6.1 The Director of Studies is responsible for the supervision of the student and the work of the supervision team. The roles and responsibilities of the supervisory team will be agreed at the start of each student’s programme (see Section 9).
Supervisory agreements will be reviewed as an ongoing process by the Research Degrees Committee at the key milestones for the relevant programme: e.g. registration, transfer from MPhil to PhD and as part of annual monitoring.
6.2 The supervision team must have knowledge of a student’s subject area and/or theoretical approach to be applied. The roles and responsibilities of the team must be articulated in the RDC application for approval of registration and as part of any application for change of supervisory arrangements.
If a student’s work goes significantly outside the supervision team’s field, the supervisors and the Faculty should be responsible for finding specialists either inside or outside the University who could be appointed as an advisor; this may in some cases involve a change in the supervision arrangements. All applications must be approved by the Research Degrees Committee.
6.3 There should be regular supervisory sessions between the student and a member of the supervisory team. Practice and frequency will inevitably vary from Faculty to Faculty and at different stages of the research, but, as a guideline, 44 hours per year would be appropriate for full-time students (based on the notion of 1 hour per week). For part-time students the equivalent time should be approximately half of this. Frequency of meetings and the nature of supervisory sessions should be agreed at the outset and reviewed regularly.
It is recommended that the supervision team should meet as a whole once a Semester. Supervisory sessions may take the form of meetings, email interactions, telephone discussions, video conferencing, skype, Zoom workshops, seminars and conferences, as deemed appropriate by the supervisory team. It is important that supervisory sessions should be largely uninterrupted by telephone calls, personal callers or Faculty business. It is advisable to arrange the time of the next meeting at the end of each session.
6.4 If the student has an urgent problem, the supervisors should deal with the matter as soon as possible. If this were not possible the student should be referred to the Postgraduate Research Tutor or PVC Dean of Faculty.
6.5 Directors of Studies should inform their students and the Postgraduate Research Tutor of times when they will be away from the University for any extended period so that the students can plan accordingly and the Faculty can make special arrangements if necessary.
6.6 The supervisors should review and critically comment on the student’s work as it progresses, normally within 2 weeks. However, in the case of a student submitting a substantial number of chapters or the final draft of the thesis for assessment, the timescale for reviewing the work will be agreed with the supervisors.
6.7 The supervisors should assist new students to plan their time, draw up a programme of work and monitor their subsequent progress. The supervisors should assist students in completing the application to register for a research degree.
The application has to be approved by the Postgraduate Research Tutor or the Chair of the Faculty Research Committee and should normally be submitted to the Research Degrees Committee within the first 6 months after initial enrolment. The Research Degrees Committee will not backdate the effective date of registration by more than 6 months unless for good reason (see section 5.1 of the Policy and Procedures section of this document).
The supervisors should be aware of the requirements of some funding bodies that renewal of funding can depend on successful transfer from MPhil to PhD and should help students on such contracts to plan their work accordingly. It is the supervisors’ responsibility to ensure that all the necessary administrative steps in undertaking a research degree - such as registration, transfer, approval of examiners, suspension or extension of registration - are carried out promptly at the appropriate time.
6.8 Supervisors should keep a record of formal supervisory sessions with students and where possible they should also keep a note of other interactions by recording the date and time of the sessions and the major areas of discussion. In addition, students should comply with Section 7.2, and keep a record of all meetings with supervisors and sign them confirming the agreed outcome of the meeting.
An email is an acceptable alternative to a signature when necessary and these records should be made available to the PVC Dean of Faculty or Postgraduate Research Tutor upon request. Other documents, such as medical certificates, which might have a bearing on the student’s ability or capability to progress in a satisfactory manner, must also be kept.
6.9 Once the annual monitoring process has been completed, the Director of Studies should then summarise the outcome of the monitoring and submit an annual report on the student’s progress, on the RDC annual monitoring form.
When the supervisory team have completed their reports, the form is sent to the Postgraduate Research Tutor or Faculty Research Committee who will review the report and once they are satisfied with the report, they will sign it on behalf of the Faculty and forward it to the Research Degrees Team.
This assessment process must include 1 person external to the supervisory team and all students should be interviewed each year as part of the monitoring process. All annual monitoring reports are reviewed by the Research Degrees Team and any concerns or outstanding actions are reported to the appropriate Sub-Committee of the University’s Research Degrees Committee.
6.10 The supervisors must ensure that the student is notified in writing by the Director of Studies if either progress or the standard of work is unsatisfactory, and arrange any necessary remedial action. Copies of the reports etc. should be held by the Director of Studies on his/her copy of the student’s file and an email will be accepted as the equivalent to a signature when confirming agreement of these records.
6.11 It is the responsibility of the supervisors to ensure that the data, results, and information collated by the student during his or her research are freely available to the student for the purposes of the research degree for which the student is registered.
6.12 Any public output resulting from the student’s work should give due acknowledgement of the student’s contribution, generally through co-authorship.
6.13 In matters relating to intellectual property rights, supervisors should refer to the University’s IPR policy.
6.14 Supervisors should advise their students about courses within the University which may complement their field of research. Supervisors should also consider any training which can be provided in generic skills (as detailed in the University Code of Practice for Research Student Training).
6.15 The supervisors should take an active part in introducing the student to meetings of learned societies, seminars and workshops and to other research workers in the field. The supervisors should give advice on writing up the research work in the form of papers and the final thesis, and should give advice on publication as appropriate.
6.16 The supervisors should nominate internal and external examiners to the Research Degrees Committee for approval at least two/three months before the expected date of submission of the thesis, and should ensure that the student is made fully aware of the examination procedures.
6.17 Supervisors must ensure that the agreed sections of their student’s work are submitted through Turnitin as required each year as part of Annual Progress Monitoring, and that work submitted for examination has been correctly referenced.
6.18 Supervisors must ensure that their students begin to obtained permission for the use of all third party copyright material from an early stage in the programme in order that it may be included in the publicly available online version of the thesis.