraduate widening participation
  • HEIs to be proactive in incorporating ‘British Muslim students’ as a disadvantaged group in Access and Participation Plans (APPs), considering institutional context
  • The ‘broken pipeline’ at PGT ought to be bridged with appropriate funding opportunities such as ring fenced scholarships

We urge institutions and practitioners to read our report carefully and consider our full set of recommendations.

Ultimately we believe that the future of the widening participation agenda can be effectively shaped through institutions that take the initiative, developing innovations and extending access to constituencies at the sharp end of the intersectionalities of disadvantage. 

Transitions: British Muslims between undergraduate and PGT studies can be accessed here. 

Dr Zain Sardar is a joint programme manager at the Aziz Foundation. He leads on the Foundation’s engagement with its university partners and higher education stakeholders. As well as completing his PhD in law at Birkbeck, University of London, he has previously worked in higher education administration and policy. Zain also currently sits on the Yorkshire Consortium for Equity in Doctoral Education external advisory board.

Amira Samatar, MA Ed., AFHEA, is a postgraduate researcher whose academic interests centre around the educational experiences and journeys of racially minoritised students in British universities, with a specific focus on Black British women’s experiences beyond the postgraduate level. Amira is an associate at MA Education Consultancy and is committed to progressing social justice agendas within the higher education sector and to this end, increasing opportunities for Black and Muslim students

References

Andrews, S, Stephenson, J. Adefila, A et al (June 2023) Approaches to addressing the ethnicity degree awarding gap, TASO Atherton, G and Mazhari, T (2020) Preparing for hyper-diversity: London’s student population in 2030 Access HE


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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.


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How poster competitions can support postgraduates

by Ben Archer and Jill Dickinson

The challenges presented by the higher education environment, including students’ mental wellbeing and doctoral completion rates (Cage et al, 2021; Rooij et al, 2019), have been compounded by Covid-19. Pre-existing concerns around the potential isolation of the doctoral journey have become more prevalent since the pandemic (Börgeson et al, 2021; Pollak, 2017). Within such an environment, opportunities for building postgraduate students’ communities of practice, networks, and self-efficacy have become even more important (Lamothe et al, 2018; Lui et al, 2020; Wazni et al, 2021). In this blog, we examine one such opportunity, a Postgraduate Research Showcase and Poster Competition. After outlining the event, we identify some of the challenges around managing the event, explore the benefits of the event for key stakeholders, and consider the potential for further developing the event both in-house and in collaboration with other institutions.

Presenting research via a poster at the Society for Research into Higher Education Conference inspired Jill Dickinson to apply for funding to devise a new Postgraduate Research Showcase and Poster Competition. The aim was to provide an accessible space for students at all stages of their postgraduate studies to share their research, discuss their ideas, prepare for assessments, develop their employability skills (Disney et al, 2015), and build networks. Jill secured internal funding through both the Graduate School and through her role as a Fellow of the Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies, and worked with a colleague from the Department of Psychology, Sociology and Politics (PSP) to launch the event. Recognising the importance of creating opportunities for postgraduate researchers to develop their research profiles, Jill also secured external funding from key organisations, including Oxford University Press, Palgrave, and Blackwells.

Following the trend towards interdisciplinary collaborations (Bridle et al, 2013), students from the Departments of Law and Criminology, Natural and Built Environment, and PSP, and the Centre for Regional, Social and Economic Research were invited to participate. To reflect the conference process, students were asked to submit abstracts for review. Fourteen students presented their work to an audience that included external organisations, doctoral research supervisors, and fellow students. The posters were judged by a panel who awarded prizes for both academic significance and potential impact. One of the winners noted ‘unlike formal conferences, the SIPS PhD Student Poster Event gave presenters the opportunity to engage with attendees on a relaxed one-to-one level. I received plenty of invaluable advice and suggestions which have shaped my PhD going forward.’ After 93% of delegates rated the event as either good or excellent, the initiative became established as an annual event in the Graduate School’s programme.

Since its launch, the event has been developed:

  • with additional funding provided by other organisations, including Emerald and Policy Press;
  • to provide opportunities for all postgraduate researchers from all disciplines across the University;
  • to include a programme of workshops to provide support for students in developing their posters;
  • to encourage the audience to vote on their favourite poster for a Delegates’ Choice Award; and
  • to become a self-perpetuating initiative that is led by, and for, postgraduate researchers.

Over the past five years, the event has provided notable benefits for those involved, including the development of skills, knowledge and experience around: consolidating and presenting ideas in a creative way (Etter and Guardi, 2015; Rowe and Ilac, 2009); explaining research findings in an accessible format for a lay audience; and strengthening confidence in public speaking, which can be particularly helpful for supporting newer student researchers with their teaching responsibilities. Furthermore, postgraduate students have described the event as a key milestone for developing their self-efficacy, particularly around helping them to prepare for their confirmation and viva stages. More broadly, the event recognises the longevity and challenges of postgraduate studies and provides an opportunity for the wider research community to celebrate research success through encouraging positive reflections on what student researchers have done, not what obstacles remain (Batty et al, 2019; Pyhältö , 2012; Sverdlik et al, 2018).

In line with the Students as Partners model (Healey, Flint and Carrington, 2014), Jill invited postgraduate students who have participated in the event to join the organisational team. For example, Ben Archer, co-author of this blog post and winner of the 2019 Delegates’ Choice Award, co-organised the event in 2020. Ben has since led on the arrangements for the 2021 event, inviting other postgraduate student researchers to join him, and the team are already planning next year’s event.

Navigating the challenges presented by the Covid-19 pandemic over the past two years has, however, proven tricky. The April 2020 showcase had been thoroughly planned, with poster submissions received, rooms booked and display boards pre-ordered, but the organisation team worked quickly to identify and realise an opportunity to incorporate the event within the University-wide Creating Knowledge online conference programme. Following the success of this format, and given the continuing uncertainties presented by the pandemic environment, the organisational committee decided to retain, and further develop, the event within this virtual format. For example, the team extended the time for this year’s event from one hour to three hours to encourage more discussions between the presenters and all members of the audience. In addition, the posters were made available on the SIPS website for two weeks prior to the event to maximise opportunities for receiving feedback and development of profiles. Against a backdrop of reduced networking opportunities necessitated by the pandemic, the continuation of this event facilitated peer-interaction and community-building which can be particularly important given the potential issues identified earlier around postgraduate students’ feelings of  isolation, lack of confidence, and mental health (Hazell et al, 2020).

Building on the event’s sustained success, and despite the challenges presented by the pandemic, the organisational team are exploring opportunities for its further development. One idea is to host a blended event that combines an on-campus poster display with online, follow-up presentations. The aim would be to maximise accessibility and engagement with an increased audience that could further build postgraduate researchers’ confidence, employability skills, networking opportunities, and profiles. Additionally, the organisational team are looking to collaborate with other institutions to host a larger scale event that further recognises the breadth and value of social policy research within higher education.

If you are interested in finding out more about the event and ways within which you could get involved, we would really like to hear from you!

Benjamin Archer is a Lecturer in Law at Sheffield Hallam University. He is a Sheffield Institute for Policy Studies and Doctoral Training Alliance joint-funded PhD student, examining the introduction of Public Spaces Protection Orders. Ben’s research interests include anti-social behaviour and the management of greenspaces and high streets. Twitter @benjaminarcher_

Dr Jill Dickinson is a Senior Lecturer in Law at Sheffield Hallam University, who is currently on secondment with the Student Engagement, Evaluation and Research Team. As a Senior Fellow of the HEA, Jill’s research interests include professional development and employability, and she sits on the England Committee for the International Professional Development Association. Twitter @jill_dickinson1