Supervision of “sandwich” PhD students Challenges and opportunities for supervisors

Abstract

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) supports bilateral cooperation North-to-South. The main part of SIDA´s support is in the form of research and capacity building, on which PhD students are selected locally in their countries and conduct their PhD studies in the sandwich model. It basically implies that the students spend half of the time that the PhD studies and project last in their home-countries. The aim of this report is to shed light on the supervision of sandwich PhD students. To get realistic insights into the topic, four supervisors of sandwich PhD students were interviewed. The outcome of the interviews provides information on the challenges for supervisors, different aspects to consider when dealing with such project and the opportunities for improvement. In few words the experience of supervisors of sandwich PhD students has been defined as being frustrating at times, rewarding, fun, interesting, enriching, stimulating and productive.