By Erika Angarita, Anna Hajdu, Yanyan Huang, BinBin Pearce, Guadalupe Peres-Cajías, Hussein Zeidan and Yuanyuan Zhu.
How can a student and their supervisors develop a shared map for a PhD project when they come from different disciplinary traditions, hold different assumptions about knowledge and quality, and operate within institutional systems that are still largely structured around single disciplines? How can they navigate what may feel obvious to one and may be invisible to another?
We developed a structured checklist of questions designed to support supervision conversations and reduce tensions resulting from unspoken assumptions.The checklist aims to be a guide for thoughtful, ongoing reflection between supervisors and doctoral students. These questions cover five areas where misunderstandings commonly arise:
- Epistemology: How each supervisor and student understands knowledge, methods, and validity.
- Institutional support and expectations: The context shaping what is possible.
- Complexity management: Working with uncertainty and external partners.
- Career orientation and identity: Finding a place within (or beyond) academia.
- Dissemination pathways: Deciding how and where inter- and transdisciplinary work has an impact.