• Research students value SOAS’s international and diverse community and the school’s generally non-mainstream approach to research.
• However, research students feel very marginalised within SOAS. In most other universities, research students are treated as ‘junior academics’ who partly contribute to the institution’s academic dynamism and whose support and material needs are generally different from that of other students. At SOAS, whilst individual academic staff treat research students as colleagues or junior staff, the overall administration tends to consider them as simple students and to overlook their specific needs.

• Encourage departments or faculties to organise a social event for all Phd Students and staff members at the beginning of each year in order to facilitate communication and exchange.

• Discuss ways in which the administration could understand, acknowledge and support the central role played by research students within SOAS.
• Find ways to make upgrading, supervising and submitting procedures more systematic and egalitarian, yet retain the flexibility necessary to the extraordinary diversity of the doctoral projects undertaken at SOAS.
• Increase the consistency, across faculties, in the rules and procedures that concern PhD students and in the facilities they are allocated.

• Academics are not adequately recognised for their role as PhD supervisors. Given the increasing pressure to teach, publish and promote research findings and take part in the school’s everyday running, supervisory responsibilities are often de facto sidelined.
• Some supervisors attract a lot of PhD students and there seems to be no proportionate adjustment of workload.
• When the relationship between supervisor and PhD student works, everything is fine. If the relationship does not work, however:
  • PhD students fear jeopardising their relationship with their supervisor and are therefore reluctant to engage in a formal complaints’ procedure, especially when they have reached the last stages of the PhD.
  • PhD students feel that there is a lack of middle ground alternatives – or a lack of information on the existing middle ground alternatives, e.g. where the supervisory committee could play a bigger role in finding a compromise to the best of the student’s and supervisor’s interests.

• Make sure MPhil students are aware of the complaints’ mechanisms that exist at SOAS.   
• Ask research tutors to try and meet with all PhD students once or twice a year at least in order to make sure that PhD students are aware of the research tutor’s role as a possible intermediary in case of misunderstandings with the supervisory committee.

• Assess the level of academic support needed by PhD students and establish minimum quality requirements, which supervisors will need to be made aware of. These requirements should also inform the school’s capacity for new admissions.
• Find a mechanism that would increase recognition – if not remuneration - of academics’ role as supervisors.
• Establish some minimum standards of supervision that also acknowledge the time supervisors should be granted, aside from their teaching, research and administrative duties, to meet these standards.
• Agree on a time code according to which supervisors will provide feedback within two weeks during the MPhil year and within three weeks during the following years.
• Find a mechanism that enables the school to keep track of research students’ progress and that simultaneously enables research students to comment on the support granted by their supervisor in a constructive manner and without jeopardising the supervisor-student relationship. 

• The logbook system does not seem to be meeting its objectives. Students are responsible for these but are given little or no advice or support in maintaining them. Research students have no sense of the logbooks being important or being instrumental in improving the quality of supervision.
• Log books seem to have been brought in without the agreement of most supervisors. Supervisors in general are not actively engaged in the up-keep of the logbook and many see it as an additional administrative burden.

• Make sure that logbooks are seen as a joint student-supervisor responsibility.
• Introduce electronic logbooks that will require that both the research student and his/her supervisor log in and fill in the required fields and that will improve communication between the research student and his/her supervisory committee.

• Members of the committee are not adequately recognised for their work and contribution to the advancement of doctoral research projects.
• The role of supervisory committees often seems to end with the upgrade process.

• Research students in general do not have access to subject specific research training.
• Whilst interdisciplinary interaction is welcomed by most students, it is felt that generic training courses have the tendency to be too general in scope to provide the required depth.
• Research students returning from fieldwork require specific and personalised training in the interpretation of fieldwork results and during the writing up. This requirement, many feel, is not currently met by general training in departmental seminars.
• Research students are, in effect, ‘trainees’ in academic research. As such, they require training that goes beyond the sole PhD thesis and also addresses matters such as presenting research results, academic publishing and teaching.
• Training, whilst useful, cannot overcome the problems of inadequate supervision.
• Training takes up a lot of resources and cannot meet its final objectives if the adequate level of resources is not also directed towards infrastructure (i.e. access to adequate working space, library, computers and software).

• Provide research students with more specific, at times personalised, training programmes that actually meet their needs.
• Reassess at faculty level what the exact training needs of research students are, e.g. different methods of analysing data, access to and training in specific software programmes (Endnote as well as software needed for the analysis of data), training for students from overseas and new to the British university system, support to meet academic English language requirements, introduction to the world of academic conferences and publications etc.

• At present, research students wishing to gain access after the library closes must go through the laborious procedure of requesting through their head of department.
• We have also been informed recently  that estates has taken the unilateral decision to refuse all research students’ requests for 24 hour access. It seems that this policy has changed from two years ago when PhD students were given 24 hour access.
• Longer access-hours are especially important during the summer, when library opening hours are especially restricted, and to the increasing number of PhD students who need to work part- or full-time in order to pay their tuition fees and cover their subsistence needs.

• Research students should be given 24 hour access, or at least access until midnight on weekdays and until 8 pm at week-ends during school terms as well as during the summer vacation, to the SOAS buildings.

• Despite paying at least half of the full-time PhD fees during the fieldwork year, SOAS research students are stripped of their student status. During this period research students are unable to:
  • obtain an NUS card;
  • obtain a letter from registry to apply for council tax exemption;
  • automatically gain access to the school buildings (students must sign in as visitors);
  • automatically gain access to the library.[2]
• This is in sharp contrast to SOAS alumni and students on short courses in the language centre who have library access and borrowing rights at a much lower fee.
• The time spent on fieldwork – which in turn informs the level of the fees paid by the research student – is determined by the research student, in agreement with his/her supervisor and with the approval of the registry. This question would thus appear to be a matter of trust between research students, supervisors and the registry. It is felt that the MPhil application procedure, one year of vetting through the MPhil year, the upgrade process and the supervisor’s signature should be enough to establish this trust and ensure that PhD students will not abuse this right.

• Students should be given a student status and library card during their fieldwork year.

• The number of workspaces available to research students is far from adequate. There are approximately 75 computers[3] for 304 full time students and 47 part time students.
• Moreover, existing work spaces are poorly equipped and maintained, in particular the printers in some of the smaller rooms (e.g. in room 276).
• There have been numerous complaints regarding the working environment in R101, the main computer room for research students, which is overused, messy, hot and inadequately  ventilated.
• PhD students, by definition, work on a long-term research project and therefore need working space that they ‘can settle into’ and not move around constantly.
• International students especially, who pay high fees to SOAS every year, feel that they are not given ‘value for money’ in terms of workspace.

• Conduct an audit of existing work space, which should then lead to a clear strategy of use of existing space. It might make sense, for example, to create faculty-wide teaching assistants (TAs) rooms in order to reallocate some of the rooms occupied by TAs to (non-TA) PhD students.
• Improve the ventilation in R101 as soon as possible.
• Allow the drinking of tea and coffee in R101 (similar to all staff drinking tea and coffee in their own offices) and, in general, trust that research students will treat with particular care the space and material they are allocated.

• Decide on what resources and space the school will dedicate to research students and prioritise research students as part of the on-going expansion of the school.
• Lead a strategic reflection on the kind of space that could be allocated to PhD students. Desks can be designed to take up little space, so that as many research students are accommodated as possible.
• Commit to providing desk space to at least every 1^st year, 20 % of all second years and 50 % of third year research students.

• The current storage facilities offered to students are inadequate for research students. The lockers are too small and can be a great distance from workspaces.

• Allocate two, preferably three, lockers to research students at the shortest possible distance from R101 or the computer room they generally work in.

• Allow each research student to have some lockable shelf-space or bigger lockers in research students’ computer rooms or at a short distance from these rooms.

• Research students, unless they are teaching, are prohibited from using the staff common room.
• The postgraduate common room is used exclusively by Masters’ students as a place of quiet study or rest and R101 is a computer room that must remain silent. This leaves research students without a designated space to meet.
• Research students are not always given an opportunity to meet departmental staff and to interact with them.

• Allow research students to share the staff common room facilities. This will also improve relations and interaction between research students and the school’s staff.
• Organise, at the departmental level, one meeting at the beginning of each year for research students to be introduced to and meet departmental staff.

• Library opening hours are too limited, especially at week-ends and during summer vacations. Research students welcomed the trials for extended opening hours and week-end openings and hope these changes will soon be definitely implemented. In addition, research students would welcome extended opening hours during the summer period.
• There have been numerous complaints by research students on the noise levels in the library, in particular that associated with mobile phone use. 
• There are no scanning facilities. Research students would welcome the opportunity to scan library materials in order to cut down on printing costs.

• Extend library opening hours – during term time as well as during the summer period - on a definitive basis as soon as possible.
• Enforce more strictly the rules concerning use of mobile phones in library.
• Provide more computers and scanning facilities in the library.

• The current quota of £ 20 is far too low and disproportionate with regards to the amount of pages PhD students are expected to read and the fees they pay.

• Increase printing quota to at least £ 100 per year.

• There is no systematic support from the registry during fieldwork absence. Students often have to call several times in order to obtain simple forms and student certification letters.
• Research students are unable to obtain SOAS business cards and letterheads through official channels and obtain them through ‘unofficial channels’ or from their supervisors. Business cards and letterheads are of vital importance during fieldwork and conference trips.
• The SOAS website fails to provide research students with a designated space on departmental webpages.

• Make all registry forms available online and create an automatic response system when a request for a specific document is logged in, so as to prevent unnecessary phone calls.
• Provide research students on fieldwork with SOAS letterheads. This is, again, a question of trust in research students who will be keen to avoid misusing these letterheads.
• Allow research students to get business cards at minimum cost.
• Help students network with other alumni or contacts in the countries where fieldwork is conducted. The alumni association could provide valuable support here.

• There needs to be an understanding that it will necessarily take some research students longer to complete their thesis for a number of reasons, e.g. the absence or depletion of funding that force PhD students to teach or work part-time, the learning of a foreign language for research purposes or a longer period spent on fieldwork.
• There is a need for funding to be made available to support students in the writing-up stage of their PhDs in order to prevent the vicious circle of working for subsistence purposes while delaying completion of the PhD.
• There have been cases where the registry, in spite of the supervisor’s approval, has not supported research students’ applications for funding for a 4^th year on the assumption that research students must complete their thesis in three years.
• For those few who receive funding in the form of an external scholarship, payments through SOAS are often delayed.
• Though there is some funding available for PhD students to attend conferences, not all PhD students are made aware of the possibility for them to apply for these monies.
• The research office provides staff with information on research funding and events but there seems to be no systematic forwarding to research students of the information of interest to them.

• Provide research students with more information on funding sources and with more support with applications for external funding. The research office could be given access to PhD students’ mailing lists, for example, and asked to forward all relevant information to research students directly.
• Improve communication on funding available from SOAS itself.
• Offer a number of ‘fees-only’ scholarships in order to increase the number of students who have access to scholarships.
• Offer a number of ‘writing-up’ scholarships that take into account the specificity of the doctoral projects conducted at SOAS and that will help students complete their thesis within a few months rather than within a year because they need to work part-time.
• Ensure that external scholarships paid to SOAS are forwarded to research students within a week.[4]

• Given the paucity of funding opportunities, research students are relying more and more on income from teaching. Simultaneously, a number of departments have become increasingly reliant on teaching provision by research students. But there seems to have been no systematic reflection on this evolution. 
• Conditions of work, contracts, payment and access to an office vary drastically from department to department.
• Many teaching assistants (TAs) are expected to take on additional responsibilities with no corresponding remuneration (e.g. office hours, essay marking).
• TAs with big class sizes spend a lot of time marking without adequate compensation for the additional work.
• TA training is, to the disadvantage of taught undergraduate and postgraduate students, not obligatory and remains unpaid.
• There are no school-wide guidelines for support provided to TAs.
• Some departments are so small that there are no opportunities to teach, thus depriving research students of a valuable professional experience.

• Harmonise and improve financial, material and training conditions for TAs across departments. All TAs should be provided with office space and additional workloads (i.e. additional essay marking and office hours) should be systematically paid for.
• Improve communication between TAs and faculty offices.
• Establish contracts for all TAs.
• Decide upon maximum class sizes and strictly adhere to this rule.
• Make TA training obligatory and paid.
• Create opportunities to teach in smaller departments.

• The process of completion and viva is somewhat of a mystery to the majority of research students.
• There is a lack of support for preparing for a post-PhD career.
• There is lack of support for publishing students’ work.

• Provide PhD students with clear information on the process of completion and organisation of the viva.
• Provide PhD students with clear information and career advice from the outset of their PhDs in order for them to develop a clear strategy and actively promote their own research through adequate conference attendance and academic publishing.
• Ensure that supervisors, departmental staff and the school provide PhD students with more guidance and support for publishing their work.

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