Hello all! I was wondering if I could get some advise, suggestions, comments or the such like? I had my viva in October 2010 and was awarded my PhD in November (3 months corrections, but I did them quickly) from a UK university. I'm currently applying for post-doctoral funding, looking in particular (but not exclusively) at Germany or Austria.

Anyway, my PhD supervisor just resigned out of the blue and sent me an email saying they won't be able to referee me as they will be difficult to contact and expect their reputation to diminish significantly as they will no longer be in academia. I do have a second supervisor, but they are based in a different university (and has been throughout my PhD, that is they haven't just upped and relocated). I have been advised (by a friend who is an Austrian professor) that the German and Austrian funding bodies would expect to see a strong and detailed reference from somebody involved with the PhD research based at the university where I did the research.

So, if anybody has any thoughts on how best to proceed I would love to hear them! please!!

I'm not sure if this would work, but could your supervisor write you a reference before they leave? I know in Germany for example it's usual for employers etc to write a reference when you leave a job and you keep the reference and use it everytime you apply for a job (at least it was when I was there, admittedly that's a long time ago!) - though might not be the case in academia?

I hope you manage to work something out. :)

Couldn't your examiners give you references? I was not supervised. I wrote and submitted my PhD, on a dialectical approach to human existence and wellbeing that I have developed, in two weeks without anyone from the department ever looking at my thesis or my writings before my submission. My Viva was a good one and I had three typos to correct. I asked my examiner who is a very pleasant full professor who liked my thesis for reference and he agreed. Still, I am taking this isolation into my postdoc stage in the hope of getting fellowship. Alon Serper