Hello everyone!! I am hoping no one has experienced my situation themselves, but that someone has some advice for me. I am a PhD student with two supervisors, one on-campus and one adjunct that is off-campus. I did my MSc with them both, and my office was on-campus so I had more contact with the university professor than the adjunct who is my primary supervisor. I thought the supervision I received during my MSc worked well and our relationship would be great for my PhD. However, when I started my PhD my adjunct had me move my office to where he works. I am having a lot of problems with this, because he simply doesn’t have time for me, and the government department I am working out of is not conducive to housing students (e.g., scanned documents end up on a locked file server, I have to ask someone to email them to me; I can’t download any programs not supported by government IT onto my computer). However, that part isn’t so bad, I can work around that. The biggest problem I’m having is with the favoritism occurring with the university professor. My adjunct supervisor cancelled my field season because I planned to do it alone. I planned it that way because we did not get funding to hire students. I had permission from the university to work alone, but my adjunct supervisor was not comfortable with a ‘young woman’ going out to do fieldwork by herself, and asked me what my dad would think of me working alone. Needless to say, I was not impressed, so I worked from home for a while. When I talked to my university supervisor, he said he couldn’t do anything because the adjunct is my primary supervisor now, and that he agrees with the adjunct anyways. Then at lab meeting yesterday, I watched an MSc student present on her field season, where she drove across country (Canada’s a pretty big country!!) and did four months of fieldwork by herself. My field season was supposed to be 2 ½ weeks long. I am furious, and I have no idea what to do now, so I’m hoping someone has some advice for me. Thanks very much!!

I find your supervisor's behaviour simply unacceptable. If I were you I would remind him that doing this fieldwork is your personal right, and that others have done similar things. As part of my PhD I had to travel to India, Pakistan, and the Middle East and the fact that I am a young woman never stopped me from travelling and working there all alone. I even had to spend over a month in these countries, all by myself! After all, you are responsible to look after yourself. You have to deal with sexism, not favouritism. This is discrimination! If talking to your supervisor doesn't work, talk to your student union or to your mentor.

If your university or department has someone in charge of health and safety, they may be a good person to talk to. I had a chat with our H&S contact about doing lone working, and he gave me information on the risk assessment forms and so on that need to be completed to satisfy the university's requirements. If you follow the right procedures and the university is satisfied with your whereabouts and the measures you've taken to keep yourself safe, then your supervisor shouldn't really over-rule that.

You will have already or will shortly pass your research proposal through an ethics committee. It's up to them, not your supervisor to comment and pass or deny your fieldwork on health, safety and ethical grounds. Also just because something is high risk doesn't mean it won't be passed. What stage are you at with ethics? If it's already been passed you can do the fieldwork then go. You'll just have to say its important to the research and its been passed. If it's been passed without the fieldwork you need to send in an amendment to now include the fieldwork and argue the grounds for including it with how you will mitigate risks to yourself being a lone traveller. Good luck.

Have you tried talking with that MSc student? Maybe she was facing the same problem but found a way to convince your supervisor.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!!

I have a meeting set up with counselling services to talk about these issues, they deal student-supervisor issues all the time on campus and will hopefully have some insight for me.

I have also contacted the university's health and safety department about who is liable for me if I get hurt doing lone fieldwork. I had the university's approval before attempting to go out into the field, but my adjunct supervisor cancelled the season because he didn't think it was safe. Then after cancelling me season he sent me the working alone policy the government department uses, so he clearly cancelled my season based on his own personal beliefs. So I'll have to clarify with the university's health and safety department what working alone policy I should be following.

I have talked to other MSc students who are co-supervised by the same university professor. They took the same steps I did, they planned their field season and got approval from the university for insurance purposes. The problem lies mostly with my adjunct supervisor's sexism and my university supervisor's intentional lack of involvement in my project.

However, I was wondering what the responsibilities of the graduate mentor are? We do not have a mentor in our department, but we do have a graduate coordinator whose responsibility is to help students deal with issues with their programs in their department. Is a graduate mentor similar to the coordinator position I describe above? Unfortunately, in my department the graduate coordinator is my university supervisor. However, I may be able to talk to the previous graduate coordinator.

Thanks again for all of your help and support, I really appreciate it!!