SIMON POPE: BECOMING SOCIAL: THE SOCIAL MODALITIES OF YOUR DOCTORAL RESEARCH

Image credit: John Hammersley (2020)

FRIDAY 24 JULY 2026 11:30 - 13:00

We worry about the problem of the lone researcher. While their doctoral programmes train you for independence and promote self-directed study, universities also worry about the rate at which researchers leave without finishing their degree – the so-called doctoral attrition rate. It is easy to attribute this to the failings of individual PhD candidates, and their lack of the resilience required to make it to competition. But perhaps our assumptions about the social modalities of doctoral research are the issue? 

Are PhD programmes, designed to produce independent researchers, also producing lonely and isolated ones who risk being cast adrift? Perhaps we could imagine other social modalities of doctoral research – ones that not just mitigate this risk, but actually promote alternative modes of research? What are the social relations that shape our doctoral journeys, which lie beyond the programme, and even beyond the academy? Could we go as far as reconfiguring doctoral research around collectivity, mutual support and peer-learning as a way to do things otherwise? How might this enable us to think differently about all aspects of the doctoral research process, including supervisory relationships, seminars, the shape of our thesis, literature review, research validity, examination, how your work is made public, and so on?

Although universities and faculty have paid attention to these issues, it’s the doctoral researcher who feels their effects most acutely. Using a creative adaptation of the ‘long conversation’ format, this two hour workshop will draw upon tractable examples, from your own experience, to explore how the affordances and constraints of various social modalities shape, and are shaped by, your doctoral journeys – and, if we so desire, how we might do things otherwise.