Missresearch: you are precisely the right person to help me. Because you have experience of the academic setting. You qualify because you offer an insight into academic life unlike anyone else.

“First choice: if you don’t want your efforts and hardship to go in vain, you must shut up and beg your supervisor to help you whenever he/she feels like it”

If you don’t want your efforts and hardship to go in vain you must beg your supervisor. I begged my supervisor on my hands and knees: he loved every minute of it. He ended up firing me. Do you think that’s fair?

“Second choice: you can make complaints and no-one will support you or (for that matter) believe you and you will be regarded as the ET the extraterrestrial!!!”

That’s precisely why we need to do something about it because so long
as victims of workplace abuse are regarded as criminals, which so often they are, nothing will change.

Like the fingers of a hand, and a hand that chooses to change things, can you be a finger of that hand?

[email protected]

Nobody's supervisor is named. Nobody has to be named. Everyone can stay anonymous, nobody has to declare anything. We know that bullying goes on because it's here for everyone to see.

HOW ARE WE GOING TO STOP IT??

I've got nothing to lose because I'm working behind the bar at O'Neills having been forced to quit my PhD by my supervisor, which he had no right to do.

I appreciate all you of you still working in academia have more to lose than me, but why do you have to say that this applies to you? Why don't you say you're just interested in the cause?

If you run a race for cancer research, does it mean you have cancer?

We need a law to protect PhD students.

It's about taking a stand, doing something about the unfairness in the academic workplace.

Why are you sitting around writing about how awful you feel about the unfairness you are subjected to in the workplace?

I don't want to be a whistleblower - whistleblower's are VICTIMS. We have to be much cleverer than that.

Do you remember "Sarah's Law" after the murder of Sarah Payne? What did the parents do? Did you see them throwing stones and cursing their daughter's killer?

NO! They, made a law so that from now on violent sex offenders face lifelong supervision by the police and social services in an overhaul of the country's criminal justice system.

So, what has this to do with unfairness in the academic workplace?

Well, I'm saying we get together to make a law, a procedure. We sit around, drinking tea and conconting this law. We get it perfect because all of us know the ins and outs of academia, having worked there, and then we push this law into the public domain.

Anyway, the issue here is not to punish those who have wronged us, rather it is to prevent those who come after us from having such experiences.

I'm not looking to take a big swipe at my supervisor (although it's what I'd like to do), more so, I'm looking to help others who come after me. It's what you and everybody else who wants to complain should be looking to do.

Anyway, I think my supervisor will get his own come uppence in due course, that is for sure. I don't want to get involved in his downfall - THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT TO CREATE A MOVEMENT FOR.

I want to look to the future - to change it for others who come after us.

I don't want to look to the past, it's over. What I'm saying is that there is nothing in place to protect students so somebody has to be clever enough to build something that will help them.

If you stay on these forums and do nothing but complain, nothing will be done.

Anyway, the issue here is not to punish those who have wronged us, rather it is to prevent those who come after us from having such experiences.

I'm not looking to take a big swipe at my supervisor (although it's what I'd like to do), more so, I'm looking to help others who come after me. It's what you and everybody else who wants to complain should be looking to do.

Anyway, I think my supervisor will get his own come uppence in due course, that is for sure. I don't want to get involved in his downfall - THAT'S NOT WHAT I WANT TO CREATE A MOVEMENT FOR.

I want to look to the future - to change it for others who come after us.

I don't want to look to the past, it's over. What I'm saying is that there is nothing in place to protect students so somebody has to be clever enough to build something that will help them.

If you stay on these forums and do nothing but complain, nothing will be done.

And, quite frankly, taking a stand for being treated unfairly is a sign of being assertive and taking control of the situation... a skill that a good student/prospective university lecturer needs to have....

"And if we name the institutions and academics we could end up in court."

Do we have to name the institutions? Can’t we say we have evidence of it going on in institutions across the UK/wherever?

Anyway, that’s why we need to discuss these issues. Your questions are exactly the type of questions that need to be addressed.

Exactly the type of questions we need to address if we create a movement against bullying in the academic setting.

"If we come out publicly we will suffer the same consequences as if we made a complaint through the uni."

Why does everyone in the cohort have to come out publicy? Only one person needs to do it on everyone’s behalf. Everyone else can stay anonymous unless they don’t mind going public.

"I’m guessing that no academic wants a student or employee that may complain."

Whistleblowers have a bad time and they have a bad reputation, don’t they? But they survive somehow…

"And is there not an attitude that only less academically able students complain?"

Yes. I must be a less academically able student. I won prizes for coming top every year of my four year degree, yet when I went into research I was told I was incompetent. I can’t quite figure it out… can you?

If you have some time to spare and you've experienced the unjustness and want to do something about it, can you get in contact with me?

If we get together we can do something about it. I'm thinking rules and procedures.

[email protected]

Please contact this address to do something about it.

Have you been bullied as a PhD student? Has this bullying seriously affected your life?

Would you be willing to tell your story completely confidentially to someone?

Have you ever been bullied and wished you'd done something about it? Would you be willing to take some time out and help set up/play a role in a student movement/organisation which puts an end to the ambiguity/unfairness in the academic setting?

I want to hear from you. Let's do something about it. If we all work together we can use our unfortunate experiences to help people in the future, to allow science/humanities to grow as they should and not be stifled by politics/bullying because there are no rules/procedures put in place to protect the student.

What will take for academic institutions to realise the seriousness of these issues?

Science, technology, humanities, art etc. will not grow if supervisors like this are allowed to stifle the imagination of students to gratify their insecurities.

There is no fair and just system allowing people who want to follow a scholastic way of life to blossom, develop and add their special qualities to the weave of scientific/humanitarian expansion. How will these areas grow if there are a majority of supervisors incapable of harnessing the best from their students?

I have loads of time of my hands now... maybe we should make a stand. A proper system in place that prevents all students in academia from this type of treatment. A system that gives everybody a fair crack at producing work that everyone is capable of, under the correct guidance.

I don't think it's too much to ask at all.

I'm serious.

Does anybody feel strongly enough about starting some kind of society/organisation which helps students in our situation?

To be able to give all people a fair crack at academia. To not be bullied, belittled, targeted by people who should not be supervising, least of be allowed to get the job of lecturer primarily because they are good friends with the head of department (i.e.).

I have NO JOB now. I'm desperate to find a PhD because I love my line of work, but am increasingly untrusting of the system.

More and more students are coming forward telling us on these forums of the bad experiences they have: it takes a small cohort of like-minded people to change the way things are.

It sounds like you want to do something about it; just like I did (to prevent what happened to me, happening to someone else). And that examiner telling you that you should not do anything about it has probably heightened your feelings of the unjustness of the whole situation.

All I can say is you are so lucky you’ve got your PhD. Poor me, I still need to look for one and I don’t know what this academic has done to my reputation….

I know how you feel. I was treated pretty roughly by my supervisor and was forced to quit after 7 months of my PhD. I have now heard that he is putting undue pressure on and making life extremely difficult for one of his other students (to quote, somebody told me that this person was close to having a nervous breakdown – but that’s just talk). When I reported this to the college tutors (as a way of reinforcing my case) they asked if this student had actually complained. He hasn’t. I wrote a report about my miserable experience and if any of the other students will complain about him it will reinforce my case.

The professor in charge of pastoral care in the department said to me "well, you're out of the situation now, at least you don't have to go through it with him anymore; somebody else will".