On this episode we interviewed Prof. Dr. Harald Wenzel, supervisor award winner for the year 2024. We discussed with him what a good supervision relationship consists of and what advice he has for aspiring or current doctoral students.

Highlights

 „…good supervision has to be based on something like responsiveness.“

„[you] could really immerse yourself much deeper in what the doctoral student is doing if you just had more time for it“

“ So you have to see that as a doctoral student, you can be very much alone. And this is really a challenge. And it’s not only a scientific challenge, it’s also a personal challenge“

Prof. Dr. Harald Wenzel

Intro

Welcome to the DRS podcast, the podcast for doctoral researchers at Freie Universität Berlin. I’m Dr. Marlies Klamt and I’ll be your host for today’s episode. Let’s be honest, supervision can be a dream or a disaster. Today we’re talking about what makes it work.

My guest is Professor Dr. Harald Wenzel, a seasoned academic who was recently awarded the DRS Supervision Award for Outstanding Doctoral Supervision. What makes this award special? It’s nominated by PhD researchers themselves. In our conversation, we talk about the three principles that make for good supervision and what doesn’t. We touch on how to build a strong and supportive working relationship, why responsiveness and enthusiasm matter, and what challenges often come up in the supervision process.

Professor Wenzel also shows what he’s learned from supervising over the years and what structural changes he believes could better support both candidates and supervisors. So whether you’re doing a PhD, supervising doctoral researchers yourself, or whether you’re just curious about the inner workings of academic life, there’s a lot to take away from this episode.

Transcript

A very warm welcome to the DRS podcast, Professor Wenzel. For those who don’t know you, could you briefly introduce yourself and your academic background?

Yes, I came to the Freie Universität Berlin as a professor for the sociology of North America. I have studied at least some time in the United States at the University of Philadelphia. I have later become a John F. Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University. And so the United States and Canada have become my special field of research. On the other hand, I must say, originally I’m a theorist in sociology, so my dissertation, since we will be talking about dissertations a lot today, has been about an American sociological theorist, Talcott Parsons, but I have also written books about pragmatism, symbolic interactionism. Although I’m a theorist, I have endeavored into new fields that are much more empirical in type, and this is also the area in which I supervised quite a number of doctoral students.

Thanks for this introduction. It sounds very interesting, your research. And you already mentioned the supervision. That’s what we’re going to talk about today. You’ve recently received an award for outstanding supervision. Congratulations.

Thank you very much.

What does this recognition mean to you personally?

Well, personally, I’ve really been surprised by that prize being awarded to me. I am already retired and therefore it’s kind of a climax, type of climax of my career as a supervisor in sociology, and not only, of course, doctoral students, but also all kinds of other students. The place where I’ve been working, or I’m still working, is the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, and there are bachelor programs, master programs, and PhD program, and I’ve done a lot of supervision in all three.

And during your career, you’ve clearly had a positive impact on your PhD candidates. So let’s start by talking about what good supervision actually looks like. In your opinion, what makes someone a good PhD supervisor?

Well, that’s really a difficult question. I’d say the first principle which I try to follow is that a good supervision has to be based on something like responsiveness. And responsiveness can look very much different depending on what kind of candidate you have. There are candidates who really want a lot of contribution by their supervisor. But there are also candidates that find that disturbing or distracting. So you have to find the right balance. And this is,  the relationship, the supervision relationship is certainly something personal. It’s not private. It’s not intimate. It’s a personal relationship which has to be built up or which can, in a sense, rely on further experience with a student because that same student has already be supervised for his or her master thesis.

So I would say the first principle I would follow is be responsive, and that means try to balance, the kind of traffic that you will be building in that kind of relationship. That kind of traffic, that kind of back and forth is something which is … Well, you need a kind of sensibility to see what’s right and what is working.

And are there any more principles you find important?

Yeah, of course. There are quite a number of them. I’ve never, so to say, explicitly thought about that, I must admit. There is certainly something which I personally find very important, and this is enthusiasm.

And you would usually think about enthusiasm in terms of, well, of course, the doctoral student has to be enthusiastic about the topic he or she is working on. But I think it’s also very much necessary that the supervisor is enthusiastic about the research project. And if there’s something which I have been very lucky with the doctoral students that I’ve been supervising, it is that I would say in 95% of all supervisions, I was really very much enthusiastic about the topic. In a sense of, well, this is a topic I would like to do the research myself if I would have been younger, if I would have had the opportunity.

This is so interesting. I’m so curious about this kind of field of research that I would like to do it myself. This is kind of a way to develop kind of an attitude towards the work of the doctoral student. So as a supervisor, if you can be enthusiastic about, so to say, the research topic and about the work that the student is doing on it, of course, this is kind of giving a lot of oxygen to the supervision project, giving energy to it.

I think that kind of energetic relationship that’s building up with the doctoral student is very important. And, well, I can only say I have been very lucky that, so to say, 95 percent, I would say, of the research that the doctoral students have been doing under my supervision had been projects that I really would have liked to do myself.

That’s a really interesting perspective. I haven’t thought about that myself. Thank you for sharing that. Did you want to add something or shall we leave it like that?

What is good supervision? I think there’s maybe a third point I would like to make. Having pursued an academic career, of course, you already have, of course, a lot of experience from the perspective of someone who has already written a dissertation or a second one, as it’s in Germany called a habilitation thesis. Yes, you have ample experience about how is this done.

Of course, time changes and technical opportunities change, so we no longer buy books. Now we buy e-books and we have e-book readers instead of looking at pieces of paper. So there’s a lot of change going on, but at the end there are some basic, I’d say, recipes that one has used in his or her academic life, which I have used in my academic life, and which turned out to be fertile. And that’s something I would also try to make my knowledge available to the doctoral students in the sense of what are certain, practical recipes that are helpful.

To give you an example, something like a working diary is something which can be really helpful, particularly in the writing process. Because if you start the next day in the morning with the writing of your thesis again, very often you have to think what you have already done and to the whole process of tracing back the argument you have already built just takes time, yes. And before you really can continue writing an hour passes or even more passes, just, to rebuild, to reconstruct the argument you have already been slowly, gradually building up.

A diary will help you in that at the end of the day you do write down what you have done this day and where the argument at the moment, what kind of point it has reached. And instead of, so to say, reconstructing the whole process of building your argument the next day when you continue writing, you will just look at your diary and read what you have written at the evening before, and this can help enormously to accelerate your writing. So you can begin earlier the whole process of where I am now, what has to be said, what’s the next argument, the next step in the argument that has to be taken. This is much easier then.

This is just an example of one practical recipe. There are lots of others. And you have to talk to a doctoral student who is open for, who is confronted with all kinds of practical difficulties, yes. You have to have, of course, an open ear of the doctoral students to listen to such practical recipes.

This also is a little bit about the balancing out of the relationship. And in some sense, your responsiveness shouldn’t be too far reaching. Yes. And this is very much depending on what’s really needed by the doctoral student and what you can give in that moment.

Thanks for sharing also for sharing this idea about a research diary. I’m sure that will also help other PhD candidates who are listening who don’t use one yet. Thanks for sharing also the three principles. And I think they’re great. And it’s a good ideal to strive for. But of course, as you know, not all supervision goes smoothly. Let’s take a look at the other side of the coin. What kind of mistakes do you think supervisors should avoid?

That’s really a very difficult question because it presupposes that you have already made a lot of mistakes and in science, of course, we don’t make mistakes usually. I haven’t seen any journals where mistakes are published. Well, there are exceptions, of course, particularly in medicine. So what are the risks of failing?

One of the problems that we, of course, are always confronted with. This is a very long period of time in which the doctoral student has to continuously achieve something, step by step. There have been really quite a number of cases in which I felt not really having the right expertise to help people, in particular, if there are any, so to say, problems of motivation, psychic problems, problems to go on. Yes, there might be, there are all kinds of circumstances which can play into this.

If they don’t write the dissertation, for example, on the basis of having a stipend, if they have a job to earn money just to be able to earn a doctoral degree, in my original studies, I studied psychology, but sometimes I think the supervisors should be in a sense supervised, in particular with problems that come up that are psychical problems, problems of motivation, problems that are related to confrontation with your individuality, problems of self-confidence or lacking self-confidence, of course. I have an expertise in sociology. I don’t have an expertise in, so to say, providing kind of therapeutical solutions for crisis in which doctoral students can be.

So, if there is a real risk of failure for supervisors, I think it’s probably in a field in which they lack expertise. And this is … The whole process of writing a dissertation is much more than just a scientific enterprise. It’s so much more on a personal level. It’s involving your individuality. It’s involving you in crisis, in feeling alone or even lonesome. Because you have to see very often the topic you are working on as a doctoral student is so exotic. There’s always the question to explain to other people what you are doing. So you have to see that as a doctoral student, you can be very much alone. And this is really a challenge. And it’s not only a scientific challenge, it’s also a personal challenge. It’s a challenge of your individuality and how you cope with that kind of crisis that might come up, particularly if you are stuck in building the argument. Well, so I think that’s really the biggest risk to fail for a supervisor. And I would very much like to have, so to say, someone supervising me in my supervision.

Is there anything you would recommend in order to help your PhD students maintain their mental and emotional well-being? Because I agree, it’s definitely a really tough time, the PhD journey during your life and a very demanding time.

Of course, there is all kinds of outside help that you could turn to. On the other hand, I would say, yeah, of course, there are again, standard practical recipes. Well, it’s difficult, because on the one hand, you would recommend limit the time you work on the dissertation, so many hours per day, and do something else. In a sense, think about a rewarding scheme or whatever there is outside of this kind of academic project and just think about other things, just do other things, whatever this is.

On the other hand, particularly in the process where you are writing up, it’s very important, in my opinion, that you develop something like a flow experience. And to get into a flow experience, in the sense of Csikszentmihalyi, I think is his name, you have to spend as much time as possible. There is nothing else that really should interfere. So to strike the right balance here in phases where your work is very intense and there shouldn’t be any distractions on the one hand, and on the other hand, that there are phases in which you really need some distraction.

This is a project which you have, well, really, of course, you have written a master’s thesis usually, but I would say over the length of time, more than two years, this is something you have no experience with. So this is a first for you. I think that’s really, really, really tricky for you as a doctoral student to come to terms with that kind of challenges.

So maybe, this is something like referring back to the experiences you had with writing your bachelor’s thesis or your master’s thesis. This might be helpful because in retrospect, you might be able to see what you did well and what you did wrong in those prior phases of intense academic work. But I think there are no easy answers to that.

If you have a PhD candidate and you see that person is clearly struggling, is that something you would actively talk about? Would you offer support? Would you say this is overstepping, the PhD student has to come to me and ask for help if they need support?

Well, if I see that someone is clearly struggling, depending on this kind of description, I’d say, of course, I would try to intervene. But of course, any intervention would be coming with a disclaimer in the sense of, I really don’t want to interfere if you do not want me to say anything, do anything about the particular personal problems that you have at this moment. I would be very reluctant, really come too close to that person. But this is again a problem of balancing.

And at the moment, this person answers and you might already learn whether your help is something that is welcomed or not. So, of course, if there are such situations, such crises, I, of course, would like to help. And the experience I had with my dissertation, for example, is, of course, you are in very often, you are very much alone with your topic, because we like to think about writing a dissertation as at least embedded in a team of other people, of other doctoral students, and they have similar challenges, similar experiences. But the real help for advancing with your study usually doesn’t come from the team. It would have been necessary to have a team that is on par with the kind of discussions and problems you are just at this moment grappling with in your writing up or in your doing research, in your empirical study. And this is, I would say, extremely improbable because, well, you have similar projects in a team, but at the end you are very much alone.

And coming to terms with that kind of individuality of challenge, is very important. And here the crises are born in a larger process. There is, I would say, a very important smaller network of, let me call them, academic friends. Not people that are necessarily also doctoral students, but friends, just people you can talk to about what you are just doing, and who are responsive because they are able to understand what you are grappling with.

So I’d say that’s very important again and again to find the opportunity to talk about what’s going on in your head and what’s creating the crisis. This is something that the supervisor alone cannot shoulder.

Yeah, but maybe they can also help to frame those crises as a possibility to grow personally and as a researcher as well.

Of course. They should always help to provide a positive interpretation of the situation. Of course, I would try to emphasize the normalcy of crisis, and help and show the doctoral student, well, this is something which you will pass through and you will look back on it as something that has provided you with an additional layer of experience, which is enormously helpful for your further academic career.

So, it’s always that kind of positive view of what’s happening that you have to provide. Although I must say, a lot of academic achievement is not accomplished by striving for excellence. I’d say there’s a large part which is accomplished by avoiding failure. And if you look into motivational theories, you might know that avoidance of failure is a very, very strong factor.

It’s a very interesting point, and I also liked very much what you said about the normality of crisis, because in my experience, just the fact to know that it’s not me, but it’s just a normal thing that happens during a PhD, that there will be hard times, there will be crisis, can be very relieving in itself. I would like to come back to something you said earlier on which I found very interesting as well, about the necessity of enthusiasm on the supervisor side. Now, if you’re going to look at the other side as well, what do you look for or what did you look for when you decided whether to take on a new PhD candidate and were there also maybe specific reasons or red flags that would make you decide not to supervise someone?

Well, that’s a difficult question. I have been lucky in the sense that most doctoral candidates came to me, well, not in the physical space meaning of that, but there was kind of an elective affinity between the student and me in the sense of that we shared the interest in a particular field of research. Very often, for example, in my case, it’s been, American religion. So, if the interest is already shared, you feel that someone who would really would come up with an interesting dissertation, and this is someone who is interested in doing research and in coming up with some new insights, there’s a natural curiosity and whatever. You just sense that. If you’re not able to sense that, if people are coming to you and telling you, I’m not sure what topic to write on, if you feel that there’s a lack of maturity of the topic, if it’s really very much inmature, this might really be kind of a red flag for me, yes.

But I must say, I rarely have experienced that. It’s rather a theoretical construct for me than a practical, real experience. Another problem which would also raise the red flag for me is that people from the beginning, so to say, seem to be, to me, sorry, I’m not an expert in this, psychically unstable. I had a lot of experience with that because I have been for, I think, 12 years Dean of Studies, and I have encountered a lot of students, not doctoral students, who really didn’t want to leave the university. I had a student, I think he was in the 52nd semester, and one of my so to say achievements was to guide her to the final exam. And so she unfortunately, in her perspective, had to leave the university successfully. Yes, so I have a lot of experience with people who really have been in trouble with finishing their studies, with writing the thesis and whatever.

So I’ve been chair of the committee that advises the Berlin program for 15 years, which is for American PhD students coming over. So I’ve been confronted with kind of a lot of episodes and crisis, episodes of crisis, of course, so that I’m able to see the red flag. But I fortunately, I must say, this is something very, very rarely really happened.

Thanks for sharing those red flags. I want to come back to another thing you said before, that the supervisor should be supervised. And I would like to zoom out now a little bit and look at the academic system around supervision. Do you feel the academic system as it currently functions supports good PhD supervision, or do you think it rather creates obstacles?

Well, I wouldn’t say that it creates obstacles. That would be a very black and white vision of what’s happening. It’s neither a very good system for supervision now, nor is it really bad. We are in the grey zone, of course. And in the grey zone, it’s always important to find some contrast. And I would say what has really been kind of a success model for supervision have been the graduate schools that have been launched in the excellence competition in Germany. That set up a new thinking about to create successful PhD programs, structured PhD programs in contrast to the individual promotion to PhD.

So, that created larger groups, interdisciplinary groups. This created a minimum of, well, other voices that a doctoral student can hear in addition to something like the first or the second supervisor, yes. There had been a larger team of supervisors. I know this from the John F. Kennedy Institute where we have the graduate school. We were successful in the first phase of the excellence competition and got the graduate school and we had our supervising teams of minimum three academic supervisors. So there is always that kind of interdisciplinary approach in that you can also talk, so to say, as a doctoral student in history to someone in sociology or political science. So that’s really something that in that grey zone, looking for contrasts, I’d say that’s really something that really stands out. This is kind of a salient model.

And I would say something like the individual promotion to PhD, it can be very questionable. I don’t want to delve into the whole topic of plagiarism of PhDs that have been earned with kind of, well, this is in murky waters. Yes, I don’t want to comment on that. But there’s really a broad rang.

And I’d say we have other systems like the Anglo-Saxon American system where reviewership and supervision is separate. And one can think about this. I think in the German system, this is would be almost impossible to achieve because of the critical mass. You need quite a large faculty to create a good model of separate reviewership and supervision.

So there might be better models. At the end, we have to see that one of the really crucial restrictions that are working against good supervision in the German system is the enormous load of teaching for professors. There is no system in which, for example, supervision is in a sense … can be counted against your duties for teaching. Which is, of course, in other systems, quite usual.

So that would free time. If you, for example, for every three supervisions you get, so to say, a reduction of two teaching hours, that would free time really, because each teaching hour has to be prepared.

There’s a lot of more time going into that. That would free time for better, I would say, supervision for more contact, for more contact that’s really fruitful, could really immerse yourself much deeper in what the doctoral student is doing if you just had more time for it.

Yeah, that’s an interesting idea. Thanks for sharing that. You’ve worked with PhD candidates over several decades. In your opinion, how has PhD supervision changed over the course of your career?

Wow. That’s a good question. Yeah, I think the sociologists would call the process which has happened in this field professionalization. And professionalization means that there are new forms to be filled out, that there are new principles, new rules laid down for providing a recipe to achieve excellence. So you are trying to put in much more control, more feedback, more management. If I compare that to the time when I wrote my dissertation, I would say, well, you had to have a good relationship to your doctoral father or doctoral mother.

And they were absolutely instrumental in helping you and also helping you, in a sense, making the first crucial step in your academic career. The problem is that this creates, from a sociological point of view, something like tribal relationships in the sense, if you look at how academic career worked 20 years ago, still, whereas today we have a much more anonymous and more controlled, more professional type of career building. And for the doctoral student, I’d say what has changed is that now you have to have more, much more emphasis on networking.

You cannot rely on those tribal relationships, on good relationships to your doctoral father, to other supervisors, to a certain relatively small field, we are in Germany and not in the United States where this is much bigger, in a small field where you are becoming an expert. So today this is much more, well, cooler. It is in a sense also much more difficult because what’s missing in all the challenges you have to create a network to publish and the most important journals and you have to choose these journals very wisely and all this stuff this has become much more so say kind of a multiple challenge.

This kind of multiplicity of single individual challenges, which you all have successfully to master, this hasn’t been the scenario, say, 20 or 30 years ago. 20 years ago, the whole kind of academic career, it was as risky as it is today, I would say. There’s no difference. Because really, if you take the academic path, there is no certainty that you can get a professorship.

But on the other hand, I would say it’s also today very difficult. I get the feeling that young scientists are kind of a neglected group in the policies of the Bundesländer [=federal states], but also of the Bund [=state], and to create a much better set of opportunities for young scientists, for younger academic careers. This is something I see personally as really, really lacking today.

There has to be much more done. And, well, this is a whole different problem, I’d say, and it’s a policy problem very much, and I’m not really an expert on that. I just get the feeling in seeing how certain careers evolve or develop or do not develop, and I sometimes think, well, something is going wrong.

Thanks for these insights. To finish off, I have a few quickfire questions prepared for you. Just say whatever comes to mind, short and spontaneous. I know you’re retired now, but maybe you can answer the next question. Imagine you were still an active professor. In an ideal world, how many doctoral candidates would you like to supervise at the same time?

No more than two.

When you’re facing a deadline, how early do you like to have things finished?

I like them to be finished at least a week before, but I never achieve that.

What do or what did you enjoy most about supervising PhD candidates?

I enjoy most, really, I have to be repeating myself, the enthusiasm. This is something I would, if I’m able to share that with a doctoral student, I’m really happy.

And when you look back, what are you personally most proud of in your role as a supervisor?

Well, I’m most proud of that quite a number of my PhD students got a professorship and still some of them staying in contact. And this is really a rewarding experience.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, for sharing your experiences. It was a real pleasure talking to you.

Thank you very much. And of course, you’re welcome.

Outro

That was such a thoughtful conversation with Professor Dr. Harald Wenzel. I hope you found it as interesting and inspiring as I did. We covered a lot, from the core principles of good supervision to common challenges to the role that energy and care play in building strong working relationships. And one thing really stood out.

A successful PhD supervisor relationship is built on mutual understanding, adaptability and shared enthusiasm for research. If you’d like to learn more about the DRS Supervision Award or hear from other inspiring supervisors, check out the DRS Podcast website. And if you enjoyed this episode, feel free to listen to some of our other interviews and conversations around the PhD journey. This was Dr. Marlies Klamt for the DRS Podcast. Thanks for tuning in today and until next time.

This interview was conducted by our trainer and podcast host Dr. Marlies Klamt