This will be my last formal activity as Director of our Doctoral School, and I am pleased to welcome my colleague and friend Professor Jeremy Niven into his new role as our first Dean of the Doctoral School. It is an exciting time as we transition out, and learn from the pandemic and I feel that doctoral research at Sussex will be a great success under Jeremy’s leadership. It has been a career highlight for me to have worked alongside so many brilliant doctoral researchers and supervisors, and I remain constantly inspired by the innovation and creativity of the research projects I have seen in my years as Director of the Doctoral School. I wish all our doctoral researchers, supervisors, Directors of Doctoral Studies, School Research staff, the RSAO and Doctoral School staff all the best for the future.

Thank you to our Doctoral Researchers for taking the time to complete the Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) during April and May this year. In total, 679 Doctoral Researchers completed the survey, representing 55% of the overall doctoral population. This was an excellent number of responses, well in excess of the sector average of 36%, and provides an invaluable set of data to understand and ultimately to enhance our research environment and the Doctoral Researcher experience. 

The survey results have been shared with colleagues across Schools and central departments. Postgraduate Research action plans, directly informed by the survey results, will be considered at the 4 October 2021 meeting of the Doctoral School Board, including our elected Doctoral Researcher representatives.

I am encouraged by many areas of the survey, and also feel that we have some priority areas to focus on going forward. We can be proud that the rate of overall satisfaction has increased since the last survey, up 1.1 percentage points to 76.3%, which bucks the 2021 trend across the UK university sector, where overall satisfaction has fallen 1.6 percentage points to 79.1%. 

That we have seen an increase in satisfaction during a pandemic, warrants note. It has undoubtedly been a challenging time for all Doctoral Researchers, who are frequently balancing studies with teaching, work or family commitments. I am pleased to note that the recognition of our Doctoral Supervisors is the highest scoring section of the survey, at 86.3%, and the support and training to prepare Doctoral Tutors to teach shows the highest increase since the last survey, up 9.9 percentage points to 67.8%.

There are some key areas in which we will need to undertake further work to understand the survey, and the doctoral experience. Results under opportunities to engage in seminar programmes, to discuss research projects and to meet other doctoral researchers under the Research Culture section of the survey have fallen since 2019, to 53.2%. While this area has undoubtedly been affected by the pandemic and we see a similar drop across the sector, we will prioritise this area for action over the coming year.

Lastly, we see some important changes in survey results in 2021 from our last survey in 2019 regarding overall satisfaction levels if we consider ethnicity. While we will be exploring why satisfaction levels among white researchers has fallen seven percentage points to 73.7%, satisfaction levels among Black, Asian and minority ethnic groups increased significantly, by 12 percentage points to 80.6%. This shift over two years requires further analysis to understand the underlying issues, but I am encouraged to observe improvements in some areas and a narrowing gap between different ethnic groups in our 2021 survey.

With best wishes

George

George Kemenes

Director of Sussex Doctoral School

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