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NTU Doctoral School

Nottingham Trent University Doctoral School is home to an inclusive community of almost 1,000 doctoral candidates across our eight schools.

Welcome to the Doctoral School

Whether you're working towards a PhD, Professional Doctorate or PhD by Publication, the Doctoral School can help you through every aspect of your doctoral degree from admission and enrolment, to professional development, social and academic events, through your project approval and annual monitoring to the submission of your thesis and your viva voce examination.

The Doctoral School is where you will find the help you’ll need to become a confident, skilled NTU researcher – and it is the first port of call for doctoral candidates and supervisors for advice, guidance and support in navigating the doctoral journey.

Information for doctoral candidates

Governance

The PGR Dashboard

NTU Doctoral candidate and supervisory teams can view, manage, and monitor progress with the dedicated PGR dashboard.

This online tool allows various tasks and requests to be carried out, including:

  • Annual monitoring of the progress of studies;
  • PhD project approval applications
  • Extension, suspension and withdrawal applications;
  • Supervisory Team changes;
  • Change of study mode applications

The PGR dashboard provides greater transparency of the doctoral candidate journey, allowing status checks of requests in real time. It also enables increased awareness of key deadlines and easier monitoring of various tasks during doctoral studies at NTU.

An NTU username and password are required to log in to the system.

Read our user guides to find out further information. If more help is required with the system, or to report a problem, please submit a request to pgrdashboardsupport@ntu.ac.uk

Supervision and support for current doctoral candidates and supervisors

The current course handbooks for Professional Doctorate candidates can be found in the relevant Learning Room in NOW.

Throughout research degree programmes, doctoral candidates are supported by a dedicated supervisory team.

This usually consists of a Director of Studies (the person with the greatest expertise of the project) and a second supervisor. If collaboration is taking place with a company or institution there may also be a third supervisor.

Projects can be inter-disciplinary and draw on knowledge from two or more Academic Schools. Doctoral candidates are encouraged to discuss any issues with the Postgraduate Research Tutor (PGRT) or Professional Doctorate Course Leader and with the Doctoral Candidate Representative.

The NTU Doctoral School Administration Team are the first point of contact during time spent at NTU on a research degree programme and are here to assist doctoral candidates throughout the period of study.

Current Research Degree policies and forms

NTU Doctorate Education, Training and Development Programme

All PhD candidates at NTU are expected to participate in a rolling programme of professional development activities – our NTU Doctoral Education, Training and Development (DETD) programme. Some of these activities are face-to-face workshops and seminars, but most of the programme is currently delivered online to make it possible for part-time, full-time, at a distance and on campus PGR to make the most of the events on offer.

The DETD is a relatively new programme which is in a piloting phase in 2021-2022. The programme has three 'streams' for new PGR working on their proposals, for PGR who are in the 'middle' of the doctorate, and for PGR approaching submission and examination. There are workshops and webinars tailored for these particular monitoring points of stages of the doctorate, and there are also many events that are open to all PGR regardless of where they are in their own journey. It is our hope that the events on offer will enable and empower doctoral candidates to create their own individualised, bespoke package of activities to support them throughout the key stages of each doctoral programme from project approval to preparing for the submission of the thesis and viva examination.

Some activities within the DETD are essential for candidates to engage with due to their research topic and may be expected by the relevant funding body or by NTU supervisors, but other activities may simply be of interest and aid in mapping out future careers. Since interests naturally change as individuals develop as researchers, this programme enables doctoral candidates to be inquisitive about professional development.

The wide range of workshops and activities accessible within the Researcher Development Programme (RDP) have been mapped to the Vitae Researcher Development Framework.

Contact the Doctoral School

Email doctoralschool@ntu.ac.uk or chat with the Doctoral School Administration Manager online if you have any questions about doctoral study at NTU.