Zones of interculturality in postgraduate doctorate supervision

In this chapter, we discuss an exploratory narrative inquiry project into the little-researched understandings of supervisors in UK universities concerning their experiences of working with international doctoral students. This research was informed by a view of interculturality as an emergent, dynamic, fluid space of meaning-making and -negotiation between individuals between whom there are significant cultural differences. The focus of the project concerned our narratively derived and interculturally approached understandings of the supervisor experience. The research project was positioned in the field of English-medium higher education with doctoral supervisors from two UK universities. It involved generating supervisor stories in one-on-one co-constructed story-telling interviews. The narratives were analysed and interpreted predominantly for content and emerging thematic categories but some elements of form were also noted. In the different layers of the supervisory experience narrated to us, we identified a number of themes which operationalise interculturality, including: stepping over borders, dividing lines, and thresholds; addressing difference; transforming identities; initiating dialogue and common understandings; and moving towards independence and autonomy. These themes and the aspects of the narratively-constructed understandings which they encapsulate are (some of ) the elements of interculturality as supervision was experienced and – to varying degrees – understood by participants in this research site. Our analysis of the empirical data thus reveal that the concept of interculturality is helpful in analysis and in capturing the experience of those involved as seen from the supervisors’ perspective. Future work may involve work on the student perspective and their conceptualisation of supervision (as approached interculturally).