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Institutional framings of doctoral education mostly do not recognize the existential dimension of doctoral experience. This paper aims to offer an expanded understanding of experiences of doctoral researchers in the humanities with the concept of entangled becoming. This concept is developed through an existential lens by using Søren Kierkegaard’s philosophy – particularly his emphasis on emotions such as passion, anxiety and despair – and Denise Batchelor’s derived concept of vulnerable voices.

The conceptual framing is used for an empirical study based on ethnographic interviews with 10 doctoral researchers and supplementary observational notes from fieldwork at a university in Denmark. Two of the interview cases were selected to showcase variation across lived experiences and how doctoral researchers voice their entangled becoming.

Common experiences such as loneliness, insecurity(ies), vulnerability(ies) or passion for one’s research were identified across the interviews. On the other hand, this study shows that each doctoral journey in the humanities envelops a distinct web of entanglements, entailing distinct navigation, that makes each case a unique story and each doctoral voice a specific one.

Combining an existential philosophical perspective with a qualitative study, the paper offers an alternative perspective for doctoral education. It connects the humanities doctoral experience to the broader condition of human existence and the sophisticated uniqueness of each researcher’s becoming.

The present study develops, conceptualizes and validates a scale based on the transactional stress theory to assess the perceived challenge and hindrance demands of doctoral programs that impact doctoral students’ psychological well-being.

This research employs an exploratory-mixed methodology comprising five phases with a sequential qualitative-quantitative approach. A rigorous scale development process is adopted to validate the instrument’s psychometric properties. The study respondents are Indian full-time doctoral students in the management discipline.

The findings show that the construct of perceived challenge and hindrance demands is a first-order four-factor and a second-order two-factor model. The study has validated the scale to capture the challenge and hindrance demands of doctoral research programs with the following sub-constructs: doctoral program resource inadequacies, doctoral program ambiguity, doctoral program workload and complexity.

The recommended challenge demands and hindrance demands (CHD) scale provides a benchmark for doctoral institutes and program supervisors in focussing on research students’ perception of their doctoral education demands to reduce the strain and increase their well-being during their doctoral program journey.

Hindrance demands adversely influence the motivation resources needed for doctoral education; challenge demands positively impact the research students’ internal resources.

This article explores challenges faced by doctoral candidates using grounded theory (GT) in their theses, focusing on coding, theory development and time constraints. It also examines the impact of doctoral committees on GT dissertations, addressing epistemological clashes and the desire for familiarity over novelty.

Drawing from a multilevel autoethnography and related literature, this study offers pragmatic solutions and strategies for a seamless research journey.

Coding, theory development and time constraints pose universal challenges, requiring mentorship for effective navigation. Addressing committee dynamics is crucial for developing novel theoretical frameworks.

The article empowers researchers to overcome GT challenges, delving into various positions within the GT paradigm, fostering transparency and facilitating original contributions to their fields.

The paper investigates the pivotal role of storytelling as a pedagogical tool in tertiary education, specifically in the context of the practice-based doctoral framework in design disciplines. In such a doctoral model, storytelling assumes different meanings and nuances that open to a study in relation to the self-reflective process at the core of the learning paradigm.

The research methodology integrates a qualitative and participatory approach with visual and design-based methods through which the authors interact with primary sources (the body of work of PhD candidates) and relevant research literature.

Drawing on the expanding field of creative practice research, the research work evidences the emergence of storytelling as a research method and learning tool applied at different levels of the candidates' Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) journey and provides methodological insights into the practice-based doctoral training paradigm.

The paper demonstrates the role of storytelling as a learning tool and evidences the multiple levels that storytelling assumes over the course of a practice-based doctoral journey, integrating processual, operational and contextual dimensions.

This study aims to perform a scoping review of the recent studies on critical resources required for the doctoral program by mapping the resources at various levels of Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems and their underlying theories. The study proposes a holistic model of supportive resources in the doctoral education.

The current scoping review is supported by Arksey and O'Malley's five-stage methodological guidance The authors reported sixty-eight articles that were published between 2010 and 2023 and complied with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist.

The study identified two categories of resources that promote doctoral student well-being: personal resources such as research self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation of the doctoral student. Second, the contextual resources provided by supervisors, department, family, peers, institution and Government policy impact the well-being of doctoral students. The study relied on the self-determination and conservation of resources theory to determine doctoral students' stress-free, high-quality research journey.

The study findings can help higher education institutions, supervisors, peers and academicians plan and implement the finest resources to improve the well-being of doctoral students. The institutions can develop a wide range of strategies, tailored supportive programs, and interventions that can help in improving students' mental and emotional health, based on the developed multifaceted resource framework. Doctoral students can also use the review's findings to help them deal with program obstacles by encouraging themselves internally and participating in mentoring programs.

This review article proposes a comprehensive conceptual framework by considering Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems on multilevel resources that help to understand the inter-relationship between resources required in the doctoral student's program.

This chapter addresses issues of power distribution in the context of doctoral research supervision. In this respect, manifestations of abusive practices constitute real problems for doctoral students in terms of the success and continuation of their research. A first reflection is made on the way this phenomenon is addressed in the literature and the explanations given. Then, it is brought into perspective with the notion of “excessive faculty entitlement” (Ratnam & Craig, 2021), to better understand how this asymmetrical power relationship between the supervisor and the supervisee is constructed and experienced. To provide exploratory answers on how to promote more equitable spaces for doctoral students, this study focuses on monitoring committees which represent an a priori more equitable way of addressing the issue of power distribution in supervision and which are therefore likely to help students in their doctoral journey. Our study of a recorded session of a monitoring committee is based on an analysis of the different discourses at work, discourse analysis being considered as a form of social action that has an impact on the lived experience and its foreseeable consequences (Fairclough, 2001). Characteristic features related to the specific detrimental asymmetries in this situation were identified. Several categories of power asymmetries detected in supervision were found to hinder the identification process at stake and thus the conditions for the doctoral student's success. It is suggested that awareness of these asymmetries could help supervisors to develop a more supportive and equitable relationship, leading to positive change.

The purpose of this study, nested within a broader study about higher education leadership, was to generate knowledge about the ways in which doctoral education prepared people for leadership roles in postsecondary institutions within the USA. At colleges and universities, there is an interest in ensuring diverse leadership teams and welcoming campus environments. Yet, the research demonstrates challenges for and underrepresentation among higher education leaders. One point of intervention is doctoral programs in higher education and related fields, given the professional socialization, identity formation and knowledge acquisition that occurs through the doctoral journey.

By conducting interviews with women who hold doctorates in the field of higher education and who took on new leadership roles at postsecondary institutions in the USA during the global health pandemic, the authors identified specific areas for which doctoral-level training and experiences may be helpful in supporting leader development.

The authors identified specific areas for which doctoral-level training and experiences may be helpful in supporting leader development. Based on those findings, the authors offer initial propositions about how doctoral programs might support the development of equity-minded leaders in higher education, which should be tested and refined through further research, theory development and application to practice.

This paper contributes by providing a focus on the ways in which doctoral programs can equitably train and develop equity-minded leaders for a range of career goals including but not limited to academic appointments in higher education.

This chapter shares the experiences of two graduate students as they navigated higher education during the pandemic. Engaging in graduate study during the pandemic shaped their socialisation experiences, challenged their understanding of themselves as scholars and impacted their relationships with mentors. This chapter shares personal reflections of their experiences and explores their sense of professional identity and aspirations for the future.