Rethinking doctoral supervision (again): Mobilising new practices and affects

Doctoral supervision is a prized aspect of academic work, contributing to original knowledge generation and academic subject formation. In this work-in-progress seminar I will draw on an ethnographic study with 11 doctoral supervisors in the humanities and qualitative social sciences in New Zealand universities to explore supervision as a form of academic work that is enmeshed in the flow of busy academic lives. I will explore the shadowy dimensions – both affective and practical – of doctoral supervision as it is described by the research informants in interviews, fieldwork observations and collaborative workshops. I hope to not only illuminate the complexity of doctoral supervisor identities and work, entangled as they are in wider academic lives, but also provide food for thinking about how supervisors might enact this work more capably, more ethically, more satisfyingly. To this end, I take a leaf out of Tim Ingold’s new book, Anthropology and/as education, to explore with participants how we might reimagine doctoral supervision as a collaborative “study practice” and what new affects and practices might emerge from such imaginings.

About the speaker
Barbara Grant is Associate Professor in the School of Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland where she researches in the field of critical university studies. She is interested in doctoral education, including the supervision of graduate students, as well as academic work and identities, and activism within the university.