The struggle for identity in doctoral supervision: a phenomenologically grounded qualitative study of power and conflict

Abstract

This paper provides an original perspective on the lived experiences of STEM doctoral students concerning their interactions with Principal Investigators, revealing insights into the often-overlooked dynamics of these relationships. While doctoral supervision is commonly seen as a nurturing process, our qualitative research exposes it as a space of conflict, control, and, at its worst, a kind of psychological hell. These findings dismantle the comforting narrative of mentorship, revealing a darker, more unsettling reality at the heart of academia; the supervisory relationship is a warzone of identity, where students are often reshaped into versions of themselves that they no longer recognize in three distinct ways. In the first way, the ‘surveilled self’, students are subject to a relentless sense of observation, creating a defensive, hyper-vigilant state. Second, in the ‘overwritten self’, students’ own identities are obliterated, subsumed by their supervisors’ demands and expectations until they can no longer recognize themselves. Finally, the ‘censored self’ embodies a profound silencing, where students suppress their authentic thoughts and emotions. We arrived at these insights by employing a novel methodological approach, Phenomenologically Grounded Qualitative Research (PGQR), which applies philosophical phenomenology to reveal the existential pressures shaping student identity. By focusing on underlying structures of consciousness, PGQR allowed us to capture the hidden, intense dimensions of conflict and dependency within supervisory relationships, offering a depth of understanding that traditional qualitative methods might overlook.