Music credit: Happy Boy Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
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Podcast transcript
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Hello and welcome, R, D and And The Inbetweens, I'm your host, Kelly Preece,
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and every fortnight I talk to a different guest about researchers development and everything in between.
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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of R, D and The Inbetweens.
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It's Kelly Preece. And today I'm gonna be talking to both sides of a PhD supervisory team to Edward Mills.
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He's been on this podcast a few times, talking about writing up his thesis and preparing for your Viva is here today with his PhD supervisor
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and now postdoc supervisor Dr. Thomas Hinton to talk about the supervisory relationship from both sides.
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What makes a good supervisor? What makes a good supervisor? And what advice they have for other students and academics.
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So, Tom, first, you happy to introduce yourself? Yes.
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So I'm Tom Hinton.
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I'm a senior lecturer in French in the Department of Modern Languages, specialised in the Middle Ages, particularly medieval French and Occitan Fab.
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Edward. Hello, my name's Edward. I am just in the process of finishing up my PhD
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I've just submitted my corrections in modern languages. Work on many of these similar areas.
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Tom. Really Which is appropriate, I think, given the focus for for this podcast.
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So, yeah, we're gonna talk about the supervisory relationship and the particular supervisory
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relationship that Tom and Edward have experienced over the past four years.
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I guess best thing to do is go right back to the start. Back to the beginning.
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So how did you come to be Tom's student Edward?
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So I am very fortunate.
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I think on one thing which I am conscious of in this episode is I'm going to give everybody supervisor envy. But to go way back.
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It actually happened because of an email that we sent out.
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So I was working in France after finishing my master's and my masters supervisor who knew that myself,
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another master's candidate, were interested in doing PhDs
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occasionally sent out emails to us saying, you know, have you seen this opportunity for funding, this opportunity for funding and so on and so forth.
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And it just so happened that Tom had sent one round about some funding that was available in Exeter,
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mentioning that there were these three student ships and it would be great to have some mediaeval French representation
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in amongst that this sort of new cohort and that French specific PhD funding was and still is quite rare.
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So I sat down over Christmas five years ago and wrote an email, basically, and that's sort of where it started, isn't it, Tom?
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Really? Yeah, I think it's a I mean, that's how a lot of PhD supervisor relationships start, I think is through someone e-mailing in this case.
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I was, as I would explain,
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I was trying to be proactive in terms of putting feelers out to colleagues around the country to see if they had students who be interested.
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And then you get an email in your inbox. And I think obviously it's important that the project is a good fit.
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So it doesn't it doesn't have to be exactly what you're working on, but you have to, as a supervisor,
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be able to see yourself giving good value, being the right person for that project.
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In this case, it did so happen that it was remarkably close to what I was interested in.
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And I think, um, the the topic immediately caught my interest.
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So was that so that you said that there was funding available?
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So was there an interview process? Did you like what kind of interaction did you have in advance of you starting Ed?
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Edward, did you speak on the phone or did you meet and get to meet in person or.
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So we most did it via e-mail. I think Tom is not fair to say.
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Yeah, I think almost entirely wasn't it I think. Yeah. I actually spoke face to face to you.
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I don't think we ever spoke on the phone. But the time we spoke face to face, I think you already had your offer.
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I think that's why. Yeah. So there was an application process.
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I actually did something I wouldn't recommend to future applicants, which is I only applied for this one particular pot of funding.
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I this was university funding rather than DTP funding.
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So looking back, I was incredibly fortunate that I was successful in this respect.
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I would definitely recommend applying for funding in as many places as possible.
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But in terms of the particular funding stream that I was on.
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Yeah, there was an application and interview process.
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So I'd say that our correspondance kind of split into two phases roughly.
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The first one was when we were kind of hammering out what the project would would be about.
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And again, that was mostly for me. I think it's it's fair to say, Tom, I think that's really the right way of going about it.
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Yeah. And I think that's quite it's kind of surprisingly important stage.
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I think potentially in it as a supervisor, I see that's the time when I can ask questions that that might prompt further reflection,
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might prompt revision of certain parts, improvements.
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So that by the time a candidate arrives at they're actually submitting an actual application.
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They're in the best possible place. I think it's you know, if this relationship is going to work well afterwards,
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it's useful if you can kind of get it in even in that speculative phase when you don't know if you need to get to work together.
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I've had other students where they weren't successful in the applications,
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and you could look at that as a lost time when you invest time in in a student and helping them to refine their ideas.
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But actually, it's it's crucial, I think, once that those projects that do get off the ground once you get going,
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because then it allows you to already know that you are probably for it.
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I mean, I'll ask you here, Edward, but I think for the student, it's an opportunity to kind of see how you might work with that supervisor as well.
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Intellectually. Yeah, I think that's that's absolutely right.
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And I remember being very struck when I started emailing back and forth and we started coming to see the second stage in particular,
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which was why me producing a rough research proposal now kind of refining it together.
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I think we went through several versions of it, didn't we, before before we submitted it.
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And I remember being struck by the level of detail of care and of interest that Tom showed for it.
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It's definitely an opportunity, as you said, time for the student to see how the relationship would work.
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And it was something that really. Made me think that.
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Exeter was a place I'd want to go.
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This isn't an advert for the University of Exeter or necessarily for Tom Hinton, though I certainly would make that in a heartbeat.
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But it's if you get that sense that there's a good dialogue going between you.
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It's it's really, really positive step. Nothing made me feel.
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More keen to go to Exeter. Or to work with this particular supervisor,
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then the degree of interest that there was in the feeling that this was a project that that you take it on were interested in.
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I think.
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I think I think that that's a it's such an important part of the process and it's not depending what discipline you're in, it's not always possible,
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because particularly in the sciences, you're applying to a very specific project which is led by a very specific supervisor or principal investigator.
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But we're kind of in the more humanities and social sciences.
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It's such so important to have that conversation. It's like you say, Tom, it's not just about how you're going to work together intellectually,
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but also about actually what the dynamic of the relationship is going to be.
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And if that that that is right for you, it's kind of like an audition like it for you both to sort of feel like, is this is this going to work for us?
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Is this going to be the kind of relationship that we're both going to find?
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Intellectually and I guess professionally is the word I'd use fruitful.
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Say they want to commit to over a significant period of time? It is.
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Yeah, I'm pleased to say that I managed to I managed to dupe Tom and four a bit.
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Years later, he's still trying to escape, I believe. So.
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Thinking about this over the span of the past four years of your supervisory relationship.
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What will? I guess I'll ask you first.
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Edward, what? How would you describe the dynamic of it?
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You talked about how in those initial interactions you felt that there was an awful lot of attention to detail and a sense of care.
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Is that did that kind of follow through in there in the rest of the relationship?
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How how would you say the dynamics are? Yeah, I think it definitely did carry on through.
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So in our first meeting together in September, we already met in person over the summer.
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But in our first sort of September meeting,
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Tom suggested that we start by effectively just discussing the document that I've been working on over the previous few months,
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which was the research proposal, just seeing if anything had changed in the couple of months since,
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obviously I'd last discussed it with him and seeing if anything new had come up and discussing how we might get started.
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Which in the arts nad humanities is often a difficult conversation to have.
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So, yeah, I definitely did, I think continue on that sense of good care and an interest.
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Yeah. What about. What about for you, Tom?
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How would you describe your dynamically working relationship with Edward as this as a supervisor and supervisor?
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I think the great thing about Edward is that he'll always come to meetings with ideas.
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So there's always something to discuss. There's always a really some really interesting routes in
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And I guess for me it's been I'd say, first of all, I want to talk about it intellectually and then about sort of interpersonally, intellectually.
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It's been an interesting experience supervising PhD that's really quite close to the kinds of questions that I'm interested in,
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because I've been very aware all the way through not wanting to to guide the project in the way that I might have if it was me working on it.
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So it's obvious it's crucial that this is the student's project.
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And your role as supervisor, I think, is to try to prompt, to nudge, to advise, but not to not to guide or to take over in any way.
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Hopefully that's something I've managed to avoid doing. And interpersonally, I think it's always been.
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It was very straightforward and easy from the start.
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I think we were lucky from that point of view because, you know, there's an element of luck about this as well.
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So you get a bit of a sense of of your supervisor's personality and your students personality from early exchanges.
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But in the end, you you can bring two people together.
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Hopefully we'll get on and certainly be professional. You know, it's very important that professional relationship.
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In our case, I think we did get on genuinely with. We are friends now.
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And and that's a that's that was a really good serendipitous thing.
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But I think as a supervisor, even if you didn't have immediate chemistry with the student on an interpersonal level,
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you obviously have responsibilities and a professional attitude that you need to have.
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You can maybe talk about that as well later on, what you're saying about the kind of the interpersonal, but also.
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You know how you work with someone professionally, I think it's really important because, yes,
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in either lots of cases you do have that sort of interpersonal connection and you do kind of end up becoming not just,
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you know, colleagues or supervisors supervisor, but friends.
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But that's not always the case because it's not always the case with anybody we work with in our professional lives.
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And just because you don't have that kind of platonic connection with someone doesn't
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mean that you can't work very productively with them on a professional level.
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Yeah, I think that's really nicely put, actually. I think yeah, I think that's my experience of sort of second hand experience of other colleagues.
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Supervisory relationships is that on the whole I think As you suggested, the staff most often there is there.
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I mean, it's it's quite a natural thing to evolve out of being so closely involved with someone's work and not just work, but their working life,
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I suppose, over such a long period of time that there very often is a strong personal relationship that develops and the supportive relationship.
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But it's not it's not a given. And even in cases where that didn't develop.
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I think the important thing is that there's a strong professional relationship.
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And one thing I'd add to that, actually, you were very kind earlier, Tom, to mention I come to.
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We call them supervisions. I think that's probably a hangover from.
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Where I did my undergraduate and various other bits of terminology, but meetings or kind of contact events or whatever you want to call them.
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I think coming to them with ideas is something I would encourage all students to do when working with supervisors.
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Tom and I both did. Alternate components of the same training.
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I think didn't we Tom in the kind of the first couple of months.
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So I had it as a hDE session on working with the supervisors,
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which is now being developed into an excellent set of online resources put together by one of our PGRs. And there's an ECR or supervisors equivalent to that.
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And I think one thing we both fully took away from the versions of that was that.
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As a PhD student, you have a lot more responsibility for shaping your project than you may be used to from an undergraduate or master's perspective.
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So I would always be.
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Possibly slightly annoying in coming to Supervisions which is certainly the early ones with an actual agenda, which may be overkill.
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But I would always come along with ideas of what I wanted to discuss because
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I was very conscious from the start of the fact that my supervisor's time,
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one of my supervisors in the plural, because of course, it's not just the one person supervision job is precious.
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And I want to effectively milk my supervisors as efficiently as possible.
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You've been working together for four years now on the PhD, but also on a postdoctoral project which we can perhaps come to later.
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But how has the dynamic of the relationship changed in that time?
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I'm interested in hearing from Tom first. Obviously, you know, you helped him.
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Put the proposal together or gave him some advice and guidance, and he said that,
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you know, because the research areas are so close, you didn't want to steer him too heavily.
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But how have things. How have things shifted during that time as he's got more knowledgeable about the project?
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I think. I think one thing I should have said probably earlier is that Edwards was my first student.
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And so it's been a learning process for me. At the same time as I think it has to him.
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So I think we both felt our way into the relationship in the in the first the first phase.
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And nothing, as is probably natural as most PhD projects.
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Initially, the initial stages were about Edward getting a sense of what he wanted to work on.
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And so I probably had more of a. More of a directional
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involvement At that stage, whereas I think as the project's gone on, particularly in the last year of it,
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when a lot of work was coming from Edward in quite a short space of time.
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It's been nice to see how he's developed his expertise.
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And I've been I've had much more of a secondary role, I think, in terms of just responding to the kind of big ideas that he was bringing.
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But I think probably that initial phase was interested to hear what Edward says to this was about helping him to
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see the big ideas that he might pursue and that he might weigh what kind of direction he might take is his PhD.
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Yeah, I think I said absolutely accurate description of what I think your role was that on?
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Only I. Always found big ideas in some aspect of that quite scary.
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So. I think certainly in the early stages, the thesis work quite well was Tom sort of pushing me to think about the big ideas
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in response to me producing what was actually quite specific pieces of text.
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So one of the things that we decided from the start of the thesis is that for pretty much every meeting that we'd have,
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I would bring something to the table. Why?
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I'd bring. I think we set it like fifteen hundred words of writing
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Tom as a minimum something. like that. Yeah.
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When we when we draftedd the supervision agreement,
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which is something that requires of PhD students and their supervisors both to sign off on.
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We said, okay, so if I produce this that will then leave something to lead us to, something to to discuss.
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So looking back, I'm looking now at first piece of work I submitted to Tom, and it's slightly painful to read in some respects.
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But I can see here how how your role, how you how how you saw your role fits into that.
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Now, in terms of encouraging me to think about these bigger ideas, I'm watching something quite specific about certain texts.
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And I remember you sort of encouraging me to think more broadly and to look at where I might go with all of that,
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these ideas I was bringing to the table.
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Whereas I think more recently that the latter stages of PhD, you've been much more assertive about the way you think you want to go next.
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And that's been really great. That's interesting. Actually, I hadn't I hadn't realised that.
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I mean, clearly you've been managing it, managing it very, very effectively.
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I think you always knew you always it's this is something that must vary a lot across from one student to another in that,
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as you say, some students are more comfortable initially diving straight into the kind of the big questions.
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And I think in your case, as you rightly said,
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it was much more about working on focussed on smaller questions and then seeing what the implications of that were.
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And I think those implications, I think you where I think you really developed over the.
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PhD is in getting to grips with those implications and seeing them a lot a lot earlier.
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Well, one of the one of the things that I was being told in, my Masters, is that I work best when I have a very specific question to answer.
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And I think that's still true. But one of the things that I think supervision has allowed me to do is to develop
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those specific questions into bigger ideas more quickly and more efficiently,
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I suppose, if that's fair to say.
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I think the one thing for you that's been a consistent all the way through is probably the corpus that you thought you wanted to work on.
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So that has stayed fairly stable, hasn't it, all the way through fairly.
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I mean, it has hasn't really changed, I think.
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But yeah the corpus itself has remained fairly similar.
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I think the way I approach it, as you say, Tom, has changed, particularly after the the upgrade, which was a a challenging point in the PhD for me.
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And I think one where I came to really appreciate your role in the supervisor's supervisor relationship.
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And I think that's a really good Segue actually into thinking about that, because you've talked and you both talked a lot about the the you know,
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the many, many positives and strengths in your intellectual, interpersonal, professional relationship as supervisor and supervisor.
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But, of course, you know, no research degree is without its challenges.
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So, Edward, first, can you talk a little bit about the upgrade and why that was a why that was such a challenge?
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And maybe, Tom, you can reflect on how you worked with Edward through that process.
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So to answer that, I'm going to have to be a little bit specific about certain parts of my PhD.
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And I'll I'll try and keep this as sort of brief as possible.
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The first year of my PhD, I was basically thinking about a distinctive Anglo Norman.
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Didactic, that is to say how what was special about French texts in medieval England and how they thought about and engaged with education.
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And I'd spent the year producing effectively a lot of contextual material about the Latin background to a lot of these medieval texts and the.
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Upgrade itself, which for me under the old system happened at the in the fourth term.
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So sort of around the start of my second year rather than the end of the first, which is the norm nowadays was something of a shock, I think.
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I think it's fair. Is it fair to say Tom was a bit of a shock for both of us? Oh, yeah, definitely a learning experience for me as well.
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So effectively, what was pointed out to me, quite rightly, I think and this is something that we had both missed.
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Was that if I'm going to ask the what's special about this block of texts that would require a significant amount of engagement with.
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The texts that they'd need to be compared to so continental French texts and Latin texts, which was really several PhDs
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And so it wasn't really something I could do in one PhD. Concomitant to that, I was also asked.
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OK. So you're doing a lot of close reading. This is this mysterious thing in the humanities we call close reading.
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So what where are you going with this? And two phrases jumped out at me from the upgrade report.
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The first one was the best backhanded compliment I've ever heard, which was Edward has done a significant amount of contextual work,
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which will stand him in good stead for primary source material later in the thesis,
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which is a very nice way of saying why is there no primary source work in this chapter that you've submitted?
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And the second was Edward needs to develop a methodology that goes beyond close reading to encompass broader questions of X, Y and Z.
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So those would be difficult things to hear. Tom, you were you were in the upgrades, I think, with me, weren't you?
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You you'd. You were keen to come along and I did.
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Can I. Can I ask what your experience was of the upgrade? I think so, yeah.
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I wanted to be there. I was invited and asked if I wanted to be there. I wanted to sit in and
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Edward was happy with that as well to learn because this was my first experience of having a student go through the upgrade.
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And I think, yes, slightly chastening experience for me as well, because, I mean,
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there was a there was good and bad mixed in in terms of the the feedback that you were getting there.
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Right. I think it made me realise that both of us had been unclear on this.
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I think is the supervisors responsibility in this case.
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I should have known the process better, but I think there are some things you learn just through going going through them and experiencing them.
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I should have been clearer about what the upgrade wanted.
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So the one thing I learnt from listening to the examiners in the conversation they were having with you, Edward,
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was that what they really wanted to see was a sign of how you argued and what kind of what
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kind of thesis in the literal sense of that word you were building and what kind of argument,
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overarching argument you you're building? And I realised that that was something that we hadn't because we'd focus so much on
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getting you the contextual knowledge and getting you a mastery of the of the whole area.
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We hadn't really done enough on that. I think what I learnt was some I talked a bit about how great it's been,
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see Edward becoming more confident as he's developed his expertise through the thesis.
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I think it made me a little bit more confident subsequently about my roles.
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So I mentioned earlier that you kind of as a supervisor,
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I think you need to step stand back and make sure that you don't take ownership in any sense of the of the project,
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that there is a balance to strike where sometimes you do need to be a little bit more interventionist.
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And I think possibly in that first year of our relationship, I was probably standing back too much, maybe I think or not one.
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I was very conscious of not wanting to interfere with your voice.
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Edward and your your way of approaching your intellectual.
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And I think that's still crucial. But I think also, having gone through the viva sorry, the upgrade,
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Viva made me more confident probably about pointing out where think if you remember,
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one of the things that they mentioned was that quite a lot of things were in the passive or you were you were kind
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of presenting other scholars views rather than taking ownership yourself off of the topic you were talking about.
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And so pushing you a little bit more to to do that in response to those to those comments.
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I think that that probably became a little bit more part of what I was doing subsequent to that.
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And this is something which you then quite rightly began to point out more, I think, in my writing.
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My tendency in when I write to hide behind authorities and to be a little bit too deferential on occasion,
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I think using quotation where you could actually say things in your own words.
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So we'd have situations when we were I'd be saying, oh, there's a possible way of why the quotation marks here, you know?
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Couldn't you just say that in your own words? Yes. Yep. Which might sound like a really, really specific point to make.
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But he actually fitted into a broader development, I think, in terms of how I argued it was a really important steppingstone.
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I disagree about that being a specific thing.
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I think that that is part of the process of learning to be an independent scholar and learning to value your contribution and your voice,
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because that process is about having.
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The confidence to articulate that in your own words, rather than always being deferential and referring to others.
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I think that's part of the a part of the process and a part of the journey.
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you're trying to work out where you are. I can relate to the fields.
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And so some PGRs are going to be very confident, being very comfortable, being assertive from the off and others are not.
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And you know, those who are very assertive, they may need to tone it down slightly.
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And those who are not assertive enough, they may need to learn to turn it up. It's a very it's really fine balance.
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Really fine balance. And in the in the sort of weeks or months following the the upgrade,
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I think there were probably two points in the PhD the where I was really struggling.
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I think this is probably one of them.
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Sad to say, my way out of that eventually was to effectively do the same thing that I'd done in my first year,
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which was just to pick a text and write something on it.
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Except this time we were thinking a lot more about the the broader implications of it, in particular the focus that the thesis started to take.
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And this was a suggestion from you,
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which I bought into very enthusiastically because I realised it fitted very well with what I like to talk about anyway,
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was that we focus less on what's special about Ango Norman didactic texts and more about the environment in which they were conceived and used.
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Again, getting slightly technical here.
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One of the really cool things about the work that Tom and I both do now actually on the same project is that medieval England is multilingual.
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And this is something that does distinguish it from what we now call the hexagons as a continental fault in that sense.
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So English is working with French and with Latin and with other minority languages.
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And this is something that we came to realise should be a much more important part of the thesis.
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And that's, I think, how we got out of that first sort of caught my eye.
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And I think Tom played a very important role there in reminding me of these big, big questions that I had to consider.
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So I think it's some that this is really common thing for these students to experience at some point during the whole process,
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a period of writer's block or of loss of confidence. There are potential knock backs.
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So in Edward's case, it was the upgrade viva. For other people, it'll be different moments.
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And it's really, I think is quite a challenge as a supervisor at that point, because your heart goes out to them.
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But then once again, we've talked about that balance of giving, giving space for the student to find their feet again,
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but equally not allowing them to feel like they're abandoned or that they're on their own with it.
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And and so I think in Edward's case,
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coming back to writing just a little bit on something focussed was a was a very good way of getting back into getting back into the saddle.
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I. But I've had yeah. I'm aware of this as a general point, that if you as a supervisor, you have a student who's.
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Struggling to write something, then you sort of don't want to.
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You kind of, yeah, you want to try and get the right amount of of contact because you don't want to do it.
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Translate into pressure from another source. But at the same time, I think you do need to maintain an active role in that stage as well.
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And I think the takeaway for me from that period, this is kind of middle end of my second year, actually, to take away from me the.
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Was very much one of Tom being there when I needed him to be.
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I think this was the thing. At no point I think did the Tom have to step in and say, you've gone quiet.
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You know how you know. Do you want to meet at some point?
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But Tom did know when I was writingsomething he'd need to give me sometimes a little bit of space.
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And we balanced that, I think, quite well. I remember one one email I received which legitimately made me.
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weep a little bit in the office. I think Tom described me is writing beautifully.
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Was the word that you use, the phrase you use Tom. And by that, which was genuinely slightly emotional.
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But it was that sort of that was that just that moment of your life.
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You've got this. While I was struggling, that was very much appreciated.
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As we're talking about writing, I think it would be useful to have a have a quick chat about.
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Feedback on written work, because it's such a fundamental part of the research degree process,
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because, of course, in the end what you're examined on is the thesis and the viva on the thesis.
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So I wonder if you could say a little bit about how you managed that, how you managed that process of.
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I guess from Tom's perspective how you gave feedback on the writing and how you approached it and then from Edward's perspective,
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how you kind of dealt with that and responded to that. So I think with feedback.
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Something the supervisors need to bear in mind and maybe that students need to bear in mind when reading feedback
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is the effect of written the written format in relation to feedback that you can give through to the voice,
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because there's a there are all sorts of things we do when we face to face it. Someone that attenuate criticism,
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that make it easier is to make suggestions for improvement without coming across painfully and sometimes with written feedback.
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I'm aware of this when I mark undergraduate work.
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When I comment on these students work and when I write do review reports or what, when I write book reviews or when I do reports, submissions,
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article submissions to journals across all of that, you can come across very aggressively, sometimes very dismissively, if you're not careful.
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And I think if you do, probably if you do get a comment that is uncomfortable,
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it's worth bearing in mind as a student that there may be just a slight infelicities of tone there.
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Hopefully the key thing is that the feedback is constructive and that means for me, it means engaging both on point of detail.
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As I read through as a kind of interested reader, really, I sort of I'm having a conversation with the with the text on the page,
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I guess, but then also engaging with those bigger questions that we talked about.
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So trying to put one's finger on where there's an implication that's not being teased out.
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Was that something that can go further productively? So I think that's those two levels on which you work.
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One is that the level of detail on the other is the level of implications and
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consequences way you want to try and help the student to see where they could go further.
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I would add, actually, that it is possible to inject some warmth into feedback for PDG arse,
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and I think that the work that Thomas is a very good example of that in that it was feedback rather than correction.
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So I would occasionally get a little note along the lines of, oh, I haven't seen this exclamation mark.
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If there was an article I'd come across the previous week that just been published, for example, I hasten to add.
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That was fantastically rare.
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But I'd also get things like nice or good analysis here, you know, which is a way of conveying that warmth and that interest in your project.
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I think. The question about the mitigation and not not coming across too harshly is one that the supervision meeting itself can really help with.
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Yes. So I think we varied it, didn't we, Tom?
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Sometimes you'd send me feedback ahead of a session. Sometimes you do it in the session.
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It depended on how punctual I was in getting the work to you.
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Probably how busy I was. No, no, no. I vaguely remember sending you, like, 10000 words on a Wednesday and that Friday was the meeting.
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So I don't know. I'd always if I did that.
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I'd say, you know, here's a bit to focus on if, you know, including the highly likely event that I'm being unrealistic or or,
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you know, do you want to delay by a week or something like that. But there was there was real warm for thinking in your comments.
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We also varied, I think, between print and PDF in terms of how we did it.
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Obviously, in terms of the last few months, the thesis when when we weren't seeing each other in person because of covic, we went to PDF.
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But I think you tended to quite like printing out and writing, didn't you, Tom?
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Yes. That's I think that's just a personal personal preference.
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Yeah, I think it's one of these things that might be worth for PhD students sort of seeing what they what they like as well,
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since it works quite well for me as well to the benefit I have of that sort of thing was I then had to take away from I then go away.
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You usually go a cup of tea, sit down and just read it all again.
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And then when I was revising that piece of work a bit later, I'd go through with a massive marker
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And you put a big tick through the comments. I did. Then if I ever told you that you say the other thing I want to say is that it might be
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easy to forget that you think of your supervisor as someone who's an expert in that field.
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You hope that they are. But that doesn't mean that they know everything, and particularly they don't necessarily know everything about your project.
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And one of the benefits of supervision for the supervisor is that it's genuinely interesting and exciting to follow someone else's project,
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to follow these ideas that are coming at you and that you're getting a lot from intellectually as well.
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Yes, so. It does sound like it's been an incredibly fruitful relationship intellectually and obviously, you know, it's continued.
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You submitted your thesis and Viva'd got minor corrections and submitted those and are just waiting to hear.
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Is that right? Still waiting to hear. That's right.
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And, you know, you've been working together already for, you know, the last part of the PhD on a of projects.
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So, you know, you don't continue those relationships if they're not intellectually fruitful.
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No. I want to say I've been I'm. But they did mention at the start of this podcast my worries about giving one supervisor envy.
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I do want to apologise because I did get incredibly fortunate,
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not just to be able to work with Tom, but also in the fact that he wanted to keep working with me.
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And in fact, that a particular project came along and got funding at the moment when I was finishing
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up my PhD and that because we were so closely aligned in terms of what we worked on.
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I was an eligible candidate for that position. I wonder what you had to say about that, Tom.
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So I think it was yeah, it was serendipitous that this project got funded at the point when it did.
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Ed is too modest to say this, but he wasn't just eligible.
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He was an ideal candidate for that role because of the skill set that he had, because I knew that we had this good working relationship.
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So I remember my PhD supervisor, former PhD supervisor, who was talking to me about this project saying, well, it would.
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It's really important if you're looking for a research associate to think about
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the working relationship and the fact that Edward and I already knew each other,
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already had this this connection and an established positive way working meant that
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it was really perfect to be able to interview and appoint him for that post.
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One thing that that has been interesting, actually, in this this phase now is thinking about making sure that it's not just the phd
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supervisors supervisor relationship anymore is we've moved beyond that now.
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We're colleagues. So that's been an interesting evolution as well. Yeah, it really has.
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I think Tom is the P.I. on the project and I'm the RD on the project.
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Tom, did I say some acronyms there that I'll just explain for our listeners just in case P I is principal investigator, RS is Research associate.
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Yes. Tom did make a point about the difference between research assistant and research associate at the start of this position.
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I think it's a valid one. I think this is an extension of the that the PhD the relationship in that Tom,
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while not technically my boss, is the person that I'm accountable to on a day to day basis.
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But the way that the project is set up, there's definitely a difference in terms of some of the technical skills.
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I was very fortunate to have some experience in that respect.
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So the discussions that Tom and I have had in certain areas are very collegiate, more so certainly than at the start of the PhD
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our discussions were around e Anglo Norman didacticism, hard to say that, you'd have thought I;d have practise after four years.
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So I guess to wrap up what I'm thinking would be useful is is just, you know,
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through the process of this supervisory relationship to Tom, you said it was, you know, and it was your first p h d student.
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So you kind of both new to either side of this.
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I wondered if you had any reflections or advice for other supervisors or supervises about what makes it kind of productive,
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intellectually exciting, good kind of professional supervisory relationship.
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Can I go first here for for supervises? I've heard a lot of discussion about what makes.
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A good environment for these student over the last few years.
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And I think that from the discussions that I've heard, the most important thing is not effective marketing.
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It's not. Advertising certain resources.
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It's not X, Y or Z, which you can you can list off very neatly and easily.
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I think it's something more ephemeral than that.
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It's the idea of finding a supervisor who genuinely cares about you as a person, about what you're doing and about your project as well.
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Any amount of. Advertising about Library resources.
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Any amount of boasting about research rankings will fall by the wayside.
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If the relationship with your supervisor doesn't work and I've been very fortunate in finding a relationship that does.
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It was actually one that was put onto me by my undergraduate supervisor, who,
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when I mentioned your the opportunity of working with Tom, specifically went.
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Yes, that one. That one. Do that one. Do it now. But.
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I think if you get a sense that a potential supervisor is someone that you will work with and get on with.
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Go with your gut there for current PGRs . I'd extend that and say I appreciate your supervisors and what they do.
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There's a lot of training available through the doctoral college in managing relationships with supervisors, and I would encourage you to do that.
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It's certainly helped me way back at the start of the thesis and also through the thesis as well to appreciate what exactly.
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The role of supervisor is and what you can reasonably and should not expect.
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That was supervisor. What about you Tom? I think I'm probably going to repeat a fair bit of someone's fair bit of what I've been saying.
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I think from supervisor's point of view, remember that each project and each student is different.
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And that's part of the joy of supervision, because you get to be involved in all these different ways of working to get
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that balance of being available without being overbearing and then enjoy it.
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Thank you so much to Edward and Tom for taking the time to have a really rich and in-depth discussion with me about their supervisory relationship.
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And I think it's been really fascinating to hear them talk about those kind of initial emails that they exchanged
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before Edward even applied right through to now working together as colleagues on the postdoctoral project.
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And that's it for this episode. Don't forget to, like, rate and subscribe and join me next time where I'll be talking to someone else about researchers, development, and everything in between!
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