Supervision

In accordance with University policy, each research student will have two research supervisors, a primary and a secondary supervisor. Your primary supervisor will identify your secondary supervisor to you within the first month of your studies.

Your second supervisor may simply have a pastoral role and act as a mentor, and as a deputy for when your principal supervisor is away. For new staff with no previous supervision experience, the secondary supervisor has to be a senior member of staff. The second supervisor’s responsibility usually includes being an assessor for your annual reviews and may sometimes extend to joint academic supervision.

You should arrange to see your primary supervisor regularly, the arrangement for working with your supervisor will generally be informal but some supervisors might require you to make appointments to see them, especially if they are particularly busy at that time. It is your responsibility to be proactive in organising contact with your supervisor to discuss your research.

If you are having a problem, your supervisor would normally be your first contact but if you would prefer to discuss it with someone else then please make an appointment to see the Director of Postgraduate Research Studies or the Postgraduate Research Programmes Officer.

All research students are required to use the Supervision Log on the QM Student Information System (MySIS) to record monthly interactions with your supervisors throughout your studies. This system is designed to record details of the supervision meetings; it also allows exchange of notes and documents between the PhD students and the members of the supervisory team. By summarising your strategic courses of action in this log, you and your supervisor will benefit as it should help ensure you are both clear on the way forward, it will also help to identify any misinterpretation.

This is of particular importance to International students on s student visa, who should note that if your engagement cannot be demonstrated via these recorded interactions, QMUL is required to report this to the UK Border Agency who may curtail (cut short) your immigration permission.

To log an interaction, log on to MySIS mysis.qmul.ac.uk  and complete an interaction form online.

See this guide on how to record a supervision meeting on MySIS

Shortly after enrolment your primary supervisor will assign an assessment panel that will be responsible for conducting your annual progression reviews. The assessment panel will be formed of two academics. These are usually QMUL staff members, but on occasions your supervisor may invite an academic from another institution to be part of your assessment panel.