The Craft of PhD Supervision

During three days, spaced over several months, you will explore how to build the conditions in which PhD candidates can grow in confidence, capability, and ownership. 

Throughout the course, you work with your own real-life cases and receive feedback from peers and trainers. In doing so, you deepen your understanding of supervision as a professional craft: one that combines structure and flexibility, clarity and empathy, leadership and learning.

Our approach is practical, evidence-based, and highly interactive. The programme connects research and models on supervision to the real dilemmas of daily research life. You broaden your repertoire of supervision styles, work on expectation management and communication, and examine how power, psychological safety, cultural differences and well-being shape supervision. Throughout the course, you also consider situations and choices through the lens of ethics and scientific integrity. The aim is not only to understand supervision better, but to become more intentional and effective in what you actually do.

Course structure

The course consists of three full training days, spread over roughly three months.

Day 1 – Supervising with Intent: Identity, Practice & Adaptability 

We start with you as a supervisor: what kind of supervisor you want to be, what you bring to supervision, and how others may experience you. You work with different conceptions and styles of supervision to broaden the choices you can make in different situations. We examine different levels at which supervision conversations take place—from research content and practical arrangements to behaviour, intentions, relationships and experience—and practise moving between these levels to intervene more effectively. Throughout the day, you work with your own supervision situations, practise giving and actively seeking feedback, and examine how you can adapt to different PhD candidates while staying connected to your own strengths, intentions and boundaries.

Day 2 – Creating Safety, Challenge & Growth

On Day 2, we widen the lens from the individual supervisor–PhD relationship to the wider supervisory system of which you are both part. We examine how supervisors, co-supervisors, formal roles, hierarchy and interpersonal power shape supervision, and how you can recognise and influence these dynamics more consciously. You explore psychological and social safety and, importantly, the relationship between safety and challenge. Good supervision is not about maximising comfort: PhD candidates also need clear expectations, feedback, challenge and room to make mistakes and learn. We examine how to create these conditions while remaining attentive to well-being—both that of your PhD candidates and your own.

Day 3 – Playing with Paradigns in Supervision

On the final day, we examine the assumptions and expectations that shape supervision. You explore how cultural and professional backgrounds can influence ideas about authority, autonomy, feedback, responsibility and relationships—without reducing people to their culture or background. You practise making implicit expectations discussable and working constructively across differences. Finally, we turn the lens back onto ourselves: which convictions, sensitivities and recurring patterns shape the way you supervise, and when can your strengths become pitfalls? The aim is to increase your freedom to respond differently when the situation, the PhD candidate or the supervisory relationship asks for it.

Learning approach

The course combines theory, reflection and active practice. You work individually and in small groups, using experiential exercises, roleplays, real-life cases, intervision and peer feedback. Trainers foster a safe learning climate where participants can speak openly about real supervision dilemmas—including uncertainty, mistakes, difficult relationships, cultural differences and situations for which there is no simple solution.

Learning continues between course days. You design small on-the-job experiments in your own supervision practice: trying something different in a real interaction, observing what happens, and bringing that experience back into the course. You decide what you want to try and these experiments can usually be embedded in supervision activities that would take place anyway, requiring little or no additional time.

During the programme, you are also offered an individual coaching conversation with a trainer. This provides space to work in greater depth on a supervision challenge, dilemma or personal learning goal that matters to you, and to translate insights from the programme into your own practice.

For whom

The course is open to all Wageningen University and Research staff who supervise (or will soon supervise) PhD candidates. It is suitable for both experienced and new supervisors who wish to reflect, refresh and further professionalise their supervision practice.

Learning outcomes

After completing the course, you are able to:

• Put the development of the candidate as a researcher in the center of your supervision
• Recognise and flexibly use different supervision styles
• Align expectations and communication with your PhD candidates more effectively
• Foster a psychologically safe and inclusive research environment
• Address ethical dilemmas and integrity issues with confidence
• Support well-being — both your candidates’ and your own
• Reflect on your role, influence, and growth as a supervisor
• Scope and tailor your supervision practise not only to your supervisee, but also to your own motivations and possibilities

 

General Information

Target Group:	Staff members (Full, Associate and Assistant Professors) of Wageningen University and Research who are member of one of the Wageningen Graduate Schools and who are supervising PhD candidates. Participants should have at least half a year experience in supervising PhDs
Group size:	Max. 12 participants
Course duration:	3 days
Language:	English
Trainers:	From Downsideup, specialists in ‘the human side of research’ and experienced in academic supervision and leadership development.
Venue:	TBD, Campus Wageningen University

 

Fee

Reduced fee: Supervisors who are member of a Wageningen Graduate School (EPS, PE&RC, VLAG, WASS, WIAS, WIMEK) and are supervisor of PhD candidates who will be defending their thesis at Wageningen University	€ 530,=
University fee: All other Wageningen University and Research postdocs and staff	€1050,=

Fee includes study and training material, coffee/tea and lunches.

 

Cancellation condition

You may cancel free of charge up to four weeks before the start of the course. After this date you will be charged the University fee. Unless:

• You can find someone to replace you in the course and supply the course coordinator with the name and contact information of your replacement.
  In this case you will only be charged a € 50,- cancellation fee.
• You (PhDs and postdocs of Wageningen University) have a valid reason to cancel (illness or death in the family 1st or 2nd degree).
  In this case you will be charged the reduced fee and your supervisor/PI must send a mail indicating the reason for cancellation.

Information

For more information please contact maartje.sijtsema@wur.nl