Wednesday 27th March 2013 - PhDs by publication

I have lost count of how many PhD examinations I have been involved in - either as an internal or an external examiner.  In the latter capacity I have undertaken vivas with only the other examiner and the candidate present, or with a room full of supporters and friends: I have been involved in examinations in three different countries, and in two different languages; some theses have been passed outright, others have been referred, sometimes with a lot of work yet to be done.  I have examined theses based on a wide variety of methodologies (or in some cases apparently none).

Today I have examined a PhD in what to me have been unique circumstances.  Today's PhD viva was of a candidate presenting for a PhD by publication.  I have been involved in examining such theses before - it is the standard Scandinavian model and candidates normally submit around four papers plus a commentary. In most cases the four papers submitted are the only ones the generally young researcher has published to date.

Today's examination was of a 'student' whose publication list runs to nearly 300 items - certainly twice the number in my own cv.  Fifteen of these had been selected to constitute the thesis.  Around half were single authored items - mostly in very high quality journals.  The others were collaborations but the role of the candidate was made very clear in the supporting documentation.

There was little doubt that a PhD would be awarded by my fellow examiner and me.  But we got into an interesting three-way discussion with the candidate.  The individual concerned had completed an MPhil within two years of the award of a relevant first degree but had not then gone on to undertake a PhD.  Instead a series of posts in research units had come up and now, perhaps 25 years later, our candidate was well into a career as a full-time researcher. Of those 300 publications, a considerable number were actually 'grey literature' in the form of reports to commissioning bodies.  We had the chance to read some of these in the thesis, and the pity was that the findings and arguments within them had not been made more widely available.  But, as the candidate explained, the relentless need to keep a research unit going by constantly finding new funded projects to undertake meant that on completion of a particular piece of funded consultancy research there was always a need to move straight on to the next client.  There is no time to step back and produce the more reflective piece that might set the particular research task in a wider context and then make the results available to a far wider audience.

Many young academics come into a university career through an enjoyment of discovery and of research.  Yet a career built entirely in a research institute with little or no baseline funding and the constant need to chase the next contract does not seem to me to be the way to complete happiness as an academic - certainly not for me.  And I think our candidate today agreed: when asked what the ideal way of spending the next twelve months would be the answer was to have that period to take some time to reflect on all the work and studies completed over the past few years, and to tie those projects and findings together into something more substantial.

Even without that bigger period of reflection, it was still a very impresive body of work that we awarded a PhD to today.

Saturday 23rd March 2013 - A Russell Group delegation, and EU officials: guess which had the better gender balance?

Those reading my blog regularly from within the University of Sheffield will know that the student newspaper, Forge Press, took exception to one paragraph of what I wrote on 26 February.   The theme of that blog was my desire to see women take senior roles as equals to men - such as the Presidency of the Students' Union.  The paper misunderstood what I was trying to get at and decided I was attacking the Women's Officer post.  That was far from my intention.

I am going to risk talking about gender again today.  Early this morning I got home from a day of meetings in Brussels.  I should have been back last night but with both the Snake and the Woodhead Passes closed by snow, the road journey via the M62 and M1 took three and a quarter hours so I didn't get home until a quarter to one (quarter to two Brussels time). 

I was in Brussels as part of a Russell Group delegation holding discussions with various European Union officials and others. The topics of discussion included the EU's future research budget, Erasmus exchange schemes, the EU's proposed financial support for Masters students studying outside their country of residence, the EU's attitude to on-line learning possibilities, and research capacity building in the countries that joined the Union most recently. 

There were only four women in our delegation of over 20 from the UK.  We had four meetings with high level officials, as well as round table discussions with representatives of research bodies from some of the A8 and the A2 (the accession 8 and the accession 2 - the new EU members).  Our meetings were with:
- The Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture, who hailed from Catalonia but who had studied in there other European countries and who was able to engage in sharp discussion with us on areas of disagreement as well as agreement. 
- The Deputy UK Permanent representative to the EU, amongst whose previous posts had been the role of ambassador to Argentina.  Here we met a civil servant and diplomat at the very height of all the powers of synthesis, clear presentation and political understanding that such individuals, at their very best, can command.
- The Chief Scientific Advisor to the EU, who reports direct to President Baroso and who has the authority - and clearly the understanding of scientific communication - to intervene in any EU policy debate where a scientific viewpoint would be of relevance.
- The EU Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science.  This was the outstanding meeting of our visit - with an individual who was completely on top of the brief, prepared to be frank and open and to answer all the points we made, and who we left with the whole of our delegation commenting that the future of EU research policy couldn't be in better hands.

Only the Deputy Director-General for Education and Culture was a man: the others were all women.  I hope I was not the only one of our delegation to reflect, at the end of the day, on our own gender balance and compare it to that of the very powerful EU officials (and the delegations from the A8 and A2) that we had met. The more women who get elected or appointed to the most senior positions, the more role models there then are for others to follow.

Monday 4th March 2013 - Lobbying in parliament for international students

It's not often that, at the end of a presentation, everyone in the room turns to their neighbours and says "that was fantastic" or words like it.  It's not often that people say "I'm going to quote from that".  It's especially not often that the people saying this are MPs, Peers, representatives of the university mission groups, the President of the National Union of Students, advisers from government departments, journalists, and lobbyists.  But that's what happende this evening.

We were at Parliament to present a report the Unviersity commissioned on the economic impact of international students on the city of Sheffield - a report that covered all international students, whether studying at our university, at Sheffield Hallam, or at Sheffield College.  The speeches were short, effective and to the point.  The event was jointly hosted by Paul Blomfield - our local MP - and Nadhim Zahawi - Conservative MP for Stratford-upon-Avon.  Both are members of the BIS Select Committee and both are working tirelessly to try to persuade the government to take international students out of the calculation of net migration.  Other short speeches were made by our Vice-Chacellor, Sir Keith Burnett, and by Nicola Dandridge, the Chief Executive of Universities UK who thanked the Unviersity for commissioning what is to date a unique study of the local impact of international students.

Incidentally, had he been still alive, it sems quite possible to me that Enoch Powell - famous for his anti-immigration stance - would have been on the side of Paul and Nadhim (and many, many others) wanting to remove students from the immigration count.  In Powell's notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech of April 1968 he specifically said: "This has nothing to do with the entry of Commonwealth citizens, any more than of aliens, into this country for the purposes of study or improving their qualifications. ... They are not, and never have been, immigrants."

What was it that moved the audience so much this evening?  It was a short film made by our Students Union on the message that in today's world studying at a global university has made us all, from whatever origin, in one way or another international students.  And that those who will succeed in the future are those who have made the most of the international opportunities they are offered. I commend it to everyone reading this blog.  It can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsX_yg6ovoI&feature=player_embedded#!