PhD candidates: ‘Involve us more in improving social safety’

The University PhD council (UPC) began a letter to the Executive Board by stating that PhD candidates at TU Delft experience social safety incidents ‘disproportionately often’. Furthermore, there are more than 3,300 PhD candidates working at TU Delft. The UPC believes that these two elements together mean that PhD candidates should be involved in drafting the social safety plan of action and in the initiatives that follow.

According to the Supervisory Committee on Social Safety, a meeting was also held with the UPC, but Israel Carrete, the UPC Chair, believes that more is needed than that, he tells Delta. “We spoke to someone from the Integrity Board and someone from the Graduate School for an hour. This is far too little to get to the heart of the problems around social safety. Furthermore, we have not yet spoken directly with the Executive Board.” Carrete hopes that the letter will change this.

Expressing views and sharing ideas

In its letter, UPC introduces the idea of ‘psychological safety’, as defined by the American researcher Amy Edmondson. ‘Psychological safety exists when people feel their workplace is an environment where they can speak up, offer ideas, and ask questions without fear of being punished or embarrassed’, write the PhD candidates.

They request the Executive Board to look into the type of problems that PhD candidates face, taking their diverse backgrounds into account. PhDs come from ‘different educational, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds and encompass a wide range of religions, sexual orientations, genders, and age groups’, writes the UPC. This could affect the degree of psychological freedom that they experience. In its report, the Inspectorate of Education stated that many TU Delft staff members do not generally feel free to share their opinions or address colleagues on their behaviour.

Mandatory training

In its letter, UPC shares several ideas on improving social safety in both the short and the long terms. The following are a few of their recommendations.

• Mandatory training on psychological safety for staff members who are higher up in the hierarchy, such as supervisors and managers.
• More opportunities to give feedback. Not only the supervisor should be able to give feedback to the doctoral candidate, but the doctoral candidate should also be able to do this.
• Appoint social safety stewards in line with the TU Delft concept of data stewards. ‘Social stewards will be (co-)responsible for safety training, formative assessment of the psychological safety in research groups …’
• Acknowledge power dynamics. ‘There is an inherently unbalanced power dynamic in PhD-supervisor relationships. This is not necessarily bad … but if it is left unaddressed, it can make transparent conversations difficult or negatively affect PSS.’
• Improve onboarding. According to the UPC, PhD candidates often do not know who they can approach in case of problems or what their rights are. On their first day of work, give them a list of the relevant support networks, regulations and documents.

UPC closes its letter with a call to the Executive Board. The advocacy body invites the Board members to ‘contact us about this letter and the well-being of our community’.