Doctoral supervision and conditional belonging in Polish law programmes

Updated Sep 07, 2026

Doctoral independence means different things when guidance is readily available and when a supervisor rarely responds. Jan Bazyli Klakla and Maciej Juzaszek examine that distinction in The leash, the trap, and the labyrinth, published in Higher Education on 30 July 2026. Their study concerns law doctoral candidates in Poland. It offers questions for reviewing supervisory relationships, rather than a verdict on whether doctoral reform succeeds everywhere.

What the study examined

The researchers recruited 27 participants purposively through institutional networks and personal contacts. Five focus groups involved 21 people; six different participants gave individual interviews. The sample covered both pre-reform programmes and doctoral schools established following Poland’s 2018 reform. The analysis used reflexive thematic analysis to interpret supervision and departmental relationships within a wider interview dataset.

The authors describe the reform as the institutional background to participants’ experiences. They explicitly distinguish this purpose from evaluating its overall success. The sample was selected for variation, not statistical representativeness, and the study did not follow a controlled before-and-after cohort.

Three ways of describing the experience

The leash concerns supervision and autonomy. Participants described both supportive freedom and very limited guidance. Some valued supervisors who remained available without tightly controlling the work. Others reported unanswered messages or little substantive feedback. These accounts suggest asking about independence and access to help separately.

The trap concerns conditional belonging. Some participants felt welcomed as colleagues. Others described inclusion accompanied by informal teaching, organisational or administrative obligations, or uncertainty about their institutional status. Belonging was therefore not uniformly experienced as either secure membership or exclusion.

The labyrinth concerns institutional navigation. Participants described unclear requirements, accumulating points and seeking answers across different authorities. The authors interpret access to insider knowledge as consequential. Accounts also included changes made after candidates challenged unnecessary requirements, so the picture was not one of universal institutional indifference.

Together, the metaphors organise the authors’ interpretation of dependence, inclusion and bureaucracy. They are not validated measures of supervisory quality or estimates of the effects of reform.

Questions for UK doctoral teams

The following are editorial suggestions for local investigation, not interventions tested in this study:

• Ask whether candidates can make intellectual decisions and obtain useful guidance when needed. Treat those as separate questions.
• Invite accounts of participation in departmental life, including whether opportunities carry unclear obligations.
• Map recurring comments about milestones and administrative routes to the processes involved before deciding what to change.
• Check whether confidentiality permits comparisons across small research cohorts. A detailed supervisory story can identify someone even after names are removed.

PRES and local PGR feedback can provide a starting point. Use follow-up discussion and process records to understand the comments, and a governance framework to decide what can be shared.

FAQ

Does the paper show that the 2018 reform failed?

No. It examines narrated experiences around the reform and argues that some forms of dependence and exclusion persisted in altered arrangements. Its design does not establish the reform’s overall causal effect.

Can the three metaphors be used in a survey?

They can inform questions to test locally. They should not be presented as a validated diagnostic scale or a benchmark for UK provision.

What is the main limitation?

The evidence comes from a purposive sample in one discipline and country. It provides situated accounts and interpretation, not national prevalence or a guaranteed improvement model.

Review note, 7 September 2026: checked against the full publisher article. Revised the headline and interpretation to distinguish qualitative accounts from evaluation of the reform, and removed a shortened quotation.

Reference

Jan Bazyli Klakla and Maciej Juzaszek (2026). “The leash, the trap, and the labyrinth - supervision, autonomy, and symbolic exclusion in doctoral education in Poland.” Higher Education. Publisher article.