Phase #02: Distinguishing the actors

Doctoral Supervisors


Output from the Work Package "Doctoral Supervisors. Multi-skilled Super Heroes or Co-competent Team Workers?".

Lead Partner: Zurich University of the Arts

The question of supervisors and supervision in artistic research doctoral programmes is manifold and complex, as are the roles and the required competences of the supervisors in the different phases of an artistic research doctorate.

Starting from scratch the work package «Doctoral Supervisors: Multi-skilled Super Heroes or Co-competent Team Worker?» first wanted to know: Who are the supervisors in artistic doctoral programmes? Which competences and qualifications do they have? What exactly are they doing when they supervise? Which are powerful formats they use? How is it their knowledge made sustainable in an institution for future generations of supervisors?

To answer these questions it seemed to be a good idea to get a picture of the different supervision ideas, practices, experiences and blind spots of the eleven artistic doctoral programmes, run by the eight university partners of the project, based in seven different European countries. To get this picture a Basic Questionnaire was worked out that allowed the heads of the eleven programmes to inform in detail about their dealing with supervision and supervisors in their programmes.

Based on an analysis of the filled in questionnaires it became clear that it made sense to develop a toolkit that includes two different tools for two related but different purposes.

On the one hand, an Annotated Checklist/Guidelines “Main Problematics of Artistic Research Doctorates Supervision (for conceptualizing artistic research doctorates)”.
This checklist/these guideline is/are aimed at decision makers–university board members, deans and heads of doctoral programmes.
Clustered in six areas, the annotated checklist/guidelines list the main problematics–issues to deal with–in re supervision and supervisors and includes a series of suggestions to tackle them.

On the other hand an Integral Questionnaire for Input / Feedback / Evaluation for supervisors, PhD candidates and administrators alike.
This unique novel type of questionnaire comes as a decidedly flexible, simple and lean, nevertheless not complexity reducing tool. Its use does not only allow to improve supervision (and supervisors) in their immediate practice, but it also may contribute to the development and/or robustness of university’s research culture.


All Outputs

Phase #01

Phase #02

Distinguishing the actors


Phase #03

Add-on
activities