The Australian Human Rights Institute and the Gendered Violence Research Network at UNSW are launching a major research project examining relationship issues between higher degree researchers and their supervisors across 10 Australian universities.
Online surveys will begin to roll out from today and will be accompanied by interviews with both PhDs and Masters by research candidates and their supervisors.
“To date, research around problematic behaviour in Australian university environments has largely focused on undergraduate or coursework students, overlooking the particular experiences of higher degree researchers,” said Dr Allison Henry, Research Fellow at the Australian Human Rights Institute.
“Higher degree researchers are engaged in different learning environments compared with coursework students, characterised by a strong reliance on their supervisors to guide their studies and connect them to wider academic networks. These circumstances lend to particular challenges and vulnerabilities.”
A pilot project led by the Australian Human Rights Institute between 2018 and 2021 confirmed anecdotal accounts of a broad spectrum of issues affecting relationships between higher degree researchers and their supervisors. These included mismatched expectations, communication problems, bullying, supervisor and candidate performance, conflicts of interest, inappropriate relationships and attachments, and sexual harassment and sexual assault.
Professor Jan Breckenridge, Co-Convener of the Gendered Violence Research Network, said: “This research will investigate the incidence of these sorts of relationship issues, particularly seeking information about participants’ experience of behaviours where they felt ignored, overlooked or uncared for; where professional boundaries may have been crossed; or where participants felt unsafe, threatened, bullied, or discriminated against.
“The research will also explore how these relationship challenges are managed within the 10 participating universities.”
The research is being supported by the Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) and the participating universities. It is anticipated that the research findings will be applicable across all Australian universities with higher degree research programs.
“By informing the development of good practice guidance and supervisor training materials by the Australian Council of Graduate Research and others, this important research will generate practical benefits beyond the research participants, to the more than 66,000 higher degree research candidates currently undertaking these programs in Australia, and their supervisors,” said ACGR President, Professor Clive Baldock.
The 10 universities participating in the study are:
Australian National University
James Cook University
RMIT University
Swinburne University of Technology
The University of Adelaide
The University of Melbourne
The University of Sydney
The University of Western Australia
University of New South Wales
University of Tasmania
Further information on the project is available here.