Book Review: The Prosperous PhD

What does it take to prosper during a doctorate? In The Prosperous PhD: Secrets to Success from Top Supervisors, Judy Wearing, Christopher DeLuca and Stephen MacGregor offer an unusually extensive answer. Drawing on more than 140 pieces of advice from 74 supervisors across eight countries, the book ranges across the doctoral journey, from choosing a supervisor and managing a research project to maintaining relationships, responding to failure and developing confidence as an independent researcher.

Written primarily for doctoral researchers, the book offers practical advice about how to navigate the doctorate from beginning to end. Its chapters move through making good choices, fostering relationships, managing a research project, finding research-life balance, and building confidence. Within these themes, readers encounter advice on matters ranging from selecting a supervisor and defining a manageable research problem to planning milestones, establishing writing habits, handling feedback, building supportive networks and thinking seriously about careers within and beyond academia. The authors supplement the supervisors’ advice with exercises designed to turn general recommendations into clear actionable steps. For example, the ​‘Prosperous PhD Decision-Making Tool’ asks readers considering an institution or supervisor to identify what matters to them, what evidence they would need to make an informed choice, what questions they should ask, and whose perspectives they should seek before deciding.

The result is something close to a comprehensive, workbook-style ​“how to” guide to demystify the doctorate. This practical facet is one of the book’s main strengths. Much of the knowledge required to navigate doctoral study is not readily available in formal programme information or easily conveyed at an applicant day. For example, how to make effective use of a supervision meeting or how to respond productively to critical feedback. Nor can there be a one-size-fits-all approach to explaining these experiences, given the differences between disciplines, projects, supervisors and individual researchers. By bringing together advice from experienced supervisors and translating it into concrete exercises, The Prosperous PhD makes some of these more abstract elements considerably more visible. This makes it useful to both current doctoral researchers and to prospective applicants seeking a clearer understanding of what doctoral study actually involves. In this sense, the book functions almost as a practical methodology for navigating the doctorate itself.

For those involved in supervision and doctoral provision, however, The Prosperous PhD prompts a slightly different question: What might supervisors, doctoral schools, institutions and research partners do to make prosperity possible?

The authors deliberately asked supervisors what doctoral researchers themselves should do, and what behaviours or habits they should avoid. They acknowledge that this means their collected advice primarily concerns what the researcher can change, rather than offering a comprehensive account of the doctoral environment. That is entirely appropriate for a practical book addressed to researchers. However, once its advice is considered from the perspective of doctoral provision, it becomes possible to ask what conditions need to surround researcher agency.

One particularly clear example concerns supervision. Throughout the book, doctoral researchers are encouraged to communicate openly with their supervisors. This includes clarifying expectations and gradually taking greater responsibility for directing their own work. This is sensible advice. However, the book also recognises that supervisory relationships involve a significant power imbalance and that students and supervisors may have different expectations about the level and type of support required. One contributor recommends explicit conversations about interests, motives and expectations precisely because circumstances can change and misunderstandings can otherwise become difficult to resolve. The reciprocal side to this advice is that doctoral researchers can be encouraged to communicate openly, but supervisors and institutions also have some responsibility for creating conditions in which this can occur. For example, expectations for supervision meetings can be made explicit and doctoral schools can provide routes for advice that do not depend entirely upon the principal supervisor. Similarly, supervisor development can help colleagues recognise that the balance between guidance and autonomy will change as researchers develop and may differ substantially between individuals.

A similar point emerges from the book’s treatment of relationships and community. One of the book’s strongest takeaways is that the doctorate should not be understood as a solitary activity. Researchers are encouraged to find peers and mentors beyond their immediate supervisory relationship for intellectual development and future opportunities. Again, there is much a researcher can do, such as speaking to colleagues and joining reading groups. However, opportunities for connection are not distributed evenly. A thriving doctoral community is easier to build where doctoral schools create spaces in which researchers encounter one another and where activities are accessible and inclusive to all researchers.

The challenge, then, is to find the right balance. A doctorate is supposed to develop an independent researcher. Many of the skills identified in The Prosperous PhD, including seeking advice and taking responsibility of a long-term research project, are themselves part of what doctoral education is supposed to develop. However, independence should not mean that every difficulty is reframed as another task for the researcher to solve. A doctoral researcher who is already expected to manage a complex project and develop as an independent scholar can quickly become overburdened if they must also individually navigate the doctoral research journey. 

Perhaps one of the most useful ways to read The Prosperous PhD, then, is both as a guide for researchers and a prompt for those who help to create the environments in which doctoral research takes place. Its advice identifies many of the things researchers need in order to prosper, and paves the way for the question of how institutions can create the conditions in which researchers are genuinely able to thrive.