Workshop on PhD supervision

Unlike other countries, PhD supervision training is optional in Spain and the availability of training courses is scarce. For this reason, INGENIO organizes a seminar aimed at doctoral students, early-stage postdocs, and more senior researchers who have supervised PhDs for some time. The seminar will be in a workshop format, allowing an open discussion of the challenges and problems faced at each stage.

About Melanie Walker

Professor Melanie Walker has been an active member of the HDCA since its inception in 2004. She is a South African born  and describes herself as a capabilitarian scholar whose research is informed by her own biography, the profound impact of struggling against apartheid in education and civic life, and hence enduring commitments to removing inequalities and injustices. Her research over the last two decades has been deeply informed by human development and the capability approach. She focuses on (higher) education, mostly in the global South, and transversal research and practice challenges of decoloniality, methodology, inequalities and justice. She holds a BA Hons and MA in History (both cum laude) from the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal and a PhD from the University of Cape Town.  Since 2012 she has worked at the University of the Free State in South Africa, where she is currently distinguished professor and holds a prestigious South African Research Chair in Higher Education and Human Development.  Previously she was professor of higher education at the University of Nottingham and has held senior positions at the University of Sheffield, the University of the West of England, the University of Glasgow and the University of the Western Cape. She directs an internationally highly regarded research programme on higher education and development at the UFS, including high quality capacity building of cohorts of PhD students and post-doctoral fellows, the majority from sub-Saharan Africa. Since 2016 this dynamic group has produced 23 doctoral theses on higher education and human development and numerous monographs constituting a significant collective body of global South scholarship. She is an A1 rated education sciences scholar with the National Research Foundation (NRF) in South Africa, honorary professor at the Universities of Nottingham and Pretoria, and a fellow of the Academy of Sciences in South Africa (ASSAF). She was vice-president of the HDCA from 2014-2017, an editor of the JHDC (2007-2010), associate editor (2014-), and is current President of the HDCA (2022-2024). She has been the recipient of numerous research grants in the UK, Europe and South Africa, has delivered keynotes in South Africa, the UK, Europe, Australia, South Korea and Taiwan, and is widely published both books and journal articles.