News

DEAR Centre Deputy Director James Burford recently attended the Ninth Biennial Postgraduate Supervision Conference in Stellenbosch, South Africa. The conference theme focussed on postgraduate supervision as a relational practice.

Dr Burford facilitated a pre-conference workshop titled “Supervising Postgraduate Students at a Distance”, which brought together over 20 researchers interested in learning more about working with postgraduate students at a distance (including in formal ‘distance’ programmes, and informal off-campus or hybrid formats). This workshop builds from Dr Burford’s previous collaborative project on Doctoral Education at a Distance, including the co-authored book Doing Doctoral Research at a Distance: Flourishing In Off-Campus, Hybrid, and Remote Pathways.

Dr Burford also gave a conference keynote. His keynote builds out of his collaborative work with DEAR Centre colleagues on the Pre-Application Doctoral Communication projects (www.warwick.ac.uk/padc ). Dr Burford’s keynote was titled “First impressions: Understanding the beginnings of the supervisor-student relationship in doctoral education” and made the argument that supervision-ish relationships can emerge between pre-applicants and potential supervisors before formal supervision is recognised. These early foundations of supervision can go on to be important in shaping access to formal admissions, and ultimately the formal supervision relationship itself.

While in South Africa, Dr Burford had the opportunity to connect with Stellenbosch research collaborators on a Warwick-Stellenbosch partnership funded project examining distance doctoral supervisionLink opens in a new window in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr Burford is conducting this study with Stellenbosch colleagues Prof Liezel Frick and Dr Nompilo Tshuma, Dr Harriet Richmond from Warwick and Dr Katrina McChesney from Waikato University in NZ.