For Research Supervisors

If you have recently joined City St George's as a member of academic staff, you will be identified as a Category A/First Supervisor or Category B/Second Supervisor based on your research profile and prior experience of supervising doctoral researchers, in line with our Policy on the Approval of Doctoral Degree Supervisors.

Your supervisor category may change over time.

If you have never supervised a research student before, you should be enrolled on the EDM119 (Research Supervision) module provided by Learning Enhancement and Development (LEaD) – this forms part of City St George's MA in Academic Practice.

Our procedures for research degrees are summarised in Senate Regulations 23 and 24, supplemented by policies and guidance in Section 9 of City’s Quality Manual, available on Staff Hub.

Our roles and responsibilities document may provide you with a useful summary of what is expected of supervisors.

These policies are also summarised for the benefit of doctoral researchers on the Essential Information page of the Doctoral College website, which may provide a helpful summary for you as well.

Supervisors are generally expected to meet with their doctoral researchers monthly, this is essential for student visa holders and completion of up-to-date meeting records on Research Manager forms part of City St George's visa compliance obligations.

As a supervisor, you will need to sign off these forms as an accurate record of discussions held.

There are two key aspects to being a good supervisor:

• Developing the research
• Developing the researcher

Each doctoral researcher should be attached to a Research Centre or Department at City St George's and encouraged both to attend relevant Research Seminars and to presenting their emerging research findings.

Each doctoral researcher has a series of progression milestones up to and including submission of their thesis for examination; these are forms accessed through Research Manager, and you as a supervisor will need to approve each of these forms before ultimate sign off from the Senior Tutor for Research and the Doctoral College Board of Studies.

Across City St George's, Schools provide a variety of skills development sessions for doctoral reseachers which are known collectively as the Doctoral Researcher Development Programme (DRDP); the list of upcoming sessions is available through Research Manager.

As part of the induction process for a new doctoral researcher, and then at the start of each academic year, you should meet with your doctoral researcher and identify what skills they need to develop and what sessions are available as part of the DRDP to support them.

What is SENSS?

SENSS is the South and East Network for Social Sciences, an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP). City St George’s is a partner in this DTP, which is led by the University of Essex.  The SENSS bid was awarded in 2023 and the partnership will train at least 29 doctoral researchers per year over the next five years, with the first cohort starting in 2024.  SENSS is built on three key pillars:

• Interdisciplinary Research
• Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity
• Impact on Practice

What does SENSS offer?

SENSS has two schemes for training doctoral research students: the collaborative partner call and the student-led call.  The collaborative partner call is supervisor-led; the project proposals involve a non-academic partner who contributes something of value to the research. The student-led competition accepts applications from students who develop a research proposal under one of the six interdisciplinary themes in SENSS.  Students will have approached potential supervisors who need to support the application and provide supporting statements.  SENSS also received funding for four, one-year, post-doctoral fellowships in 2023-24.  City St George’s has four doctoral students starting in 2024 and two post-doctoral fellows. It would be good to exceed these numbers in 2025.

Who is eligible to apply?

City St George’s is part of all six interdisciplinary themes in SENSS but not all Schools and Departments are eligible to take the lead in each theme.  Eligibility for leading an application submitted to SENSS for any given theme is based on performance in REF 2021.  The table below gives details of the Units of Assessment at City St George’s that can lead within each of the six interdisciplinary themes.  Other Departments and Schools can be involved in projects provided the primary supervisor is based in one of the Units of Assessment that maps to the theme and therefore can act as the lead.  This encourages interdisciplinarity and cross-School working.  There are further details in the scheme guidance materials on the SENSS website .  If you are unsure, please check with one of the SENSS contacts listed below.

Information about the calls

Information about both calls is available from SENSS and it is important to carefully check the information about each call .  Look for the “Funding Opportunities” link from the SENSS home page (South and East Network for Social Sciences Doctoral Training Partnership (senss.ac.uk)).  In addition, the SENSS director, Professor Fragkiskos Filippaios, runs webinars to support those applying to the different calls.

The SENSS team at City

Getting support

For further information, please contact the Doctoral College (doctoralcollege@city.ac.uk ), a theme lead, or the SENSS team at Essex (admin@senss-dtp.ac.uk ).

Deadlines/timeline for collaborative and student-led competitions.

Please note that the collaborative competition has two phases, the supervisor phase and the studentship phase.

Collaborative competition: Supervisor phase

Collaborative competition: Studentship phase

Student-led competition

Within your Department and School, your Senior Tutor for Research and Associate Dean (Research and Enterprise) should cascade information and encourage the sharing of best practice locally.

Your School will have a Research Programmes Committee or Research Degrees Committee where issues in relation to research degrees are discussed, including the participation of student representatives.

The Department of Learning Enhancement and Development (LEaD) runs a variety of professional development workshops, including an annual Learning and Teaching Conference.

UKCGE Research Supervision Recognition Programme

The UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) have recently launched a Research Supervision Recognition Programme, offering a toolkit including the sector-approved Good Supervisory Practice Framework and offering a route to recognition for research supervisors.

City St George's is keen to support supervisors who wish to achieve this accreditation, including payment of the application fee. For more information, please visit the Supervision Recognition Programme website.