Supervising doctorates in creative writing: what is the lived experience?
Date
2025
Authors
Ellison, E.
Batty, C.
Joseph, S.
Owens, A.
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Journal article
Citation
New Writing, 2025; 22(4):1-22
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Abstract
Universities are increasingly focussed on the accountability, standardisation, professionalisation, completion rates and graduate outcomes of doctoral degrees. This is particularly pronounced in countries where doctoral completions count towards national research excellence evaluations or return a significant monetary value from government re-investment. As such, the supervision of doctorates is a growing field of research inquiry, including in creative writing where in some countries (e.g. Australia, New Zealand, UK) there are many doctoral candidates. While research to date explores supervisory practices from a variety of perspectives–including quantitative investigations of variables affecting completion time, supervisor management styles, and student and supervisor conceptions of supervision–the lived experience of supervising attracts less scholarly attention. Aspects such as supervisor training, candidate pastoral support, and supervisor workload and career development are real issues for supervisors and are arguably more pronounced in the creative doctorate, where thesis paradigms and research methodology are still not universally agreed upon. This article offers findings into what we call ‘the human dimension’ of doctoral supervision, drawing on a survey undertaken across Australia by supervisors of creative writing doctorates.
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Link to a related website: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0865-950X, ORCID profile - Ellison, Elizabeth
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2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in anymedium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on whichthis article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)