Supervising Conflict

This book provides practical advice for faculty who supervise PhD and master’s students about how to proactively manage the most common conflicts that arise in graduate studies.

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Cultivating respectful and productive academic relationships is a priority within higher education. What can faculty do when conflict disrupts research progress and strains the supervisor/student relationship?

Supervising Conflict offers practical advice and tools to help faculty identify and actively respond to the most common grad school concerns – the "everyday" conflicts. Drawing on data collected over four years at a large research-intensive university in Canada, Heather McGhee Peggs provides faculty with a map to where issues are likely to emerge based on hundreds of coaching conversations with faculty and students.

While ideally every campus would have a dispute resolution office and a graduate peer support team to help individuals navigate conflict, the reality is that faculty are often managing complex and difficult situations on their own. This unique resource combines negotiation and fair complaints-handling principles with insights from a multidisciplinary graduate peer team and highlights the critical role that equitable, restorative, and trauma-informed approaches can play in the emergence and resolution of conflict. This book includes opportunities for self-reflection, real-life case studies, and activities for professional faculty development. Supervising Conflict guides administrators seeking to address graduate concerns earlier and more effectively at a systemic level.