Our PhD students are viewed as junior colleagues in their research group and future colleagues in their research community – they are apprentices in the best sense of the word.
Principal Supervisor and Advisory Committee
We allocate a Principal Supervisor to each student who continues from the MPhil to the PhD programme. (MRes students are allocated a Principal Supervisor at admission to the MRes). Your Principal Supervisor will be a senior academic, normally a Reader or Professor, who will guide you through the programme, help you to succeed in the job market and assist you in gaining a faculty position at a leading business school. They will take an active role in your research programme. During the course of the PhD they will assemble a group of faculty (an Advisory Committee) who will be actively involved in joint research with you, with the aim of producing leading academic journals publications. We also encourage joint work with faculty from other schools, including our renowned academic visitors.
Apprenticeship model
Our PhD students learn via an apprenticeship model. Within supervisory relationships you learn first-hand how research is done. Our faculty train you to become an independent researcher with an exciting research programme and portfolio of academic papers. Through working so closely with faculty you also develop your academic writing skills, your ability to tailor your writing for specific audiences/journals, your network of valuable research relationships with other leading faculty and your readiness for the academic job market.
Investment of time
To ensure close interaction between students and their Principal Supervisor, CJBS faculty do not supervise more than two PhD students at any point in time. Our PhD students are expected to receive a minimum of one supervision per week. Our PhD students frequently comment on the outstanding quality of supervision, in-depth feedback and time invested by faculty. A recent survey of PhD students revealed that supervision hours currently average two hours per week and can range up to five hours per week, depending on what phase a research project is in.
