Whilst I have not started the PhD yet, as a prospective Part-timer, my prospects of retaining are singular supervisor throughout the entire project is slim. This means my prospective supervisor could move university, retire, give up on my, be abducted by an alien etc. This means I may need to move university to keep my supervisor or to find a new one. I have tried searching for an articles, threads and comments on Changing University mid-PhD, but can find none. In an age when this moronic Willets fellow is shifting my role from potential researcher toward course consumer, I would be interesting in seeing if it possible to transfer institution mid-PhD. Has anybody managed this? Assumably an MPhil ABD could shift with ease, but how would it fare pre-upgrade to shift?

Example: I start a PhD part time. I do 18 months, then the project gradually grows away from the supervisors area of research. Being Part-time, I get less than half the attention/time required, so the growing rift between the supervisor and myself goes unchecked. I'm 18 months in and I notice that another local University has a great researcher, with research interests matching my new focus, and they are happy to supervise my project - better still I could do it distance via Skype in their new Asia campus paying half the fees I do in the UK. - Would there be any covenants or stipulations that would stop be shifting University? Would the new University only accept in full year chunks?

Whilst not a plan for me, I do like to keep options open.

Hi Bluespace- I can't answer all of your queries I'm afraid, but fairly recently a prof from my department moved universities and his staff and PhD students were given the option to either move with him to the new university or be happy to have long-distance supervision from him as well as a new supervisor at the current uni. That was a situation out of their control really, so I can't say what the options would be if you actually wanted to change supervisor because you found one that you thought might be better! That might not be so straightforward! KB

I agree with KB where I have heard of supervisors taking staff/students with them when they move unis. If you choose to look for another supervisor at another uni that could be tricky as unis are protective of their students so you generally can't be a member of more than one uni unless by prior arrangement (e.g. at the outset the project involved you have to be registered or involved with different institutions but this depends on your project and funding perhaps.) I think you need to check the rules on this carefully as I know someone who tried it and it didn't work (well at least not in the UK.) You can't submit the same piece of work for examination more than once so this has implications for your thesis and is related to the point above. I hope this helps.

Thank you for the responses. I guess that is a 'No.' in general then! It just seems so scary, prior to starting a PhD that I'm entrusting 3 to 4 years full-time labour and around £12,000+ to what in effect is a complete stranger, only likely to converse with me once a months for 8 months each year for the duration-hence I will have spent 24 hours with them. Madness. Obviously the relationship will (I hope) be closer than that. But it all seems so risky to place so much trust in one other person with little or no chance to move without losing out in terms of time and finances.

I started by part-time PhD 6 years ago and have kept the same university supervisor and two specialised supervisors. The uni sup had some interest and expertise in the field but one of my specialised sups was highly regarded in the field. My spec sup was agreed by the uni as an external sup but obviously does not work for the uni. He was considering retirement a couple of years ago (about yr 4 of studies) but said that he would happily continue my supervision. We had tutorials at his establishment or via skype. I think that you need to have faith in the supervisory team that a supervisor would like to keep their students despite their moves/retirement, and that the uni has a contract with you to provide a supervisor. You can have several supervisors which helps provide stability and different views of your research. Only one sup has to be from the chosen institution for your PhD.