PhD is a personal individual struggle … but you don’t have to struggle alone: supervisors’ perspectives of international scholars

Increasingly, attention has been paid globally to the well-being of doctoral scholars in general, and to a much lesser extent, the international cohort. Recognising the primacy of supervisors as the first port of call for the international cohort, this study considers the supervisors’ lens in offering a new angle on the discourse about international doctoral scholars’ well-being. Interviews utilising a creative journey mapping tool to generate more reflective responses were conducted with fifteen highly-experienced UK-based supervisors, and the resulting data were analysed thematically. Drawing upon Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological model of human development, this study highlights the connection among doctoral spatial contexts for a deeper and holistic understanding of well-being. By re-aligning these spaces with Bronfenbrenner’s nested systems, we elucidate how these intertwined spatial elements could preserve and nurture international doctoral scholars’ well-being: a) Personal space – doctoral ‘adventures’ within the microsystem; b) Supervisor space – academic remit, professional boundaries and received support distributed within the microsystem, mesosystem and exosystem; and c) Institutional space – doctoral research culture, professional and social communities within the exosystem. In addressing the high levels of stress that, at times, lead to a diagnosis of mental illness, our study advocates that a deeper appreciation of the three doctoral spaces in nurturing well-being is vital. Specifically, we contend not only for the necessity to improve the current dynamics, but also to forge stronger connections among these spatial elements as a form of non-clinical intervention for fostering well-being for all doctoral scholars in general and international doctoral scholars in particular.