VIRTUAL EVENT: CHES-CDE doctoral seminar - session 2 of 4
As part of the CHES-CDE Doctoral Seminar Series, Dr Hao Phan and Dr Will Gibson will present on the topic of doctoral education.

This event is part of the Centre for Higher Education Studies-Centre for Doctoral Education (CHES-CDE) seminar series. It will be particularly useful for those interested in doctoral education.
Programme
Speaker: Hao Phan
In this presentation, Hao Phan specifically reflects on a number of methodological aspects related to researching Vietnamese PhD students who experience difficulties and drop out of their doctoral programmes.
It addresses Hao's challenges as a researcher in recruiting potential research participants, in adapting scope of sampling, and in navigating her positionalities in the field.
Hao will revisit her initial research design and compare it to her actual fieldwork activities. Hao will highlight the themes emerging from her data collection by:
- identifying main reasons for Vietnamese PhD students to drop out of their doctoral programmes from their own narratives
- contextualising these self-explanations within their gendered roles, notions of well-being and career development.
Lastly, she will attempt to link these preliminary findings back to methodological challenges and propose some strategies to move forward with her final round of data collection and presentation of findings.
Speaker: Dr Will Gibson
This presentation will explore a project which aims to assess the current institutional frameworks for doctoral writing support found at the IOE and around the UK, and to make recommendations for their development.
The research involves an analysis of the experiences of students and supervisors at the IOE in terms of doctoral writing support, as well as an evaluation of institutional frameworks used in other UK higher education institutions.
This presentation provides an overview of the literature review from the project, which outlines the debates surrounding the areas of support: supervisors, the student community and academic writing specialists. It also offers initial samples from the data to draw out some of the tensions, challenges and possibilities for a future model of doctoral support.
CHES-CDE Doctoral Seminar Series
Doctoral education has received increased attention in recent years with concerns expressed about access by minority ethnic groups, preparation for future careers and the appropriateness of institutional structures and support for supervisors. This series will explore these and further issues.
Links
Hao holds a PhD degree from the School of International Development, University of East Anglia.
Her research focuses are:
- Gender
- Environment
- Education
- and Sustainable Development.
She has published blogs, reports and academic papers related to these topics in both Vietnamese and English. She’s particularly interested in the Feminist Political Ecology and the life course approach in her recent works.
She is an active member of the Global Environmental Justice group (University of East Anglia), the Asian Association of Women’s Studies, the Collective of Agrarian Scholar-Activists from the South, and the British Educational Research Association (BERA).
Will is a sociologist with a particular interest in social interaction. His research explores a wide range of interactional contexts and phenomena, including online communication and sensory experience.
He recently co-edited the 'Routledge International Handbook of Interactionism' (2021), and a special issue of the journal 'Symbolic Interaction' (2021) which explores the uses of the senses in interaction.
He has taught and researched in the area of qualtative research inquiry for more than 20 years, and has supervised doctoral students in a broad range of topics for more than 15 years. Will is currently the Director of the IOE's Academic Writing Centre.
Further information
Ticketing
Pre-booking essential
Cost
Free
Open to
All
Availability
Yes