Project updates and news

Access the interventions, read author insights, and join our upcoming launch webinar.

Over the past year, we’ve been researching, co-creating, and piloting professional development interventions for doctoral supervisors with our incredible network of Practitioner Partners. We’re in the process of digesting the feedback and completing revisions, and are delighted to announce that we’ll be making a staggered release of many of these free resources to the sector from Autumn 2026 through to Spring 2027.

In association with the UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE), we welcomed Professor Debbie Riby (Centre for Neurodiversity & Development, Durham University) on 28 November 2025 to share insights from her research on neurodivergent PhD researchers and lead a discussion about supervision practices for neuroinclusion.

Ahead of the roll-out of an extended pilot programme of peer mentoring circles across our practitioner partner network, the University of York is currently running an internal pilot with 36 research supervisors in six cross-disciplinary groups. Supervisor peer mentoring circles create a supportive space for supervisors from diverse disciplines, backgrounds, and levels of experience to engage in regular, facilitated conversations about supervision. Participants are encouraged

RSVP's iterative development cycle for our co-creation process Since the start of 2025, the RSVP core partners have been busy developing and piloting Continuing Professional Development (CPD) interventions. We've been taking on board key learnings from our network of 58 Practitioner Partners, who have been a crucial element in establishing the evidence base for the development work. What we’ve learned from our Practitioner Partners to date includes: Over 64% of institutions

Focus groups are a critical part of gathering the evidence base for RSVP, and we have been busy in May and June hosting sessions with two groups of key stakeholders: Deans and Directors of Doctoral Schools, and non-HEI based research supervisors.

Across two days in late April, we hosted our first 'train-the-trainer' workshop at the University of York for our Practitioner Partners. The two-day workshop explored facilitation tools, covered key continuing professional development (CPD) topics and identified approaches for engaging supervisors in professional development. Cascading and co-creating ideas in this way is part of the approach that RSVP is developing to benefit the whole sector. These events are part of our pi

Dr Karen Clegg was delighted to be an invited contributor to the Annual Conference of the Network for Professionals in Doctoral Education, held in London from 8-9 April. With a conference theme of 'Back to the Future: The next two decades of doctoral education', the conference was very much aligned with RSVP's focus on Next Generation Research Supervision. Karen provided an extended pre-conference workshop, entitled Professionalising Supervision, which attracted 60 participan

RSVP was delighted to be involved at the 9th Biennial Conference on Research into Postgraduate Supervision, across two days (26-28 March 2025) at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Our Postdoctoral Research Associate Dr Liz Quinlan (University of York) attended the full duration of the conference, and presented their paper discussing some of the exciting empirical data gathered so far from RSVP research initiatives including focus groups with research supervisors and the

Find out what we've achieved in our first year and what we’ve got planned for 2025.

Following an exceptional response to our call for expressions of interest, the Next Generation Research SuperVision Project (RSVP) now includes representation from 50+ research organisations across the whole of the UK and beyond. Institutions were selected as practitioner partners to reflect diversity in terms of size, modes of doctoral provision, capacity and commitment to sharing and evaluating practice. Our new partners include: University of the Arts London University of

On Tuesday 27 February 2024, we launched the Next Generation Research SuperVision Project (RSVP). Over 200 people attended to hear presentations from the different stakeholders and to ask questions about this Research England-funded project. A welcome was given by Professor Doug Cleaver – Chair of UKCGE’s Board of Trustees and a Co-Principal Investigator for the RSVP project (under the auspices of Sheffield Hallam University). He began by posing a question to the audience: ​“