As elsewhere across the globe, for the past two decades doctoral education in the UK has been in the throes of change. This article seeks to describe and analyse developments in 1) the national framework for doctoral education, 2) institutional structures, 3) doctoral programmes, 4) doctoral candidacy, 5) doctoral supervision and 6) doctoral…

Most research into research supervision practice focuses on functional, collegial or problematic power-related experiences. Work developing the supervisory role concentrates on new supervisors, and on taught development and support programmes. Most literature on academics' professional learning concentrates on learning to be a university teacher…

Much international doctoral learning research focuses on personal, institutional and learning support provided by supervisors, managed relationships,"nudging" robust, conceptual, critical, creative work. Other work focuses on stresses experienced in supervisor-student relationships and doctoral journeys. Some considers formal and…

Traditionally, supervisors work with students on an individual basis and postgraduate development programmes are run on site. However, with increasing numbers of part-time and international students, supervisory relationships are likely to be conducted at a distance as students study alongside other commitments. Isolation can often be a key…

Much research into postgraduate student learning focuses on generic issues of research development. Early work, reported here, uses threshold concept theories and theories of conceptual threshold crossing to focus on the learning and supervisory support of postgraduates researching in the fields of literature and art. This paper is based on…