York Research Supervisor Workshops

The York Research Supervisor Workshop Series provides an opportunity for supervisors from a variety of disciplines to come together to share and reflect on their practice as a community of supervisor practitioners. They are designed to support individual supervisors and those working in supervisory teams.

The workshops for 2024 are designed to support PGR supervisors at all career stages and with different levels of experience. They are offered as both online and face to face to suit preference and are divided into three categories:

Supporting the PGR lifecycle - compliance and process. These are typically two hours in duration facilitated by colleagues at York to enable consistency, quality assurance and compliance with University, legal and funder requirements.
Enhancing your supervisory practice. These are one-day interactive intensive courses facilitated by external consultants and are limited in number to enable active participation. Lunch is provided for on campus one-day workshops.
Supporting Health and Wellbeing, Diversity and Equity. These are specialised workshops focusing on a particular aspect of supervisory practice and designed to enable greater confidence in attracting and supporting researchers from diverse backgrounds.

Flexibility: All the workshops have been scheduled on different days and times to enable as many people as possible to fit them into their schedules. The emphasis is on sharing of ideas and practice and they are informal in nature so please be ready to engage verbally or through the chat function.

York is leading the Next Generation Research SuperVision Project. Some of the sessions offered in 2024 will form the basis of provision for supervisors at partner organisations. This is your opportunity to be involved and co-create meaningful provision.

Workshops for 2024

Supporting the PGR lifecycle - compliance and process:

17 April 2024, 10am to 11.30am (on campus - ARC/010)
1 October 2024, 10am to 11.30am (online)

This session, facilitated by colleagues in professional services, will provide supervisors with a walk through of the important areas that need to be discussed with PGRs in the initial stages of their research. Working through authentic (anonymised) case studies colleagues are invited to learn about, or refresh their understanding of, research integrity and ethics alongside compliance issues such as Trusted Research and Nagoya Protocol.

Audience: All supervisors
Facilitators: Facilitated by colleagues in Open Research, Academic Liaison, Teaching and Learning teams and Policy, Integrity and Performance teams.

Book session for Integrating Integrity into Doctoral research: building best practice

Enhancing your supervisory practice:

17 May 2024, 10am to 4pm (on campus - CL/A/028 - lunch provided)
23 May 2024, 9am to 11.30am (online)

This intensive workshop is designed to support supervisors from all disciplines with some experience of supervision. It will examine the doctoral journey – from recruitment to the viva and beyond – and examine elements within the process such as expectations and relationships within the supervisory team, defining professional boundaries, guiding the research project and developing an independent scholar, providing appropriate feedback and encouraging writing and dissemination. We’ll also explore supervision in distant or hybrid ways of working – and examine how the support a supervisor can offer is different online. Supervisors will be invited to reflect and discuss the craft of research supervision with colleagues so as to create a community of peers who can help and support each other.

Audience: Supervisors with fewer than 2 supervisees within a UK context
Facilitators: Steve Hutchinson Training - Steve has been delivering professional development training and coaching for staff in the UK and internationally for 20+ years. Before that he worked at the Universities of York and Leeds and studied for his Doctorate at the University of Liverpool. Steve has published extensively (including books on PhD supervision, and academic mentoring) and is a coach for the UKRI FLF scheme.

Book session for Developing Effective PhD Supervision Practices for new supervisors

1 May and 2 May 2024 (on campus - National STEM Learning Centre - lunch and refreshments provided)

This intensive interactive 1.5 day in-person session is designed for experienced supervisors in the Faculty of Science. It will explore the supervisor role and leadership, active listening, writing process and how to support it, challenges in supervisory relationships, supporting writing and giving feedback. Limited to 25 places - all supervisors will be invited to submit case studies to be used to shape the content of the session.

Audience: Experienced supervisors in science (3+ supervisees through to completion)
Facilitators: Gitte Wichmann-Hansen (University of Aarhus and Academic Supervision consultancy) and Mirjam Godskesen (Aalborg University and UNWIND consultancy) are highly experienced facilitators of supervision practice. Drawing on their experience as researchers, supervisors and freelance consultants they form part of the expert facilitators on the Research SuperVision Programme (RSVP).

Places for this session are limited. If you would like to attend, please complete our expression of interest form for Science.

18 June 2024, 9.30am to 4pm (on campus - Berrick Saul Treehouse - lunch and refreshments provided)

This intensive interactive in-person session is designed for experienced supervisors in the Arts, Humanities and Social Science faculties. It will explore the supervisor role and leadership, active listening, writing process and how to support it, challenges in supervisory relationships, supporting writing and giving feedback. Limited to 25 places - all supervisors will be invited to submit case studies to be used to shape the content of the session.

Audience: Experienced supervisors in science (3+ supervisees through to completion)
Facilitators: Steve Hutchinson Training - Steve has been delivering professional development training and coaching for staff in the UK and internationally for 20+ years. Before that he worked at the Universities of York and Leeds and studied for his Doctorate at the University of Liverpool. Steve has published extensively (including books on PhD supervision, and academic mentoring) and is a coach for the UKRI FLF scheme.

Places for this session are limited. If you would like to attend, please complete our expression of interest form for Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

5 June 2024, 10am to 4pm (on campus - CL/A/028 - lunch provided)
27 June 2024, 9.30am to 12 noon (online)

Designed to support supervisors from all disciplines these workshop will introduce participants to a range of coaching and mentoring models and concepts that will equip them to actively listen, ask powerful questions, and support their Supervisee as effectively as possible. The full day includes extra time to practice and receive feedback and will include lunch. The half day is a condensed version.

Supervisors will be able to:

Actively reflect on your approach to supporting, communicating with, and empowering the Supervisee.
Evaluate coaching and mentoring frameworks and integrate these into your current method.
In a reflective environment, demonstrate emotional intelligence and self-awareness when communicating with others.
Confidently use evidence-based coaching and mentoring models and tools to support Supervisees to solve problems and make decisions.

Audience: All supervisors at all career stages (and PIs) who wish to develop their mentoring and listening skills
Facilitators: Alex Firmin - Promethean Executive. Alex is the CEO of Promethean Executive and delivers training across the globe. He provides leadership training and accredited training. He has many years experience in the military and as a professional developer and is in the process of completing his own PhD.

Book session for Using mentoring to support PhD supervision

9 May 2024, 1.30pm to 3pm (online)

This session is for those supervisors who would like their supervision practice to be formally recognised. The UKCGE Supervision Recognition Programme is designed to provide a route by which PhD supervisors at all levels can achieve recognition of their professional practice (either through the associate route for those with less experience, or full recognition for more experienced supervisors). Supervisors will be introduced to the UKCGE Good Supervisory Practice Framework and encouraged to reflect and identify how their practice meets the criteria. Those supervisors who wish to develop evidence for submission will be supported through the process.

Audience: Supervisors with 2+ successful supervisions through to completion and Graduate Chairs
Facilitators: Karen Clegg (University of York and RSVP) and Heather Sears (Coventry University and RSVP)

Book session for Gaining recognition for your supervisory practice

Supporting Health and Wellbeing, Diversity and Equity:

Supervisor CPD opportunity: Supporting neurodivergent PhD students

24 April 2024, 2pm to 3.30pm (on campus - CL/A/028)

Today, about one in seven people in the UK is neurodivergent. Indeed, the number of neurodivergent students entering Higher Education has rapidly increased in recent years; between 2004-2015 there was a 400% increase in the number of autistic university students in the UK. In 2019/20, 14,360 university students disclosed that they were autistic. Neurodivergent students, including those who are autistic, are not only at undergraduate and Masters Degree levels and evidence suggests that there is a significant increase in the proportion of the postgraduate research community that is neurodivergent. Supervisors therefore need to have appropriate knowledge to support the growing neurodivergent PhD community.

This session focuses on considerations that need to be taken to support neurodivergent PhD researchers to thrive and reach their full potential during their studies/training. The session will include coverage and discussion of issues such as: What is neurodiversity? Supporting neurodiversity-affirmative practices in supervision; understanding the individual student; building a strengths-based PhD approach; preparing for the viva; and more.

Audience: For supervisors at all levels within Faculties/Schools
Facilitators: The session is delivered by Professor Debbie Riby who is Co-Director of the Centre for Neurodiversity & Development at Durham University. Debbie is also Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Postgraduate Research Students at Durham University.

Book session for Supporting PGRs with neurodiversity

20 February 2024, 11.30am to 12.30pm (online)

This session will focus on the situation of PGR Supervisors working with students who may bring emotional and life issues as well as academic queries. It will add to the 'Responding to Students in Distress’ sessions already being provided to all staff working with students. Open Door Practitioner Grant Denkinson will prompt reflective learning on how pastoral care sits with supervisors, setting expectations and boundaries, appropriate signposting and some emotional issues that students commonly experience using anonymised case studies.

Audience: For supervisors at all levels within Faculties/Schools
Facilitators: Grant Denkinson, Open Door Practitioner and Wellbeing Team Manager, University of York

Book session for Supporting student mental health and wellbeing

Communities of Practice Events

Communities of Practice discussions will be face to face on campus to enable Graduate Chairs and PhD supervisors from different departments to get to know each other and, where desirable, to form informal faculty based communities of practice. The topics, scope and format of these will be agreed through consultation with the PGR leads.

Next Graduate Chair session: Wednesday 13 March at 12 noon to 2pm in SLB/203
Topic: PGR Engagement

Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen a slow but definite change in the nature of PGR engagement with their Departments. In many Schools and Departments, PGRs are coming to campus less frequently, opting to attend training events online rather than in person, requiring increased support in the final years of their projects, and becoming somewhat distant from their wider departmental research cultures. In short, colleagues with responsibilities in the area of PGR support are concerned about declining cultures of presence in their Departments. In this session, we will work together to identify ways of addressing this trend, identifying areas of best practice with respect to PGR engagement.