Enabling interdisciplinary doctoral education through digital cross-institutional collaboration

In the post-COVID-19 academic world, in-person networking has been gradually displaced by digital networking practices. This, alongside continuing calls to make the modern PhD ​‘fit for purpose’, suggests the need to restructure some of our basic assumptions about doctoral education, especially around collaborative and interdisciplinary skills. Remote collaboration, already ubiquitous in the sciences, is now emerging in the humanities too and productively challenging the traditional postgraduate research curriculum. For the 6th International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education & Training, we will present data about the new interdisciplinary doctoral network between the University of St Andrews’ Graduate School for Interdisciplinary Studies (GSIS) and John Hopkins University’s Alexander Grass Humanities Institute (AGHI). The cross-institutional project, which kicked off in 2023, brings together interdisciplinary humanities students to enable epistemological and methodological exchanges within the remit of interdisciplinarity. Central to our talk are 6 principles of innovative doctoral training and development which have shaped our doctoral experience and are likely to guide academic collaboration in the years to come. They are: 1) structurally embedding interdisciplinary education within the PhD curriculum; 2) investing in digital infrastructure allowing for larger digital collaboration; 3) capitalising on doctoral students’ skillset for developing the network further; 4) cost-efficiency and potential to collaboratively identify funding opportunities to develop individual or group opportunities within the network; 5) publishing opportunities for more diverse output formats; 6) developing doctoral students’ research and teaching confidence through a self-directed approach to planning collaborative projects around research and teaching. Far from providing definitive answers, our presentation highlights the importance of prising apart traditional modes of doctoral training, suggesting that willingness to educational experimentation is a core strength of designing future doctoral programmes.