Beyond Surviving: Towards Thriving in Doctoral Education

Abstract

Forming bonds and creating communities across academic, professional, and societal contexts is an ongoing experience for doctoral researchers. Intellectual energy, momentum, and support for the research process can be strengthened by personal and social lifeworlds beyond the campus walls. Supervisors, peers, academic friends, and the wider social network of family and friends serve as doctoral researchers’ co-travellers in intellectually challenging and emotionally charged journeys. This suggests that doctoral journeys need not be a lonely ride, as previously claimed. Instead, doctoral researchers (and supervisors) can utilise their agency to pursue a thriving experience, maximising its overall quality. This final chapter will discuss what constitutes ‘thriving’ to enable doctoral researchers and their co-travellers to recognise the hidden curriculum and make it more visible, accessible, tangible, collective, and sustainable.