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In this paper, we take up an autoethnographic review of literature on doctoral programs in order to engage notions of doctoral subjects. While the paper basically proceeds by taking up and entwining these methods, it is neither/both an autoethnography nor/and a literature review. Rather, this work – like many spaces of a doctoral seminar – emerges as an uncontainable, unpredictable monster. We have also placed a kind of “I” at the center of this project, and yet use a posthuman reading of what this “I” might be. We search for a preconfigured “I” in the literature and create an “I/we” of doctoral experiences that never quite exists and yet moves and haunts us. We take up a tentative (post-)monstrous position that recognizes our cruel attachment to the “good” doctoral student, a subject that remains the inevitable (im)possibility of graduate school. Reviewing literature as an ethnographic practice and looking at ethnography as textual helps us smash these methods together. Yet, at any moment, we defy our methods – ignoring findings in the literature and possibly making up autoethnographic stories that never happened to us. Rather than sloppy academic work, this move intends to focus on thinkable and intelligible experiences as those belonging to doctoral students/studies/school instead of focusing on “authentic” experiences of well defined “researchers.” We hope our project provides space to question the very categories and credentials built into doctoral studies by decentering the “doctoral student” subject.

The purpose of this article is to present findings from the authors' research into how supervisors of doctoral students cope with change in supervisory relationships where a supervisor takes on a student previously supervised by another, or has to hand over a student to another supervisor's care, and to identify recommendations for applying these findings to supervisory practice.

The research used interviews to gather and analyse perceptions and practices from experienced supervisors, and aimed to identify good practice to support supervisors in enabling transitions to enhance student success. This work is underpinned by work on conceptual threshold‐crossing, students working at sufficiently critical, creative and conceptual levels to achieve doctorates; well‐being and emotional resilience, particularly in doctoral studies. It makes links between knowledge construction, resilience and well‐being, from the perspective of the supervisors, since it focuses on the experience of supervisors engaging with and supporting students.

The research identifies supervisors' anxiety at, and ways of managing the difficulties of, either losing or acquiring students. It highlights effective strategies for taking on students midway into their research to enable successful supervision.

This research offers new knowledge about supervisor perceptions of, experiences with and good practice suggestions for, supporting transitions for doctoral students who change supervisor.

The purpose of this study is to better understand the declines in doctoral students’ mental and physical health while pursuing their doctoral degrees, by revealing the major themes of students’ voluntary comments following a survey that primed students to reflect on these topics.

The present study used qualitative thematic analysis to uncover themes in doctoral students’ voluntary comments on a large-scale, web-based survey of graduate students’ motivation and well-being.

A thematic analysis revealed six major emerging themes: timing in the degree process, work-life balance, health/well-being changes, impostor syndrome, the supervisor and hopelessness.

The themes uncovered in the present study contribute to the literature by highlighting important underexplored topics (e.g. timing in the degree process, hopelessness) in doctoral education research and they are discussed and situated in the context of existing literature.

Implications for doctoral supervisors and departments are discussed.

The present study highlights some pressing concerns among doctoral students, as articulated by the students themselves and can contribute to the betterment of doctoral education, thereby reducing attrition, improving the experiences of doctoral students and possibly affording more candidates to achieve a doctoral degree.

The present study makes the above-mentioned contributions by taking a novel approach and analyzing doctoral students’ voluntary comments (n = 607) on a large-scale, web-based survey. Thus, while some of the themes were primed by the survey itself, the data represent issues/concerns that students perceived as important enough to comment about after already having completed a lengthy questionnaire.

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 advance the understanding on individual variations in PhD candidates’ personal interest in their doctorate and supervisory and research community support, and several individual and structural attributes potentially having an impact on the profiles.

The authors explored the interrelationship between personal interest – social support profiles, and nationality, gender, research group and study status and the risk of dropping out. A total of 768 PhD candidates from a research-intensive university in Finland responded to a modified version of the cross-cultural doctoral experience survey. Latent profile analysis was used to explore the individual variations in PhD candidates’ interest and support from the supervisor and research community.

Three distinctive PhD interest-social support profiles were detected; the high interest–high support profile (74.4%, n = 570), the high interest–moderate support profile (18.2%, n = 140) and the moderate interest–moderate support profile (7.4%, n = 56). The profiles exhibited high to moderate levels of research, development and instrumental interest. Individuals in the high interest–moderate support and in the moderate interest–moderate support profiles were more prone to consider dropping out from their PhD than in the high interest–high support profile.

The results indicate that by cultivating PhD candidates’ interest and providing sufficient supervisory and the research community offers a means for preventing candidates from discontinuing their doctorate. Hence, building a supportive learning environment that cultivates a PhD candidate’s personal interest is likely to reduce high dropout rates among the candidates.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case for appraisal of the current curriculum provisions for international students. In this paper, the authors summarise the key challenges of Asian international research graduate students pursuing doctorate studies in Australian universities to become researchers for the global communities. The intention is to advocate further research on current higher degree research curriculum with a view to enriching the developmental experiences of international research graduate students in preparation for global practice.

This is an analytical paper that adopts a conceptual and rhetorical approach.

The authors review a growing body of research on higher degree research studies and establish a need for appraisal of current curriculum provisions.

This is the first paper to concentrate on an emerging need to appraise current higher degree research curriculum provisions to enhance the development international research graduate students for global practices.

Although the production of a dissertation and the transition to an independent researcher undergird the outcomes of doctoral education, this study aims to emphasize issues of inequality in doctoral study through the use of Bourdieu’s (1977, 1986) concepts of cultural capital and field.

This qualitative study with 15 doctoral students in Engineering and in Philosophy revealed that activities in doctoral study that tend to socialize students possess value, given the conventions of various contexts or social spaces related to academe.

Doctoral students who attain particular accomplishments experience doctoral study in ways that suggest that doctoral study is a system of conventions and norms that imbue particular activities with value, which then impact students’ doctoral education experiences.

Inequality is tied to students’ portfolio of achievements, as the value of these achievements suggests differential socialization experiences, such that different students learn about the norms and practices within doctoral study in different ways.

Much of the extant research, practice and policy in engineering education has focused on the limited persistence, waning interest and lack of preparation among Black students to continue beyond the post-secondary engineering pipeline. However, this research suggests that many Black PhD students persist and succeed in engineering, fueled by various motivational strengths. To better understand the motivations of Black students in engineering doctoral programs, this study aims to explore the factors that influence their decision to enroll in either an engineering or a computing doctoral program.

This paper uses an intrinsic and extrinsic motivational framework to investigate the inspiration of 44 Black engineering doctoral students in PhD engineering programs in 11 engineering schools across the country.

Results show that the participants’ motivation to pursue a PhD in engineering comes from several distinct factors, including the following: an unyielding passion for their particular discipline, a sense of responsibility to serve marginalized peoples and society, a path toward autonomy, pre-PhD mentorship and research opportunities and family and prior work experience.

Based on this study’s findings, a reconceptualization of graduate engineering education that incorporates the importance of “being Black” and its relationships with motivating and, potentially, retaining Black science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students is also offered.

This paper seeks to expose particular constructs and behaviors surrounding Black students’ motivation to learn and achieve in engineering at the highest academic levels, offering a more nuanced perspective than currently is found in traditional engineering education literature.

This paper aims to respond to the need for a model of doctoral supervision that can capture and represent the focus, range and complexity of instructional intentions, practices and possibilities.

The study draws on the substantive literature on supervision and changing doctoral programs in the Fine Arts and relatively new empirical findings about supervision and learning. The authors posit a holistic model of supervision ranging across micro–macro and product–person dimensions. The model is further explained and illustrated using four supervisor cases in Fine Arts.

The model offers a heuristic for supervisors to reflect on and identify existing emphases, alignments and integrative possibilities to better understand the complexities of Fine Arts supervisory practices.

There is a dearth of research that addresses how doctoral supervisors perceive and articulate their roles and breadth of responsibilities in light of new programs and changing sectoral expectations.

The purpose of this study is to identify what skills gained during PhD study are linked with preparation and differences between industry and academic positions.

Using student-level data from nearly 2,400 early career PhD alumni from 50 US PhD granting institutions, this study uses a generalized ordered logit model with partial proportional odds to test the main and conditional effects of 14 areas of skill development on perceptions of career preparation.

This study contributes empirical evidence to show that research skills and communicating with non-technical audiences are positively linked with job preparation.

The combination of sophisticated research and noncognitive skills promotes the idea of a well-rounded PhD – a highly skilled and versatile researcher that can interact in both academic and industry settings – as a goal of doctoral education. The knowledge gained from this study will assist scholars and graduate educators, including faculty advisors, program directors, graduate deans, graduate education professionals and career development professionals to reconceptualize professional preparation for work in industry.

For-profit businesses, particularly start-up companies, are vital for economic development and many require PhD-level employees across research and management roles. Developing PhDs with the appropriate skills for industry will better align higher education and economic interests.

The wide scope of doctoral institutions allows for a quantitative approach not appropriate for single-institution case studies of doctoral career pathways research.