phd supervisor family tree

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Academic Genealogy

Starting at one's own PhD supervisor(s) and tracing their supervisor, it is possible to form an 'academic family tree', stretching back many generations; often into the renaissance period and earlier. Below is the Williams Group genealogy, which shows the primary PhD supervisor for each student (in their main field of study, if more than one doctorate was obtained), along with the institution at which they worked/work. Once the tree reaches the pre'PhD era, then the student's mentors are recorded. Notable members of the tree include Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (Nobel Laureate), Robert Bunsen, Gabriel Fallopio (One of the founders of modern anatomy), Saint Gaetano da Thiene (Philosopher), William of Ockham (on of the most important medieval philosophers, known for the principle of 'Occam's Razor'), Saint Albertus Magnus [Albert the Great] (Teacher of Saint Thomas Aquinas and patron saint of scientists) and Saint Dominic de Guzman (founder of the Dominican order of Catholicism).

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How much does the academic family tree matter for a PhD?

I remember my MSCS advisor often refers to his "academic grandfather" (his advisor's advisor Dr. Leonard Kleinrock) as the person who sent the first data packets. Although distant, I think it is cool for him to be a descendant of someone famous.

For PhDs, have you ever traced your academic family tree? Does it matter for those of you that are not in academia? I am also a PhD student now and would it be too early to imagine folks in my lab as my "academic brother/sister"?

Would like to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks!

• 10 Like a real genealogy tree, It's a nice topic to discuss on social occasions but at the end of the day it's unlikely to have any influence on your (academic) life. –  Erwan Commented Mar 3, 2019 at 1:03
• 5 Erdös-Bacon number is the really important thing here :-) –  user48953094 Commented Mar 3, 2019 at 1:11
• 4 I'm fortunate to have Stephen Hawking, Dennis Sciama and Paul Dirac in my academic family tree, so as a physicist it's pretty cool for me :) And it's fun to know your tree so you can find long-lost academic siblings, nephews, uncles, cousins etc when you go to conferences. No harm in it, and a handy networking tool. –  astronat supports the strike Commented Mar 3, 2019 at 23:27
• 2 @user48953094, I agree of course. But I note that as long as you are in the collaborative game in any way, then both your Erdos and your Bacon numbers can be lowered entirely through the work of others with on more effort on your part. Synergy in action. –  Buffy Commented Feb 21, 2020 at 21:14

3 Answers 3

I have traced mine, using the Academic Tree website. Honestly, it's one of those things that doesn't really matter, but can be quite entertaining. It can be good for a story or two, or to better understand the history of the field, but I'd doubt it'd do much career-wise - whether it's academic or not. However, referring to academic relatives can be an interesting tool when teaching - it can give a more personal touch to an otherwise dry subject, for example.

I believe that academic tree does not impact your work. However it is something that is really cool and gives you a sense of responsibility that you are carrying some of the most significant names of the industry. Having these names associated to you will give you a sense of pride and honor and that is all what it is. In addition to that it may also be used to see the transition of technology along the time.

• 3 I'll note that for many in mathematics, especially older folks like myself, our ancestor list is pretty impressive. But it is due, a lot, to the fact that the field was smaller (much smaller) before our time. –  Buffy Commented Feb 21, 2020 at 21:20

Maybe you have heard of and looked around on the website of the Mathematics Genealogy Project. Pretty fun, and an extensive collection of academics.

About it's worth, to me as a scholar in the field of mathematics and sociology, I can say I was happy to be able to use their dataset in my dissertation. For example, the genealogical connections and additional information on academic degrees, allowed me to map global trends and interactions in research. Something which I believe is worthwhile outside academia as well.

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Ten types of PhD supervisor relationships – which is yours?

Lecturer, Griffith University

Disclosure statement

Susanna Chamberlain does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Griffith University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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It’s no secret that getting a PhD is a stressful process .

One of the factors that can help or hinder this period of study is the relationship between supervisor and student. Research shows that effective supervision can significantly influence the quality of the PhD and its success or failure.

PhD supervisors tend to fulfil several functions: the teacher; the mentor who can support and facilitate the emotional processes; and the patron who manages the springboard from which the student can leap into a career.

There are many styles of supervision that are adopted – and these can vary depending on the type of research being conducted and subject area.

Although research suggests that providing extra mentoring support and striking the right balance between affiliation and control can help improve PhD success and supervisor relationships, there is little research on the types of PhD-supervisor relationships that occur.

From decades of experience of conducting and observing PhD supervision, I’ve noticed ten types of common supervisor relationships that occur. These include:

The candidate is expected to replicate the field, approach and worldview of the supervisor, producing a sliver of research that supports the supervisor’s repute and prestige. Often this is accompanied by strictures about not attempting to be too “creative”.

Cheap labour

The student becomes research assistant to the supervisor’s projects and becomes caught forever in that power imbalance. The patron-client roles often continue long after graduation, with the student forever cast in the secondary role. Their own work is often disregarded as being unimportant.

The “ghost supervisor”

The supervisor is seen rarely, responds to emails only occasionally and has rarely any understanding of either the needs of the student or of their project. For determined students, who will work autonomously, the ghost supervisor is often acceptable until the crunch comes - usually towards the end of the writing process. For those who need some support and engagement, this is a nightmare.

The relationship is overly familiar, with the assurance that we are all good friends, and the student is drawn into family and friendship networks. Situations occur where the PhD students are engaged as babysitters or in other domestic roles (usually unpaid because they don’t want to upset the supervisor by asking for money). The chum, however, often does not support the student in professional networks.

Collateral damage

When the supervisor is a high-powered researcher, the relationship can be based on minimal contact, because of frequent significant appearances around the world. The student may find themselves taking on teaching, marking and administrative functions for the supervisor at the cost of their own learning and research.

The practice of supervision becomes a method of intellectual torment, denigrating everything presented by the student. Each piece of research is interrogated rigorously, every meeting is an inquisition and every piece of writing is edited into oblivion. The student is given to believe that they are worthless and stupid.

Creepy crawlers

Some supervisors prefer to stalk their students, sometimes students stalk their supervisors, each with an unhealthy and unrequited sexual obsession with the other. Most Australian universities have moved actively to address this relationship, making it less common than in previous decades.

Captivate and con

Occasionally, supervisor and student enter into a sexual relationship. This can be for a number of reasons, ranging from a desire to please to a need for power over youth. These affairs can sometimes lead to permanent relationships. However, what remains from the supervisor-student relationship is the asymmetric set of power balances.

Almost all supervision relationships contain some aspect of the counsellor or mentor, but there is often little training or desire to develop the role and it is often dismissed as pastoral care. Although the life experiences of students become obvious, few supervisors are skilled in dealing with the emotional or affective issues.

Colleague in training

When a PhD candidate is treated as a colleague in training, the relationship is always on a professional basis, where the individual and their work is held in respect. The supervisor recognises that their role is to guide through the morass of regulation and requirements, offer suggestions and do some teaching around issues such as methodology, research practice and process, and be sensitive to the life-cycle of the PhD process. The experience for both the supervisor and student should be one of acknowledgement of each other, recognising the power differential but emphasising the support at this time. This is the best of supervision.

There are many university policies that move to address a lot of the issues in supervisor relationships , such as supervisor panels, and dedicated training in supervising and mentoring practices. However, these policies need to be accommodated into already overloaded workloads and should include regular review of supervisors.

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Who was your great, great supervisor? 30,000 History PhDs now available on British History Online

Jun 23, 2020 | British History Online , Features & Articles

By Philip Carter

British History Online has recently digitised and published the records of 22,000 history PhDs from UK and Irish universities . The records cover research degrees awarded between 1970 and 2014, drawn from the IHR’s annual print catalogues of recently completed PhDs. This latest set of records complements an existing BHO series covering degrees awarded 1901-1970 which was published online in 2018.

Together both sets provide opportunities to trace shifts and developments in historical research, and chart the role of individual historians—first as doctoral research students and then as supervisors.

Here, in the first of two posts, we outline these new records and some of their applications. Having published the records on BHO, we’re also making available the underlying data — enabling you to undertake your own research at scale. This data—released in a couple of weeks—will be the subject of a second blog post.

1. BHO thesis data, 1901-70

In 1930 the Institute of Historical Research began collecting information about the award of new doctorates in history. Each year to 1970, the IHR received details of recently completed research degrees (mainly PhDs but also BPhil, MPhil and MA degrees) granted by UK universities. In 1976 this data was published by the Institute in a single volume which supplemented the 40 years of IHR records with earlier PhD listings going back to 1901 and the origins of the modern historical profession.

In 2018 British History Online digitized and published this single volume , providing information on 7500 research degrees on topics in British, international and world history, from ancient Greece to post-1945 Europe. In keeping with BHO editorial policy, the 2018 digital edition replicated the structure and the content of the 1976 print publication. Under a top-level category such as ‘Britain: 1660-1832’, sub-sections group 70 years of PhDs by theme. For example:

BRITAIN: 1660-1832

–> political history.

• Foreign and colonial relations
• Radicalism and reform movements
• Political thought

–> Ecclesiastical History

• Church of England
• Protestant nonconformity
• Roman Catholicism

Within each sub-section, individual records provide information on a thesis title, the student, institution, degree type and date of award: e.g.

The political career of General Conway.  Hilda I. Clark. Liverpool M.A. 1917

The impeachment of Warren Hastings.  P.J. Marshall. Oxford D.Phil. 1962

The evangelical revival as reflected in the life and works of John William de la Fléchère (1729–85) .  W.C. Lockhart. Edinburgh Ph.D. 1936

2. BHO thesis data, 1970-2014

It’s to this existing collection that we now add a second BHO data set, covering History dissertations awarded between 1970 to 2014 —principally PhDs though with some Masters theses.

Unlike the 1901-1970 print collection (which we had rekeyed to create a new digital edition), the set covering 1970 to 2014 already existed in database format. Each year History departments in the UK, and latterly the Republic of Ireland, were invited to supply us with information on their recently completed theses. This was added to the database and used annually to create a print record of the latest PhDs.

By 2014 our database held records for 22,000 theses which we’ve now extracted and converted to the format required for British History Online. As you’d expect, our data contains the same fields as for the earlier 1901-70 series; but it now also includes references to thesis supervisor/s—together with focused ‘index’ and broader ‘category’ terms which relate to the subject matter of an individual PhD.

BHO records for the new series, 1970-2014, display these additional fields in the following format:

Meanings of manhood in early modern England, with special reference to Cambridge, c.1560-1640. Shepard, Alexandra J.      Ph.D., Cambridge. (Hist.). Supervised by Wrightson, Keith E.      Chronological coverage: 1560–1640      Index terms:  Cambridge; Manhood      Categories: 16th Century; 17th Century

The foiled quest for a democratic factory order: a study in factory relations in Petrograd during the Russian civil war, 1918-21.   Lyu, Hansu      Ph.D., Essex. (Hist.). Supervised by Smith, Stephen A.      Chronological coverage: 1918–1921      Index terms:  Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; Civil War, Russian (1918-21); Factory relations, in the U.S.S.R.; see also Russia; Petrograd, U.S.S.R.

To be a moudjahida in independent Algeria: itineraries and memories of women veterans of the War of Independence, 1954-62 .  Vince, Natalya      Ph.D., London. (Q.M. Hist.). Supervised by Jackson, Julian T.      Chronological coverage: 1954–1962      Index terms:  Algerian War (1954-62); Women, in Algeria; Algeria      Categories: Gender and Women; Military/naval history; Social history; 20th Century

Given the annual print format in which this data originally appeared, individual theses for 1970-2014 are now listed by year of award; so while dates aren’t provided in the individual record, each thesis remains clearly connected to its year: in the case of the three examples above: 1996, 2000 and 2009.

The extra index terms within the 1970-2014 records originally featured as finding aids for the annual catalogues. With these terms now exposed in BHO, it becomes easier to locate sets of theses on common subject areas or periods, even when this may not be evident from searching the text of thousands of PhD titles. Knowing which classifications have been applied to a thesis helps you search more precisely for related theses, although we need to stress that the original (print) classification is not consistent or exhaustive and never has been.

Similarly it’s important to note that the data in this new set of records was submitted annually by History departments on request; where information was not supplied there are inevitable gaps in our records. While the 22,000 theses now listed on BHO comprise a significant and sizeable data set, it is certainly not a full listing of all UK doctorates in History. We believe that by being transparent about the data and its inconsistencies we’re helping our users make informed choices about how best to engage with our content.

Further guidance on how to search BHO is available on the Using British History Online page.

3. Five applications of BHO thesis data

How might we engage with the information in these 30,000 records, recording History theses 1901-2014? Here are five ideas.

i. Historians – before they were famous

At its simplest both BHO collections (theses 1901-1970 and 1970-2014) offer text searchable records by student and title. Thus it’s easy to: find the work of a young Geoffrey Elton ( ‘ Thomas Cromwell: aspects of his administrative work ’ , London 1949) or Isabel de Madariaga ( ‘Anglo-Russian relations during the War of American Independence, 1778–83′, also London 1959 ) . And equally to: identify the respective supervisors of Roy Porter (‘ The making of the science of geology in Britain, 1660-1815 ’ Cambridge, 1975 – Martin Rudwick) and Helen Castor (‘ The duchy of Lancaster in the Lancastrian polity, 1399-1461 ‘ Cambridge, 1993 – Christine M. Carpenter).   

Text searching across titles is one way of identifying dissertations with a common subject area: thus ‘geology’ and ‘geological’ appear (in addition to Roy Porter’s PhD) in 13 thesis titles, 1901-2014*, while 581 dissertations in the field of ‘Modern Britain and Ireland’—and completed between 2000 and 2009—include reference to one of more of the terms: ‘gender’, ‘women’, ‘masculinity’.

*Each section of the BHO thesis listings, 1901-70 and 1970-2014 can be investigated separately, given its distinctive data structure. Equally you can search across shared fields for all records 1901-2014: by entering the term History Theses in the Title box and a search term in the Keywords box, you can search all theses at once. The 14 references to ‘Geology’ / ‘Geological’ as a search term appear in eight sections of the full series of theses.

ii. PhDs by university and student cohort

The BHO listings also highlight research activity within an institution. For example, in our data the earliest History PhD from Leicester University was awarded in 1959 (two years after that institution received its royal charter), with an additional 22 doctorates completed in the following decade. Between 1970 and 2014 a further 197 graduates in the BHO gained a PhD from the university.

Honing in by year also identifies fellow students by institution and/or by areas of research. Cambridge contemporaries of Roy Porter, working in the field of modern British history and also completing in 1975, include Michael Bentley, David Bebbington and Paul Bew. That year also saw David Abulafia—winner of the 2020 Wolfson Prize —receive his Cambridge PhD for ‘Commercial relations between the Norman kingdom of Sicily and the North Italian mercantile republics, 1116-91.’

iii. Pioneering women historians

Though our records aren’t coded by gender, the listings similarly highlight pioneering women researchers via browsing. Among those from the opening decade of the twentieth century are: Frances A. Collie, ‘ The history and nature of the dowry among the ancient Greeks ‘ (Wales M.A. 1905); Helen M. Cam , ‘ A comparison of the local administration and law courts of the Carolingian empire with those of the West Saxon kings ‘ (London M.A., 1909) and Laura H. Thraves, ‘ The Gordon Riots, 1780’ (Liverpool M.A. 1910).

iv. Academic ‘family trees’

References to supervisors for many post-1970 records allow us to chart connections between historians: one of those first generation Leicester historians was the early modernist Margaret Spufford (1935-2014) whose MA ( ‘Rural Cambridgeshire, 1520–1680’ , 1962) was followed by a PhD (‘ People, land and literacy in 16th- and 17th-century Cambridgeshire ‘, 1970). Ten of Spufford’s own PhD students are listed in the BHO collections for 1970-2014, among them Tessa Watt ( ‘Cheap print and religion, c.1550-1640’ , Cambridge, 1988) and Christopher Marsh, ‘ The Family of Love in English society, 1550-1630 ‘ (also Cambridge, 1992).

And with sufficient data it becomes possible to plot what are in effect supervisory lineages, as the following example shows.

Starting with the medieval historian Caroline Barron, for example, BHO data include records of 30 of the 33 PhDs she supervised between 1983 and 2017 . Many of Professor Barron’s students have since gone on to supervise researchers of their own, as have their students—in turn listed in British History Online. Mary McKisack —supervisor of Caroline Barron’s 1970 thesis, and herself a student of the Irish medievalist Maud Clarke (1895-1932)—also features in BHO with her Oxford BLitt dissertation, ‘ Parliament in the reign of Richard II ‘ (awarded 1924).

Put together this has the makings of an ‘academic family tree’, of interest not just for its intellectual continuities (metropolitan and urban history / Richard II) but also its branching into new areas and chronologies as careers and research interests develop over the generations.

v. What comes after the PhD?

Of course, for many researchers a PhD thesis is just the start, serving as their gateway to a first book and other publications. What comes after the PhD is now often well-documented via a range of accompanying online resources that help us trace the development of a historian’s career.

Putting these resources together builds up a richer profile, as we can see in the following example–Tim Reinke-Williams’ 2006 PhD from Warwick University–chosen at random from the list of theses in British history, awarded 2000-09. (Tim is now Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Northampton and our thanks to him for allowing us to use his work as a case study here.)

1. The starting point: Tim Reinke-Williams’ 2006 PhD thesis as listed in BHO, Theses, 1970-2014: Modern Britain and Ireland, awarded 2000-09

2. Tim’s complete thesis is also available for download via the British Library’s EThOS website

3. Having completed his PhD, Tim went on to publish. Here’s his current publications page in the IHR/RHS Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH) – a subscription resource .

4. The BBIH record includes Tim’s first book (2014) which drew on his PhD research. BBIH adds metadata to allow similar works to be identified, plus links to academic reviews of Tim’s book

5. Via BBIH, links point to reviews of Tim’s book: here in the IHR’s Reviews in History

6. By connecting the citation to Google Books we also gain access not just to extracts of published text but also to a book’s acknowledgements page.

Here we have sight of a historian’s wider intellectual networks (thanked for their support during the writing of a book), plus — often for first books — reference to PhD examiners who might play a role in developing a research project from thesis to first publication.

In our case study, Tim Reinke-Williams’ examiners were Alex Shepard — who we encountered earlier (‘ Meanings of manhood in early modern England ‘ 1999) — and Steve Hindle (‘ Aspects of the relationship of the state and local society in early modern England, with special reference to Cheshire, c.1590-1630 ‘ 1993). Via the BHO listing we can in turn find the examiners’ own research students , and discover that both Shepard and Hindle studied for their doctorates under the supervision of Keith Wrightson. Another lineage begins to emerge.

Made at scale, such connections offer intriguing possibilities for charting the intellectual and social networks that shape and inform the profession. We’ll be further considering these possibilities in future posts, and encourage you to have a go when the underlying thesis data is released via a CC licence in early July.

About British History Online

British History Online (BHO) is the IHR’s digital library of nearly 1300 volumes of primary and secondary content, with a focus on British and Irish history, c.1200-1800. BHO is the creation of the Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and is used by students, researchers and teachers, worldwide.

To help researchers at this time, all BHO premium content is currently freely available for individual users until 30 September 2020.

BHO editors are also inviting responses to our 2020 Survey : tell us what you like, and don’t like about British History Online, and what you’d like to added to the service.

Philip Carter is Head of Digital and Publishing at the IHR and Senior Lecturer in British History.

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On the origin of theses

By Peter Hall

14 October 1995

IN THE mid-1970s, when I was a postdoc at Michigan State University, I became fascinated by a large wall chart displayed in the foyer of the chemistry building. It showed the academic “family trees” of all faculty members, based on the chain of supervision of doctoral research. Such charts lead back from each newly fledged PhD to his or her professor or research supervisor, and so on back through history. Many of the older names on the chart were distinguished: some associated with famous scientific laws or major discoveries, or trailblazing work in one or more of the branches of chemistry or physics.

A few years after I left Michigan, I spent a few rainy lunchtimes in the University of Birmingham’s library working out my own chart. Most research scientists will know the more recent links in their academic genealogy, often from their supervisor. Earlier links may be established simply by asking people further up the chain. To dig much beyond this, requires a fairly challenging literature search.

Some principles can guide you. Suppose you want to know when and where Paul Pioneer obtained his PhD. You can search through some appropriate database to find Pioneer’s earliest publications. The chances are that at least one of these will be based on the research for his thesis, probably one fairly close in date. According to convention, this research paper will usually have been co-authored by Pioneer’s supervisor, Olga Oldtimer, and it should cite the full details of the thesis. The appropriate university department should be able to confirm these details and the identity of Pioneer’s supervisor and when she or he was a member of staff. You are now armed with the essential information for the next phase of your search, through even older and dustier journals, seeking out the dissertation of Oldtimer.

Not everyone will find this fun, but it can be rewarding. Actually, I was lucky and didn’t need to trace theses via individual universities. In my academic family tree, my supervisor and my “great grandfather” were separated by a relatively short time. The latter and his supervisor were both still alive and sufficiently eminent to list their careers in some detail in Who’s Who. Their own predecessors were all famous enough to be featured in the 16-volume Dictionary of Scientific Biography (Scribner’s, New York). Having traced my ancestry back this far, it was quite a simple task to complete my entire chart, which contained some eminent pioneers of physics and physical chemistry. The trail may end, as mine did, back in times when people took classics as their main degrees and only turned to science later in life as a hobby.

The subject matter of the doctoral theses in the chain evolved in an interesting way. The four most recent doctorates (including my own) were awarded for work using electron spin resonance. Evgeny Zavoisky discovered ESR in 1945 while he was working on radar at Kazan State University in the USSR. However, a number of groups including researchers at the University of Oxford, were also looking for the effect because the Dutch physicists George Uhlenbeck and Samuel Goudsmit had predicted it in the 1920s.

Brebis Bleaney, a leading light in the famous ESR group working at the University of Oxford just after the Second World War, did his thesis work on low-temperature physics in 1939 under Franz (Francis) Simon. Simon pioneered a technique for achieving ultra-low temperatures by exploiting a transition between a disordered state and the order imposed by an applied magnetic field, similar to the change of state in a fridge’s vapour cycle.

Simon had moved to the University of Oxford from the University of Breslau a few years earlier, shortly after Hitler’s rise to power. He had obtained his doctorate in Berlin in 1921 under Walther Nernst for work related to the third law of thermodynamics. The law had been discovered by Nernst, who had won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry the previous year. Nernst’s other well-known contributions to science include our modern understanding of electrolyte solutions and the specific heats of materials at low temperatures.

Nernst’s supervisor had been Friedrich Kohlrausch, another name intimately associated with electrochemistry, whose extensive work demonstrated that in dilute electrolytes the cations and anions moved independently and in opposite directions under the influence of an electric field. Kohlrausch himself obtained his doctorate under Wilhelm Weber in 1863 at the University of Göttingen in Germany.

Weber, whose name has been immortalised in the units of magnetic flux, worked extensively with the even more famous German polymath Karl Gauss. Among his achievements, Weber demonstrated that the electromagnetic and electrostatic units of electric charge were related by the velocity of light. This was a clue which assisted the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell to formulate the equations of electromagnetic fields. Weber explanation of metallic conduction in terms of mobile negative charges balanced by static positive charges anticipated by decades both the Rutherford-Bohr picture of the atom and the electron band theory of metals.

In looking at my academic family tree, there is a notable difference between the earlier part (19th or early 20th-century Germany) and the later part (Britain from 1939 onwards). In the earlier part, four scientific generations span 121 years, averaging just over 30 years a generation, while in the later part these figures come down to just 34 and 8.5 years respectively. This shortening, consistent with the acceleration of scientific progress, is due to a drop in the mean age of the supervisor at the time of completion of the student’s research, from 52 to approximately 35 years.

It is, of course, far too small a sample from which to draw any firm conclusions. If similar trends were found elsewhere, however, there could be two possible explanations. First, that these days a greater number of younger academics supervise PhD students, whereas formerly a relatively small number of students tended to be concentrated in the research groups of senior professors. Secondly, the mean age of academics has decreased since the end of the Second World War.

If the second is true, is this because more junior (new-blood) posts have been created, or because there has been a relative depletion in the number of senior academics still actively supervising students, for example because of moves into administration, industry, or early retirement?

I suspect that many scientists have more than a sneaking interest in their academic ancestors. I’d be pleased to hear from any other scientific genealogists who may be out there. Perhaps we can form our own society with its own acronym and newsletter. Anyway, happy searching.

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• Choosing a PhD Supervisor

Written by Ben Taylor

Your PhD supervisor will play a vital part in your PhD, providing you with the mentorship, feedback and support you need to succeed. That’s why it’s so important to spend time finding a supervisor for your PhD who will be a great fit for you and your project.

The role of a PhD supervisor is to use their own experience and expertise to support you throughout your project. A good supervisor will show interest in your project and provide regular feedback on your work.

Each person’s supervision experience depends on their university, department and personal preferences. While it’s expected you’ll meet with your supervisor regularly, this might mean weekly for some, and monthly for others. It’s important to make sure both you and your supervisor’s expectations match so that you can receive the best possible support.

This page covers how to find and choose a PhD supervisor. We’ve also explained the qualities of a good PhD supervisor.

On this page

How to find a phd supervisor.

How you'll find your PhD supervisor depends on whether you’re applying for an advertised project or putting forward your own research proposal .

If you’re applying for an advertised project , the process of finding a supervisor is simple. Usually they’ll be the academic who has devised the project in question, and the person you’ll be making your application to.

It’s still important to do your homework. Make sure you’re clued up on their research and able to ask sensible, specific questions about the project in your initial contact . Advertised projects – often with funding already attached – are much more common in STEM subjects , although you may still come across them in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences too.

If you’re proposing your own PhD project , you’ll need to do some investigation to find an academic whose research interests align with your own. The rest of this section will give you several pointers how you can do this.

Finding an expert in your field

First of all, you’ll want to have at least a rough idea of what you want your PhD topic to be. This is so that you can begin to narrow down prospective supervisors by research interests and focus on those that have expertise in your area.

This doesn’t necessarily have to mean finishing the final draft of your research proposal (that comes a little later), but you’ll need to have a decent plan of what you want to achieve with your PhD research so that you know you’re getting in touch with the right people (and not wasting your time – or theirs!).

There are several ways to do this:

• Browsing the academic staff section of a university department website – This is where lecturers and professors will list their research interests, publications and the areas in which they’re keen to supervise PhD students. Some websites allow you to filter and search by interest. In other cases you’ll need to check these profiles individually – time-consuming but worth it.
• Speaking to the academics at your current (or previous) university – These people will likely know exactly who the experts in your field are. They’ll probably even be experts themselves! If you already have a friendly relationship with a personal tutor or Masters dissertation supervisor, it’ll be good to have an informal chat about who they think could be a good fit for your work.
• Checking who has been prolific in your research area – There are probably a few names that have come up repeatedly in your previous work at postgraduate level. It’s worth scouring bibliographies and chapters to learn more about the academics behind them. Read up on their current work and find out whether they’re accepting supervisees.
• Scientific databases – If you’re a STEM student, scientific databases will give you lots of data with which to refine your search. This allows you to look for the most cited articles and thus find out who the leading researchers are.

Once you’ve done your research and have a good idea of the academic landscape around your proposed PhD topic, you should make a shortlist of around three potential supervisors to contact. Now is the time to make sure you’re really clued up on their academic background and current projects, so that you can make an excellent first impression when you get in touch with them.

Who can supervise a PhD student?

An academic doesn’t necessarily need to hold a senior role in order to supervise a PhD student. Junior research fellows and assistant professors often act as supervisors when their work is particularly relevant, as well as more senior professors and lecturers.

However, universities will have different policies on who exactly can supervise (and in what circumstances). It’s best to do your research if you think you’ve found the perfect supervisor candidate but they aren’t a lecturer.

Contacting a PhD supervisor

Our guide to contacting a PhD supervisor has everything you need to know about first contact, with tips on preparation, email etiquette, making a good impression and questions to ask.

How to choose a PhD supervisor

If you’re in a lucky enough position that you have two or more prospective supervisors that are happy to oversee your PhD project, there are several factors that you might consider when making your final decision:

• What career stage your potential supervisor is at – An academic at the beginning of their career might have fewer professional commitments and therefore more time to supervise you. A senior lecturer or professor, meanwhile, may have an extremely busy professional life – but this could be counterbalanced by their expertise and experience.
• Other supervisees – Find out what kind of work the supervisor has previously been (or is currently) involved in. You can normally see a list of current research students on a department website, for example. Are they engaged in similar work to you? See if you can find out what path previous supervisees took after finishing their PhD. Maybe stayed in the department or took up postdoc positions.
• University facilities – If your choices of supervisor are at different universities, weigh up the benefits that might come with the specialist facilities and resources available at each institution.
• University department – Depending on your preferences, you may want to work within a small, specialised department or a larger team that allows more scope for cross-disciplinary collaboration.

If you’re able to meet your potential supervisor – either in-person or via video call – that can also be a great way of gauging their personality and your chemistry. You’re going to be working with them for a minimum of three years, so you want to make sure you’re going to get on with them!

What are the qualities of a good PhD supervisor?

Now that you know how to find a supervisor for your project, you might be wondering about how to choose a good PhD supervisor. You’ll be spending a lot of time with them during your PhD, so it pays to understand what to look out for in terms of personality traits, expertise and experience.

#1 Substantial research expertise

The ideal PhD supervisor will be an expert in their academic field, with a wealth of publications, articles, chapters and books. They’ll also have a background in organising and presenting at conference events.

It’s also important that their expertise is up-to-date. You should look for evidence that they’re currently active in your research area, with recent publications and conference attendance. The quality of these publications is also important – prominent, peer-reviewed journals are ideal. If your prospective supervisor has lots of citations, that’s also a great sign.

#2 Clear about their career plans

After you’ve made initial contact with a supervisor, it’s good to get an idea of where they see their own future. If they’re planning to retire, go on sabbatical or change institution, that could cause problems for your PhD later down the line. It goes without saying that you want a supervisor who is going to stick around for the duration of your PhD.

#3 Previous experience as a PhD supervisor

Ideally, a supervisor should have a long track record of supervising PhD candidates, with plenty of experience helping them through the ups and downs that come with research. It’s well worth investigating how previous supervisees have done under the tutelage of your prospective supervisor – university websites, ResearchGate and LinkedIn are the best places to do this.

If you’re able to visit the department in person, speak to current PhD students to get an idea of how they’re getting on.

#4 Personality

It can be difficult to judge someone’s personality on the basis of emails, a video call or a chat over coffee, but try to decide if your potential supervisor is a good match for you on a personal level.

Do they seem enthusiastic about your work and inspiring about their own interests? Will they make a good mentor when it comes down to the hard work of completing your PhD? Are they more of a hands-on or hands-off supervisor?

#5 Organisational skills

Excellent organisational skills – both on your part and your supervisor’s part – are key to succeeding at a PhD. You’ll want a supervisor that is clear with their expectations, giving you deadlines where necessary but also having some flexibility that takes your personal situation into account.

You also want a supervisor who is easy to get hold of for feedback and advice, with regular office hours. Many academics are extremely busy, but you should expect your supervisor to find time for you where necessary.

Can I change my PhD supervisor?

There are a variety of reasons why someone may want or need to change their PhD supervisor. Issues with the working relationship or other circumstances could make a supervisor unable to provide proper support . Unfortunately these things happen, but universities are well equipped to help PhD students in these instances.

Usually PhD students wishing to change supervisors should contact their departmental head of postgraduate study to discuss the situation. They will then advise on the best course of action to take. If there is an available academic in the department with the right expertise for your project, then they will be assigned as your new supervisor. Otherwise, you may have to consider transferring to another university.

PhD supervisor guide

If you want to find out more about what it's like to work with a PhD supervisor, we've written a guide on what to expect from your PhD supervisor . Then, head over to our course listings where you can find information on interesting courses and their academic supervisors.

Our postgrad newsletter shares courses, funding news, stories and advice

Ben worked in the FindAPhD content team from 2017 to 2022, starting as an Assistant Content Writer and leaving as Student Content Manager. He focused on producing well-researched advice across a range of topics related to postgraduate study. Ben has a Bachelors degree in English Literature from the University of Sheffield and a Masters from the University of Amsterdam. Having also spent a semester at the University of Helsinki through the Erasmus programme, he’s no stranger to study abroad (or cold weather!).

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• PLoS Comput Biol
• v.17(9); 2021 Sep

Ten simple rules for choosing a PhD supervisor

Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Catherine Bannon

J. scott p. mccain, introduction.

The PhD beckons. You thought long and hard about why you want to do it, you understand the sacrifices and commitments it entails, and you have decided that it is the right thing for you. Congratulations! Undertaking a doctoral degree can be an extremely rewarding experience, greatly enhancing your personal, intellectual, and professional development. If you are still on the fence about whether or not you want to pursue a PhD, see [ 1 , 2 ] and others to help you decide.

As a PhD student in the making, you will have many important decisions to consider. Several of them will depend on your chosen discipline and research topic, the institution you want to attend, and even the country where you will undertake your degree. However, one of the earliest and most critical decisions you will need to make transcends most other decisions: choosing your PhD thesis supervisor. Your PhD supervisor will strongly influence the success and quality of your degree as well as your general well-being throughout the program. It is therefore vital to choose the right supervisor for you. A wrong choice or poor fit can be disastrous on both a personal and professional levels—something you obviously want to avoid. Unfortunately, however, most PhD students go through the process of choosing a supervisor only once and thus do not get the opportunity to learn from previous experiences. Additionally, many prospective PhD students do not have access to resources and proper guidance to rely on when making important academic decisions such as those involved in choosing a PhD supervisor.

In this short guide, we—a group of PhD students with varied backgrounds, research disciplines, and academic journeys—share our collective experiences with choosing our own PhD supervisors. We provide tips and advice to help prospective students in various disciplines, including computational biology, in their quest to find a suitable PhD supervisor. Despite procedural differences across countries, institutions, and programs, the following rules and discussions should remain helpful for guiding one’s approach to selecting their future PhD supervisor. These guidelines mostly address how to evaluate a potential PhD supervisor and do not include details on how you might find a supervisor. In brief, you can find a supervisor anywhere: seminars, a class you were taught, internet search of interesting research topics, departmental pages, etc. After reading about a group’s research and convincing yourself it seems interesting, get in touch! Make sure to craft an e-mail carefully, demonstrating you have thought about their research and what you might do in their group. After finding one or several supervisors of interest, we hope that the rules bellow will help you choose the right supervisor for you.

Rule 1: Align research interests

You need to make sure that a prospective supervisor studies, or at the very least, has an interest in what you want to study. A good starting point would be to browse their personal and research group websites (though those are often outdated), their publication profile, and their students’ theses, if possible. Keep in mind that the publication process can be slow, so recent publications may not necessarily reflect current research in that group. Pay special attention to publications where the supervisor is senior author—in life sciences, their name would typically be last. This would help you construct a mental map of where the group interests are going, in addition to where they have been.

Be proactive about pursuing your research interests, but also flexible: Your dream research topic might not currently be conducted in a particular group, but perhaps the supervisor is open to exploring new ideas and research avenues with you. Check that the group or institution of interest has the facilities and resources appropriate for your research, and/or be prepared to establish collaborations to access those resources elsewhere. Make sure you like not only the research topic, but also the “grunt work” it requires, as a topic you find interesting may not be suitable for you in terms of day-to-day work. You can look at the “Methods” sections of published papers to get a sense for what this is like—for example, if you do not like resolving cryptic error messages, programming is probably not for you, and you might want to consider a wet lab–based project. Lastly, any research can be made interesting, and interests change. Perhaps your favorite topic today is difficult to work with now, and you might cut your teeth on a different project.

Rule 2: Seek trusted sources

Discussing your plans with experienced and trustworthy people is a great way to learn more about the reputation of potential supervisors, their research group dynamics, and exciting projects in your field of interest. Your current supervisor, if you have one, could be aware of position openings that are compatible with your interests and time frame and is likely to know talented supervisors with good reputations in their fields. Professors you admire, reliable student advisors, and colleagues might also know your prospective supervisor on various professional or personal levels and could have additional insight about working with them. Listen carefully to what these trusted sources have to say, as they can provide a wealth of insider information (e.g., personality, reputation, interpersonal relationships, and supervisory styles) that might not be readily accessible to you.

Rule 3: Expectations, expectations, expectations

A considerable portion of PhD students feel that their program does not meet original expectations [ 3 ]. To avoid being part of this group, we stress the importance of aligning your expectations with the supervisor’s expectations before joining a research group or PhD program. Also, remember that one person’s dream supervisor can be another’s worst nightmare and vice versa—it is about a good fit for you. Identifying what a “good fit” looks like requires a serious self-appraisal of your goals (see Rule 1 ), working style (see Rule 5 ), and what you expect in a mentor (see Rule 4 ). One way to conduct this self-appraisal is to work in a research lab to get experiences similar to a PhD student (if this is possible).

Money!—Many people have been conditioned to avoid the subject of finances at all costs, but setting financial expectations early is crucial for maintaining your well-being inside and outside the lab. Inside the lab, funding will provide chemicals and equipment required for you to do cool research. It is also important to know if there will be sufficient funding for your potential projects to be completed. Outside the lab, you deserve to get paid a reasonable, livable stipend. What is the minimum required take-home stipend, or does that even exist at the institution you are interested in? Are there hard cutoffs for funding once your time runs out, or does the institution have support for students who take longer than anticipated? If the supervisor supplies the funding, do they end up cutting off students when funds run low, or do they have contingency plans? ( Fig 1 ).

Professional development opportunities—A key aspect of graduate school training is professional development. In some research groups, it is normal for PhD students to mentor undergraduate students or take a semester to work in industry to get more diverse experiences. Other research groups have clear links with government entities, which is helpful for going into policy or government-based research. These opportunities (and others) are critical for your career and next steps. What are the career development opportunities and expectations of a potential supervisor? Is a potential supervisor happy to send students to workshops to learn new skills? Are they supportive of public outreach activities? If you are looking at joining a newer group, these sorts of questions will have to be part of the larger set of conversations about expectations. Ask: “What sort of professional development opportunities are there at the institution?”

Publications—Some PhD programs have minimum requirements for finishing a thesis (i.e., you must publish a certain number of papers prior to defending), while other programs leave it up to the student and supervisor to decide on this. A simple and important topic to discuss is: How many publications are expected from your PhD and when will you publish them? If you are keen to publish in high-impact journals, does your prospective supervisor share that aim? (Although question why you are so keen to do so, see the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment ( www.sfdora.org ) to learn about the pitfalls of journal impact factor.)

Rule 4: It takes two to tango

Sooner or later, you will get to meet and interview with a prospective PhD supervisor. This should go both ways: Interview them just as much as they are interviewing you. Prepare questions and pay close attention to how they respond. For example, ask them about their “lab culture,” research interests (especially for the future/long term), and what they are looking for in a graduate student. Do you feel like you need to “put on an act” to go along with the supervisor (beyond just the standard interview mode)? Represent yourself, and not the person you think they are looking for. All of us will have some interviews go badly. Remember that discovering a poor fit during the interview has way fewer consequences than the incompatibility that could arise once you have committed to a position.

To come up with good questions for the prospective supervisor, first ask yourself questions. What are you looking for in a mentor? People differ in their optimal levels of supervision, and there is nothing wrong with wanting more or less than your peers. How much career guidance do you expect and does the potential supervisor respect your interests, particularly if your long-term goals do not include academia? What kind of student might not thrive in this research group?

Treat the PhD position like a partnership: What do you seek to get out of it? Keep in mind that a large portion of research is conducted by PhD students [ 4 ], so you are also an asset. Your supervisor will provide guidance, but the PhD is your work. Make sure you and your mentor are on the same page before committing to what is fundamentally a professional contract akin to an apprenticeship (see “ Rule 3 ”).

Rule 5: Workstyle compatibility

Sharing interests with a supervisor does not necessarily guarantee you would work well together, and just because you enjoyed a course by a certain professor does not mean they are the right PhD supervisor for you. Make sure your expectations for work and work–life approaches are compatible. Do you thrive on structure, or do you need freedom to proceed at your own pace? Do they expect you to be in the lab from 6:00 AM to midnight on a regular basis (red flag!)? Are they comfortable with you working from home when you can? Are they around the lab enough for it to work for you? Are they supportive of alternative work hours if you have other obligations (e.g., childcare, other employment, extracurriculars)? How is the group itself organized? Is there a lab manager or are the logistics shared (fairly?) between the group members? Discuss this before you commit!

Two key attributes of a research group are the supervisor’s career stage and number of people in the group. A supervisor in a later career stage may have more established research connections and protocols. An earlier career stage supervisor comes with more opportunities to shape the research direction of the lab, but less access to academic political power and less certainty in what their supervision style will be (even to themselves). Joining new research groups provides a great opportunity to learn how to build a lab if you are considering that career path but may take away time and energy from your thesis project. Similarly, be aware of pros and cons of different lab sizes. While big labs provide more opportunity for collaborations and learning from fellow lab members, their supervisors generally have less time available for each trainee. Smaller labs tend to have better access to the supervisor but may be more isolating [ 5 , 6 ]. Also note that large research groups tend to be better for developing extant research topics further, while small groups can conduct more disruptive research [ 7 ].

Rule 6: Be sure to meet current students

Meeting with current students is one of the most important steps prior to joining a lab. Current students will give you the most direct and complete sense of what working with a certain supervisor is actually like. They can also give you a valuable sense of departmental culture and nonacademic life. You could also ask to meet with other students in the department to get a broader sense of the latter. However, if current students are not happy with their current supervisor, they are unlikely to tell you directly. Try to ask specific questions: “How often do you meet with your supervisor?”, “What are the typical turnaround times for a paper draft?”, “How would you describe the lab culture?”, “How does your supervisor react to mistakes or unexpected results?”, “How does your supervisor react to interruptions to research from, e.g., personal life?”, and yes, even “What would you say is the biggest weakness of your supervisor?”

Rule 7: But also try to meet past students

While not always possible, meeting with past students can be very informative. Past students give you information on career outcomes (i.e., what are they doing now?) and can provide insight into what the lab was like when they were in it. Previous students will provide a unique perspective because they have gone through the entire process, from start to finish—and, in some cases, no longer feel obligated to speak well of their now former supervisor. It can also be helpful to look at previous students’ experiences by reading the acknowledgement section in their theses.

Rule 8: Consider the entire experience

Your PhD supervisor is only one—albeit large—piece of your PhD puzzle. It is therefore essential to consider your PhD experience as whole when deciding on a supervisor. One important aspect to contemplate is your mental health. Graduate students have disproportionately higher rates of depression and anxiety compared to the general population [ 8 ], so your mental health will be tested greatly throughout your PhD experience. We suggest taking the time to reflect on what factors would enable you to do your best work while maintaining a healthy work–life balance. Does your happiness depend on surfing regularly? Check out coastal areas. Do you despise being cold? Consider being closer to the equator. Do you have a deep-rooted phobia of koalas? Maybe avoid Australia. Consider these potentially even more important questions like: Do you want to be close to your friends and family? Will there be adequate childcare support? Are you comfortable with studying abroad? How does the potential university treat international or underrepresented students? When thinking about your next steps, keep in mind that although obtaining your PhD will come with many challenges, you will be at your most productive when you are well rested, financially stable, nourished, and enjoying your experience.

Rule 9: Trust your gut

You have made it to our most “hand-wavy” rule! As academics, we understand the desire for quantifiable data and some sort of statistic to make logical decisions. If this is more your style, consider every interaction with a prospective supervisor, from the first e-mail onwards, as a piece of data.

However, there is considerable value in trusting gut instincts. One way to trust your gut is to listen to your internal dialogue while making your decision on a PhD supervisor. For example, if your internal dialogue includes such phrases as “it will be different for me,” “I’ll just put my head down and work hard,” or “maybe their students were exaggerating,” you might want to proceed with caution. If you are saying “Wow! How are they so kind and intelligent?” or “I cannot wait to start!”, then you might have found a winner ( Fig 2 ).

Rule 10: Wash, rinse, repeat

The last piece of advice we give you is to do this lengthy process all over again. Comparing your options is a key step during the search for a PhD supervisor. By screening multiple different groups, you ultimately learn more about what red flags to look for, compatible work styles, your personal expectations, and group atmospheres. Repeat this entire process with another supervisor, another university, or even another country. We suggest you reject the notion that you would be “wasting someone’s time.” You deserve to take your time and inform yourself to choose a PhD supervisor wisely. The time and energy invested in a “failed” supervisor search would still be far less than what is consumed by a bad PhD experience ( Fig 3 ).

The more supervisors your interview and the more advice you get from peers, the more apparent these red flags will become.

Conclusions

Pursuing a PhD can be an extremely rewarding endeavor and a time of immense personal growth. The relationship you have with your PhD supervisor can make or break an entire experience, so make this choice carefully. Above, we have outlined some key points to think about while making this decision. Clarifying your own expectations is a particularly important step, as conflicts can arise when there are expectation mismatches. In outlining these topics, we hope to share pieces of advice that sometimes require “insider” knowledge and experience.

After thoroughly evaluating your options, go ahead and tackle the PhD! In our own experiences, carefully choosing a supervisor has led to relationships that morph from mentor to mentee into a collaborative partnership where we can pose new questions and construct novel approaches to answer them. Science is hard enough by itself. If you choose your supervisor well and end up developing a positive relationship with them and their group, you will be better suited for sound and enjoyable science.

Funding Statement

The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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What Makes A Good PhD Supervisor?

• By Dr Harry Hothi
• August 12, 2020

A good PhD supervisor has a track record of supervising PhD students through to completion, has a strong publication record, is active in their research field, has sufficient time to provide adequate supervision, is genuinely interested in your project, can provide mentorship and has a supportive personality.

Introduction

The indicators that you’ll have the best chance of succeeding in your PhD project are multi-factorial. You’ll need to secure funding, find a research project that you’re interested in and is within your academic area of expertise, maybe even write your own research proposal, and find a good supervisor that will help guide you through PhD life.

As you research more into life as a doctoral student, you’ll appreciate that choosing a good supervisor is one of the most important factors that can influence the success of your project, and even If you complete your PhD at all. You need to find a good supervisory relationship with someone who has a genuine research interest in your project.

This page outlines the top qualities to look for as indicators of an ideal PhD supervisor. But before we get to that, we should be clear on precisely what the supervisor is there to do, and what they are not.

The Role of a PhD Supervisor

A PhD supervisor is there to guide you as you work through PhD life and help you make informed decisions about how you shape your PhD project. The key elements of their supervisory role include:

• To help ensure that you stay on schedule and maintain constant progress of your research so that you ultimately finish your PhD within your intended time frame, typically three to four years.
• To advise and guide you based on their knowledge and expertise in your subject area.
• To help you in the decision-making process as you design, prepare and execute your study design.
• To work with you as you analyse your raw data and begin to draw conclusions about key findings that are coming out of your research.
• To provide feedback and edits where necessary on your manuscripts and elements of your thesis writing.
• To encourage and motivate you and provide ongoing support as a mentor.
• To provide support at a human level, beyond just the academic challenges.

It’s important that you know from the outset what a supervisor isn’t there to do, so that your expectations of the PhDstudent-supervisor relationship are correct. A supervisor cannot and should not create your study design or tell you how you should run your experiments or help you write your thesis. Broadly speaking, you as a PhD student will create, develop and refine content for your thesis, and your supervisor will help you improve this content by providing you with continuous constructive feedback.

There’s a balance to be found here in what makes a good PhD supervisor, ranging from one extreme of providing very little support during a research project, to becoming too involved in the running of the project to the extent that it takes away from it being an independent body of work by the graduate student themselves. Ultimately, what makes a good supervisor is someone you can build a rapport with, who helps bring out the best in you to produce a well written, significant body of research that contributes novel findings to your subject area.

Read on to learn the key qualities you should consider when looking for a good PhD supervisor.

Qualities to Look For in A Good PhD Supervisor

1. a track record of successful phd student supervision.

A quick first check to gauge how good a prospective supervisor is is to find out how many students they’ve successfully supervised in the past; i.e. how many students have earned their PhD under their supervision. Ideally, you’d want to go one step further and find out:

• How many students they’ve supervised in total previously and of those, what percentage have gone onto gain their PhDs; however, this level of detail may not always be easy to find online. Most often though, a conversation with a potential supervisor and even their current or previous students should help you get an idea of this.
• What were the project titles and specifically the areas of research that they supervised on? Are these similar to your intended project or are they significantly different from the type of work performed in the academic’s lab in the past? Of the current students in the lab, are there any projects that could complement yours
• Did any of the previous PhD students publish the work of their doctoral research in peer-reviewed journals and present at conferences? It’s a great sign if they have, and in particular, if they’re named first authors in some or all of these publications.

This isn’t to say that a potential supervisor without a track record of PhD supervision is necessarily a bad fit, especially if the supervisor is relatively new to the position and is still establishing their research group. It is, however, reassuring if you know they have supervision experience in supporting students to successful PhD completion.

2. Is an Expert in their Field of Research

As a PhD candidate, you will want your supervisor to have a high level of research expertise within the field that your own research topic sits in. This expertise will be essential if they are to help guide you through your research and keep you on track to what is most novel and impactful to your research area.

Your supervisor doesn’t necessarily need to have all the answers to questions that arise in your specific PhD project, but should know enough to be able to have useful conversations about your research. It will be your responsibility to discover the answers to problems as they arise, and you should even expect to complete your PhD with a higher level of expertise about your project than your supervisor.

The best way to determine if your supervisor has the expertise to supervise you properly is to look at their publication track record. The things you need to look for are:

• How often do they publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, and are they still actively involved in new papers coming out in the research field?
• What type of journals have they published in? For example, are most papers in comparatively low impact factor journals, or do they have at least some in the ‘big’ journals within your field?
• How many citations do they have from their research? This can be a good indicator of the value that other researchgroups place on these publications; having 50 papers published that have been cited only 10 times may (but not always) suggest that this research is not directly relevant to the subject area or focus from other groups.
• How many co-authors has your potential supervisor published with? Many authors from different institutions is a good indicator of a vast collaborative professional network that could be useful to you.

There’re no hard metrics here as to how many papers or citations an individual needs to be considered an expert, and these numbers can vary considerably between different disciplines. Instead, it’s better to get a sense of where your potential supervisor’s track record sits in comparison to other researchers in the same field; remember that it would be unfair to directly compare the output of a new university lecturer with a well-established professor who has naturally led more research projects.

Equally, this exercise is a good way for you to better understand how interested your supervisor will be in your research; if you find that much of their research output is directly related to your PhD study, then it’s logical that your supervisor has a real interest here. While the opposite is not necessarily true, it’s understandable from a human perspective that a supervisor may be less interested in a project that doesn’t help to further their own research work, especially if they’re already very busy.

Two excellent resources to look up publications are Google Scholar and ResearchGate .

3. Has Enough Time to Provide Good PhD Supervision

This seems like an obvious point, but it’s worth emphasising: how smoothly your PhD goes and ultimately how successful it is, will largely be influenced by how much time your research supervisor has to provide guidance, constructive academic advice and mentorship. The fact that your supervisor is the world’s leading expert in your field becomes a moot point if they don’t have time to meet you.

A good PhD supervisor will take the time to meet with you regularly in person (ideally) or remotely and be reachable and responsive to questions as and when they arise (e.g. through email or video calling). As a student, you want to have a research environment where you know you can drop by your supervisors’ office for a quick chat, or that you’ll see them around the university regularly; chance encounters and corridor discussions are sometimes the most impactful when working through problems.

Unsurprisingly, however, most academics who are well-known experts in their field are also usually some of the busiest too. It’s common for established academic supervisors to have several commitments competing for their time. These can include teaching and supervising undergraduate students, masters students and post-docs, travelling to collaborator meetings or invited talks, managing the growth of their academic department or graduate school, sitting on advisory boards and writing grants for funding applications. Beware of the other obligations they may have and how this could impact your work relationship.

You’ll need to find a balance here to find a PhD supervisor who has the academic knowledge to support you, but also the time to do so; talking to their current and past students will help you get a sense of this. It’s also reassuring to know that your supervisor has a permanent position within your university and has no plans for a sabbatical during your time as a PhD researcher.

4. Is a Good Mentor with a Supportive Personality

A PhD project is an exercise in independently producing a substantial body of research work; the primary role of your supervisor should be to provide mentoring to help you achieve this. You want to have a supervisor with the necessary academic knowledge, but it is just as important to have a supportive supervisor who is actively willing and able to provide you constructive criticism on your work in a consistent manner. You’ll likely get a sense of their personality during your first few meetings with them when discussing your research proposal; if you feel there’s a disconnect between you as a PhD student and your potential supervisor at this stage, it’s better to decide on other options with different supervisors.

A good supervisor will help direct you towards the best outcomes in your PhD research when you reach crossroads. They will work with you to develop a structure for your thesis and encourage you to set deadlines to work to and push you to achieve these. A good mentor should be able to recognise when you need more support in a specific area, be it a technical academic hurdle or simply some guidance in developing efficient work patterns and routines, and have the communication skills to help you recognise and overcome them.

A good supervisor should share the same mindset as you about finishing your PhD within a reasonable time frame; in the UK this would be within three to four years as a full-time university student. Their encouragement should reflect this and (gently) push you to set and reach mini-milestones throughout your project to ensure you stay on track with progress. This is a great example of when a supportive personality and positive attitude is essential for you both to maintain a good professional relationship throughout a PhD. The ideal supervisor will bring out the best in you without becoming prescriptive in their guidance, allowing you the freedom to develop your own working style.

Finding a PhD has never been this easy – search for a PhD by keyword, location or academic area of interest.

To sum up, the qualities you should look for in a good PhD supervisor are that they have a strong understanding of your research field, demonstrated by regular and impactful publications, have a proven track record of PhD supervision, have the time to support you, and will do so by providing mentorship rather than being a ‘boss’.

As a final point, if you’re considering a research career after you finish your PhD journey, get a sense of if there may any research opportunities to continue as a postdoc with the supervisor if you so wanted.

There are various types of research that are classified by objective, depth of study, analysed data and the time required to study the phenomenon etc.

Academic conferences are expensive and it can be tough finding the funds to go; this naturally leads to the question of are academic conferences worth it?

You’ll come across many academics with PhD, some using the title of Doctor and others using Professor. This blog post helps you understand the differences.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

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The Thurstone Scale is used to quantify the attitudes of people being surveyed, using a format of ‘agree-disagree’ statements.

There’s no doubt about it – writing can be difficult. Whether you’re writing the first sentence of a paper or a grant proposal, it’s easy

Gareth is getting ready for his PhD viva at Aberystwyth University and has been researching bacteria living inside coastal plants that can help other plants grow in salt contaminated soils.

Adam’s about to start his fifth year of PhD research at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he’s earning a doctorate in anthropology as an affiliated researcher with the University of Iceland’s medical school.

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PhD Programme / ILLC

Supervision

Main supervisor and second supervisor(s).

Your PhD project will be overseen by one main supervisor and at least a second supervisor. Both supervisors must be appointed right at the start of your PhD track.

Your main supervisor will guide you and support you in all aspects of your research, will monitor your training needs as well as your progress, and will lead you through the process of producing the thesis and its examination. They will also advice you and  help you in your career before and after graduation.

The second supervisor can have different degrees of involvement in your PhD project, from being an informal advisor to acting as co-supervisor side by side with your main supervisor. The second supervisor may be an external researcher from a different university.

On the Code of Practice for supervisors you can find a more detailed description of the roles and responibilities of your main and second supervisor.

Note on conflicts of interest.  Family members of the supervisor or co-supervisor or other individuals whose relationship to the supervisor or co-supervisor could give rise to suspicions of partiality may not be appointed as supervisors, co-supervisors, voting members of the Doctorate Committee, guest experts, guest opponents, referees, or chairperson of the Doctorate Committee.

Finally, you and your supervisors are jointly responsible for ensuring that you can realistically finish your PhD track within the agreed time. Your supervisors are expected to inform the ILLC immediately of any problems that could potentially hinder you completing the PhD track within the given time frame.

Code of Practice for supervisors

To make sure that the Training and Supervision Plan (see the procedures for year one ) is submitted to the ILLC within the first three months after the start of your appointment.

To organize and conduct the first-year assessment interview and annual evaluation meetings (see for example the procedures for year one and the procedures for year two and three )

To inform the ILLC immediately of any problems that could potentially hinder you completing the PhD track within the given time frame.

In order to obtain a PhD degree, you need a so-called promotor . However, in the Netherlands, not all professors have the right to be a PhD promotor (ius promovendi). All full professors have this right. Associate professors can be granted ius promovendi on an individual basis, depending on their experience as co-promotor and supervisor. Assistant professors can be granted ius promovendi on an ad hoc basis for a specific PhD candidate, depending on various criteria.

If none of your supervisors has been granted ius promovendi, another professor who does have this right will need to be appointed as promotor . Your main supervisor and co-supervisor(s) will officially be called co-promotors . You may have a maximum of two promotors and two co-promotors . The role of the promotor can range from fully involved supervisor to purely administrative. Your main supervisor, co-supervisor(s) and promotor will agree on the extent to which each of them will be involved in the actual supervision of your research. The degree of involvement of each member of your supervision team should be described in your Training and Supervision Plan, so that this is clear from the beginning for all parties.

In those rare cases when it is not clear at the start of your PhD track who can act as your promotor , the institute director can be designated promotor : this is a temporary and purely pro-forma role, to comply with the administrative regulations for admission. In this case, you and your supervisors should agree who is to be your actual promotor by the start of the third year, at the latest.

If you want to know whether at least one of your supervisors has been granted ius promovendi, you'll just have to ask them.

If neither of your supervisors (copromotors) are full professors, the director of the institute will be designated as pro-forma promotor for the time being. You should agree with your supervisors and the pro-forma promotor who is to be your actual promotor by the third year, at the latest.

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"Family tree" of mathematicians and their PhD advisors and students

Whilst looking at the Wikipedia pages for some well known mathematicians I was surprised at how many of them were advised by other recognisable mathematicians. In some cases I could back track 5 or more mathemaicians I recognised just through Advisors.

Is there a website or database etc that has collated this in some sort of "family tree" style format? I think it would be interesting to see visually how interconnected the influential mathematicians of the past were.

• mathematics
• mathematicians
• mathematics-social-history

• 9 $\begingroup$ Yes, this database is called "Math Genealogy", genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu . Enjoy. BTW it is not surprising that well known mathematicians come from well known advisers:-) Exceptions from this rule are more surprising. $\endgroup$ –  Alexandre Eremenko Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 1:21
• 2 $\begingroup$ This database is fun to browse, but infuriatingly quirky. Since Cambridge University lists 2 supervisors per degree, if you have 1 Cambridge "ancestor" you probably have 2^n. And the concept of "advisor" has changed over time. And "horizontal" connections (of the sort Erdos made famous) are not represented. $\endgroup$ –  kimchi lover Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 14:31
• $\begingroup$ @kimchilover your comment is so important that I want to both emphasize it and elaborate. Our current PhD system is inspired by the german model from the early 19th century. France and Britain did not have the same system until late 19th century for France and early 20th century for Britain (I don't know about other places). So the database is good for the 20th century, but before that it contains educated guesses for people outside Germany. Cambridge is notorious for that, one of the listed supervisors is typically the person's tutor for the math tripos. $\endgroup$ –  cesaruliana Commented Oct 17, 2020 at 17:47
• $\begingroup$ @AlexandreEremenko the most frequent exceptions (not-well known from not-well known) may be less surprising than the more exceptional exceptions :-) $\endgroup$ –  uhoh Commented Oct 18, 2020 at 7:46
• $\begingroup$ @kimchi lover: Yes, very much can be said about deficiencies and inconsistencies of this database. Still, overall, on my opinion this is a very entertaining and sometimes useful thing. $\endgroup$ –  Alexandre Eremenko Commented Oct 18, 2020 at 13:18

Yes, this database is called "Math Genealogy", genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu. Its value and reliability has been much discussed, but on my opinion, it is useful and entertaining. AMS is probably of the same opinion: it includes links to it in MathScinet.

Some points of criticism are the following: the notions of PhD degree and PhD adviser is relatively recent; it did not exist in all countries at all times, though the database covers some people back to 15 century.

Until 18 century mathematics was not a profession, so inevitably the database contains many people who cannot be called mathematicians, or mathematicians who earned a degree for other things.

The data about 19-20 centuries PhD does not cover various countries uniformly.

With all these drawbacks, one still can learn something interesting from this database.

BTW it is not surprising that well known mathematicians come from well known advisers:-) Exceptions from this rule are more surprising.

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