CONFERENCE TOPICS

Transitions, trajectories and transformations in postgraduate supervision:
The times they are a-changing

Transitions are not one-off events that occur when postgraduate students decide to register for and engage in senior degree studies or when supervisors take on the challenges of supervising at new levels or within unexplored terrains. Rather, they are ongoing processes where both candidates and academic staff/faculty keep learning and changing as studies and research proceed. Significant transitions might occur for both candidates and supervisors, especially in times of drastic change brought about by recent developments around the Covid pandemic. Such transitions might include a loss of a sense of ‘being in control’, changing one’s approaches to established research and supervision practices, learning the values and practices of scholarship and how it is promoted, and many more. In and during transitions, relationships among peers and academics seem to make significant differences to how such transitions are experienced and managed. Moreover, transitional experiences are having, and continue to have, an impact on the personal and professional lives of researchers and supervisors.

Similarly, understanding research, study and supervisory trajectories goes hand in hand with working out what one’s research options and professional practices are about and deciding what routes to pursue. In a nutshell, research and supervision trajectories clarify to candidates and supervisors alike what they are doing, where they are heading and, also, how well they are doing it. Typical questions asked in the process of understanding trajectories include: Why are you on this research or professional trajectory? What brought you there? Is this where you want to remain? How does your identity relate to your research or your supervision and how might it change? How do you see the (social) world and your research/professional future? What constitutes the knowledge and evidence that might influence or change your current trajectory?

The third dimension of transformations draws attention to the possibilities of qualitative innovation and development in the light of the new challenges and circumstances brought about by the pandemic and its aftermath. Rethinking and re-imagining our supervision practices, environments, processes and procedures, as well as our trajectories and identities as supervisors, students and support staff, can lead to new possibilities for academia and its pursuit of knowledge. This dimension also acknowledges that drastic changes in context, while often traumatic, disorienting and destructive, can create opportunities for reflection, re-orientation and creativity. The conference thus also makes a space for exploring the transformations of postgraduate supervision in relation to theory, policy, research and practice.

Against this background the conference will accommodate contributions within the following within 5 identified tracks (see ‘Abstracts’):


  • A. Postgraduate supervision theories and policies.
  • B. Postgraduate supervision practices.
  • C. Postgraduate supervision trends and trajectories.
  • D. Transitions in postgraduate supervision in a complex (post-/pandemic) world.
  • E. Transforming the post-graduate supervision space.

  • Examples of relevant topics may include:


  • Restrictions in academic and student mobility - effects and implications
  • New student and supervisor trajectories in the (post-)Covid world
  • Supervisory challenges and opportunities of ‘remote supervision’
  • Technological affordances and pedagogical efficacy in supervision
  • New ideas around promoting data access and data sources for students
  • ‘Virtual’ environments – the implications of rapidly developing virtual opportunities for flexibility in higher degree studies and supervision
  • Disrupted studies – students and supervision ‘in limbo’
  • Moving minds rather than moving bodies during times of restrictions and beyond
  • The empathic supervisor - being vulnerable, compassionate and kind
  • Transitions for early career researchers
  • Transforming identity and community in PG supervision.