The programme aims to improve research results by improving the relationship between researchers and doctoral students

The URV lecturers Mar Reguero and Joan J. Carvajal, members of the Training Group for the Professionalization of Doctoral Supervision, which is part of the Graduate and Doctoral School of the URV, gave the course-workshop “Introduction to good practices in doctoral supervision” at the National University of San Marcos (Lima, Peru) and the University of Manizales (Manizales, Colombia).

This training for thesis directors is based on the project that the URV launched in 2013 to promote an honest and professional relationship between doctoral students and supervisors, and thus improve research results.

The courses-workshops are part of the technical missions organized by the Iberoamerican Association of Postgraduate Universities (AUIP), of which the URV is a member. The partner institutions can receive advice and help to solve problems that they have detected in their postgraduate courses. These technical workshops lasted 16 hours each, divided into 2 days of intensive work at each university, and served to strengthen these universities’ doctoral programmes by training doctoral thesis supervisors.

The association requires that the workshops be coordinated by reputable experts in the field, and that they do practical work with small groups of supervisors and academics responsible for the postgraduate or doctoral programmes offered by the institution.

The Group of Trainers for the Professionalization of Doctoral Supervision was formed in 2015 by the Postgraduate and Doctoral School of the URV, and since then has given training courses for doctoral thesis supervisors and doctoral students at the URV and in more than twenty universities in Catalonia, the rest of Spain, Andorra, Portugal, Mexico and Colombia.

The group has also participated in several European conferences dedicated to doctoral education and has organized two editions of the “Tarragona Think Tank on supervisory training” with experts in doctoral education from fifteen European universities. They have produced a number of publications, including the book Good practices in doctoral supervision: reflections from the Tarragona Think Tank (2017), with the URV Publications label. In addition to Mar Reguero and Joan J. Carvajal, the group is also formed by lecturers María Ercilia García, María Dolores Jiménez, and Mireia Valverde.