Different journeys: Cultivating doctoral researcher independence, with distance and professional practice-oriented researchers through intercultural research supervision, the hidden curriculum and cohort-based provision

Supporting and enabling doctoral researchers, their achievement and independence, is not just an aim for higher education institutions but a necessity. This is particularly true in current contexts of differences across time, space, culturally inflected research learning and the variety of outcomes sought through doctorates. This conceptual and experience-based essay argues that flexibility and imaginative, responsive change in university systems, in supervision practices, modes of study and support are needed to enable diverse researchers access the ‘hidden curriculum’ of effective research and writing practices, achieve their doctorate and related outcomes. Sensitive, intercultural, distance supervision practices and cohort-based collegial support are seen as essential to enable diverse doctoral researchers to achieve publication and practice outcomes and support their future work.