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RSVP Newsletter: January 2026

  • Jan 20
  • 5 min read

Updated: Mar 12

As a team we took some time in December to reflect on how we work and what we’ve achieved. We were encouraged by the first release of a set of professional development interventions for piloting by our practitioner partner network, and the warm reception to peer mentoring circles. We also acknowledged that in 2026, we need to share more of what we’ve been doing with the wider world. To that end, we’ll be releasing, over the next few months, reports based on focus groups with academic and industry supervisors and Deans and Directors of Doctoral Schools. Using this empirical data we’re developing support for new and more experienced supervisors. We’ll also be sharing some of the data and our approach as part of the REDS conference this week. We hope you’ll join us.


Updates


In addition to the data gathering activities described above, a major focus for the project team in 2025 was the development of a set of professional development interventions covering many core principles of high-quality research supervision, including peer mentoring circles (which you can read more about below). Our approach for ensuring the relevance and quality of these materials for diverse doctoral training contexts is to have pursued an extensive piloting and evaluation programme across the RSVP core institutions, and subsequently with our Practitioner Partner network.


To this end, over the course of last year, we’ve covered three core stages of the piloting process:


Internal piloting: February to June 2025

Pilots of the professional development interventions took place across the RSVP core consortium partners (University of York, Sheffield Hallam University, Coventry University, King's College London and the University of Nottingham).


Reviewing and refining pilot materials: June to October 2025

Over the summer, we evaluated and refined pilot materials. This formed the basis of our step-by-step piloting guide & manuals.


Official launch of the Practitioner Partner Piloting Phase: October 2025 to March 2027

Over the course of two days at the start of October 2025, we officially launched the first phase of external piloting with our Practitioner Partners. As part of this initial launch, we released 18 professional development interventions that our partners will now pilot and evaluate throughout 2026. At the end of this iterative feedback and evaluation process, we hope to have a suite of sector-ready resources available. Examples of the topics being piloted include feedback on written material, preparing students for doctoral examination and supporting recognition for research supervisors.


💡Spotlight on Peer Mentoring Circles

Bringing supervisors together for impactful conversations that further develop supervisory skills and practices is at the core of RSVP. Having completed the first round of peer mentoring circles at York, and now starting the second, it has been really satisfying to hear the feedback from participants. We want these to be spaces for supervisors to reflect on their own pedagogy and practice and learn from others, and that has definitely been the case:

“[Peer mentoring circles] have made a huge contribution to helping me understand my role as a supervisor.”
“I feel my participation has made me far more effective in my role and given me invaluable tools, which have given me three times or more back on my time investment.”

It is also really interesting that it provides a unique space to pause and reflect and for conversations to emerge, which is such a refreshing change in a world of busyness. Participants commented:

“Peer mentoring circles provide a space that doesn’t exist anywhere else for discussing your experience as a supervisor.”
“A unique opportunity to participate in something reflective with no fixed agenda.”

We look forward to sharing further feedback on what makes a successful peer mentoring circle as well as some of the challenges in more detail soon. In the meantime, you can find out more about our approach to peer mentoring.

Upcoming release of focus group findings 📄

Throughout 2024 and 2025, we conducted focus groups with supervisors based in both higher education institutions (HEIs) and industrial sectors. We also met with Deans and Directors of Doctoral Schools. The opinions, experiences, and observations made by participants resulted in an incredibly rich resource that we are incorporating into our supervision development initiatives, scholarly outputs, and sector-wide research on culture change.


Some of the key discussions in these focus groups covered: 1) the benefits and challenges of team supervision, 2) supervision practices in different disciplines and contexts, 3) the range of different skills required to supervise diverse types of PhDs, and 4) identifying and combating poor supervision practices.


Our focus group findings will soon be shared in a report series that will be made available via our website.

RSVP🤝AI.RDN+

As you may have spotted on LinkedIn, RSVP is a support partner of the AI.RDN+ Project (Artificial Intelligence Researcher Development Network Plus), which was recently launched at Aston University. With a focus on doctoral researchers and those that support them (including supervisors!), AI.RDN+ will undertake an extensive consultation process involving key stakeholders across the doctoral ecosystem and we’re happy to say that RSVP will be part of this process. We look forward to tapping into the network’s findings, guidance and training resources in the future, and feeding this through into the suite of resources we’re currently developing for supervisors.

Publications & Resources

We’ve rounded up some publications and useful resources from last year in case you missed them. We’ll be adding more publication outputs and blog articles to our website this year, so please do keep an eye out for those.


Clegg, K., Quinlan, L. & Palmer, N. (2025, February 24) Research supervision in the context of REF – time for a step change? Wonkhe. https://wonkhe.com/blogs/research-supervision-in-the-context-of-ref-time-for-a-step-change/


Tresidder, R., Coombes, P., Palmer, N., & Herriman, L. (2025). Mapping doctoral education and supervision research (2014-2024): Insights, trends, and trajectories. International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 20, Article 16. https://doi.org/10.28945/5640


How supervisors can support Neurodiversity-Affirmative PhD Students

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. If you missed the session, you can now watch the recording and access the slides. Find out how supervisors can support Neurodiversity-Affirmative PhD Students.


Join us at the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship (REDS) Conference 2026

Presentations:

  • Beyond compliance: Fostering a culture of reflection around doctoral policies and processes with Dr Alex Pavey, King’s College London (17:30 GMT on Wednesday 21 January 2026)

  • Voices of industry supervisors: Insights into cross-sector doctoral supervision and professional development with Dr Hang Li, University of York (09:10 GMT on Thursday 22 January 2026)


REDS blog post:



 
 
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