I have received a conditional offer for PhD studies. The only thing missing, the two academic references. I try to contact my x-lecturers but they don't respond to my emails. Any idea?

call them? pop into their office? how long has it been since you emailed them?

On what basis is your offer conditional?

And if that doesn't work, contact their PAs/department admins. They're usually pretty good at sorting these things out

Some academics (and others) seem to have a policy of not answering e-mails at various times so they can get on with other work. Even in my real world job, I know e-mails have to be ignored sometimes in order to do more important things.

Phoning them up or more to the point turning up to see them face-to-face means they cannot ignore you.

Their admins have to be goo (HazyJane makes a good suggestion) as a good number are hopeless with normal everyday tasks. ;-)

Ian (Mackem_Beefy)

I have one ex-lecturer/supervisor who is just stone cold resistant to any request for references, and has remained this way despite different attempts at contacting him and various people getting messages to him. It's a shame, because he is my one and only contact for that particular qualification. It may be worth thinking about whether any other lecturers could provide suitable references for you, if your first choices go on ignoring the request or if you need the references in a hurry.

A few thoughts:
1) a very obvious one - but are they definitely still at the university? We've had a rather surreal official complaint recently about a member of staff not providing references. That's because he died five years ago. It seems a computing glitch meant his email remained active. Staff move around quite a lot, so it is worth double-checking especially if they have been responsive to emails in the past. If they have moved on, google will probably find their new employer or the departmental office can put together a stock reference from the files, but that's not great for PhD purposes as it will be very factual / basic, so getting the actual person is best.
2) I assume you got their permission before putting their name as a reference as that's basic politeness, but have you made it as easy as possible for them to write a reference? I must admit the students, who have been in touch, asked me if I'd be a referee, told me what they're applying for and why they think they are a good candidate, given me a copy of their cv so I have the information to hand (rather than having to try and recall their student files from central records) and reminded me of when I taught them (a reminder of their dissertation title is often extremely helpful for instance), do get references sent out quicker than those who don't. Why - because they've made the task a straightforward one. A particular nightmare are those demands for references without information or warning from ex-students with common names, where there is a good chance you've taught several people with that name.

I didn't realise my supervisors would contact my referees before I had had the PhD interview so I didn't contact them beforehand... I seriously doubt they even got references from them to be honest, because I doubt one of them would even remember who I was. Plus I had changed my name anyway so...