Conference ‘The Role of the supervisor'

One of the KPI’s in the sector plan is to shorten the average duration of PhD trajectories in the coming years, in which healthy PhD practices are of great importance. During the first conference held on 16 March 2022 which was dedicated to Healthy PhD practices, it was agreed that a next conference should focus on the role of supervisors in PhD trajectories.  

This conference is jointly organized with Leiden Law School (Dr. Hilde Wermink and Dr. Jim Been), Tilburg Law School (Prof. Hans Lindahl and Prof. Giorgio Monti), Faculty of Law, Radboud University (Prof. Claartje Bulten and Prof. Marijke ter Voert) and Erasmus School of Law (Prof. Karin van Wingerde and Wilma Puper). 

Programme: 

The conference will be held in English, but the workshop Giving and Receiving Feedback will be offered in English and in Dutch. The conference will take place in person, at the Woudestein Campus in Rotterdam. There is no livestream available. 

The conference is free of charge, but registration is required.

Programme

Panel discussion with PhD researchers about supervision

In this plenary panel discussion PhD researchers are asked what they need and what they expect from their supervisors, and how good supervision looks like and can contribute to healthy PhD practices and timely completion. Next to that: what does the supervision team need from the PhD researcher, to enable them to fulfil their role in a proper way.  
This panel will consist of 7 PhD researchers and will be led by the chair of the conference.  
 

PhD panel

Closing panel

Workshop Giving and Receiving Feedback during Doctoral Research 

The aim of this session is to gain insight into different ways of giving and receiving feedback, and what effects this can have. Different situations will be depicted via actors, highlighting both the supervisor's side and the PhD researcher's side. Participants of this workshop will be asked to give input to bring the conversation to the desired level.  
This workshop will be offered twice, in the first round in English, in the second round in Dutch. 

Workshop Different roles of the supervisor

PhD supervision asks different roles from the supervisors: academic supervision (content), mentoring (e.g., how to be an academic), sponsoring (e.g., open doors and make your network available for your PhD researchers), coaching (wellbeing), monitoring (steering on project planning and timely completion), education & training. Sometimes the focus seems to be on academic supervision, on the content, but the other roles are important as well.   
This workshop will be offered once, in the first workshop round. 

Workshop Supervising PhDs and the challenges of heterogeneity  

The task of this session is to treat three aspects of heterogeneity:  

1. Interdisciplinarity 
2. Cultural differences  
3. Internal/external doctoral candidates.  

The discussion will be structured by considering each aspect from three perspectives: that of the PhD candidate, that of the supervisor and that of the supervisory team (i.e. all other support structures for PhD candidates beyond the supervisor). 
This workshop will be offered twice.  

Closing panel discussion with vice deans of research, graduate school directors, deans 

The aim is, based on the findings of the workshops, to arrive at a number of suggestions for faculties to keep the quality of supervision on the agenda and to improve it, as well as to make a link to the previous conference on healthy PhD practices, and success rates and the important role of supervision in this respect. 
This panel will be led by the chairman of the conference, Marianne Klerks, based on a number of propositions. 
The members of the panel will be published on the event page one week before the conference. 

The findings of the conference will be shared afterwards with all attendees, the boards and policy advisors of the Dutch Law Schools.