The Role of PGR Coordinators

Supervision tends to be the major influence on postgraduate researchers and supervisors ​‘get the completion’ when the researcher ​‘gets the degree’. The researcher might well be aware of other university services and structures such as graduate schools, research offices, student support, learning services etc. yet there is another layer of support usually provided, and one that seems to be all too often overlooked. That role might be taken up by academics in faculties, departments, institutes or research centres, and those people might often be called ​‘PGR coordinators’. This workshop seeks to begin a conversation about those very roles and explore the kinds of things that they do when they coordinate those pivotal aspects and features of PGR learning and experience. One worry shared by many for whom graduate education is important is that postgraduate researchers can often ​‘fall through the cracks’. What happens if those cracks are so big that other important people, PGR coordinators, might fit through too?