Thinking about supervision
Professional intimacy in a tradition of transmission
Here are some paradoxes, contradictions and ambiguities of being a doctoral supervisor, which demand constant phronetic judgement and mutual responsiveness.
The supervisory relationship is based on the experience of the supervisor(s) having already passed through the gate. It is a relationship which goes beyond the people in question, because the supervisor(s) was once supervised themselves, and so on, and so on. The relationship is both unique and a manifestation of a group practice with a history. This chain of prior relationships may or may not have been productive, so transmission is not simply mimetic, but is sometimes trying to counter previous lacks. Just as social relations change over time, so do the fashions of supervision, which may show up in differences between supervisors of the same student. The supervisory encounter can be a cacophony of voices from past and present – sometimes the room can be crowded.
The supervisory relationship can provoke a profound disturbance in both parties, calling out sometimes unhelpful transference and projection. It is a relationship of authority with all the stirrings of the unconscious that this evokes. And the relationship itself is always changing, and one hopes, maturing. It is a kind of professional intimacy with each adapting and responding to the other. It’s a professional intimacy because noone has to like the other, (liking each other can help and can also get in the way) but are still obliged to find a way of working together and in the process getting to know each other quite well.
Just as the supervisor needs to make a judgement about when to instruct, when to persuade, when to trust the student’s judgement, so the student needs to make a judgement about when to accept, when to resist, and when to negotiate a compromise.
A supervisor’s judgement isn’t always good, no matter how experienced they are, which is why it is helpful to have a second and even a third supervisor. Sometimes principal supervisor and student can get stuck in their own unhelpful patterns, because of the relationship and what each brings to the relationship from elsewhere. It is impossible to have a relationship which is influence and prejudice-free.
There is a paradox in trying to teach, or lead someone to become an independent researcher, in a relationship that starts out being relatively dependent.
The relationship depends upon mutual confidence, which ebbs and flows both ways, but preeminent is the confidence the supervisor must feel, and show, in the student. When the supervisors’ confidence in the student diminishes it is likely to produce a crisis.
There is a paradox in the discipline of becoming a research student. Without submitting, becoming a ‘disciple’ of the discipline, there will be no profound learning, no making the subject one’s own. But if the student only submits, then they merely go on to parrot what is already known, and the discipline becomes sclerotic. The transition from novice to expert involves finding one’s voice along the way to say something unique in a general tradition.
There is a readiness, or ripeness, for a student to be able to respond to suggestions from a supervisor. Encouragement doesn’t always lead to students feeling encouraged, and advice may be rejected. For example, inviting a student to read a particular author may result in the student claiming that they didn’t find the particular author helpful at all. Months later, and having forgotten the original recommendation, the student will bring the same author to supervision exclaiming that someone else had recommended said author and they have found it both helpful and stimulating.
Does it go without saying that a fruitful supervisory relationship is one where both parties find the research material interesting and compelling?
I wonder how much of the richness of the supervisory relationship will show up in online encounters when supervisors may be expected to supervise multiple students. What chance of developing the professional intimacy, the dilemmas, paradoxes and ambivalences of face to face encounters?
Chris,
I'm reading this, of course, with curiosity, anticipation, fear, hope... as I imagine what may transpire over the next few years. And I noticed similarities in the patient-physician relationship, particularly in primary care, as I reflect on the many relationships I participated in over those years. Similar dynamics, similar concerns related to virtual care. Thank you for sharing.
Chris,
I’m reading this as someone who’s never experienced doctoral supervision and likely never will. I’m what academics might call an ‘independent scholar’ but what I’d call someone doing systematic cultural work accountable to community rather than institution.
So when you write about ‘passing through the gate,’ I’m analysing gatekeeping from the position of someone that gate was designed to keep out.
You capture something real about the interpersonal complexity of these relationships - the dependence/independence, the professional intimacy, the mutual vulnerability.
I recognise these dynamics from twenty years managing hospitality teams, navigating power relationships where authority and care intertwine, where people must work together productively without necessarily liking each other.
But here’s what I see from outside: you present these paradoxes as universal features of knowledge development when they’re actually specific to gatekeeping institutions. What you call ‘becoming a disciple of the discipline’ before finding your voice - that’s not how informal researchers work. We develop voice through community accountability, not institutional submission. We become ‘ripe’ or ‘ready’ through material necessity and political urgency, not through supervised dependency.
The ‘chain of relationships’ you describe - supervisor was supervised, who was supervised - that chain deliberately excludes people like me. Not because we lack intellectual capacity or cultural curiosity, but because we can’t afford years of dependent relationships with middle-class gatekeepers who determine when we’re ‘ready.’
The paradoxes you identify aren’t philosophical - they’re material. They describe how institutions maintain control over knowledge production whilst claiming to democratise it.
When you ask ‘Does it go without saying that fruitful supervision requires both parties finding the research compelling?’ - that question reveals everything.
For informal researchers, the work being compelling isn’t leisure preference, it’s survival necessity. I research class and institutional gatekeeping because these systems are crushing my community, not because I find them intellectually stimulating.
The middle-class luxury of pursuing knowledge for its own fascination - that’s exactly the privilege this supervision model requires and reproduces.
I appreciate your attention to relational complexity because these dynamics are real. But your analysis needs class infrastructure. The contradictions you describe aren’t universal; they’re produced by specific institutional arrangements that privilege some students whilst systematically eliminating others.
What would knowledge production look like if we designed it around community accountability rather than supervisory chains? What analytical possibilities emerge when ‘readiness’ means political urgency rather than institutional patience? What happens when ‘finding your voice’ doesn’t require prior submission to disciplines that were never designed for voices like mine?
Rob