Leadership role of the main supervisor in co-supervision 

As part of the project, we organised a PhD supervision course at Makerere University in Kampala between 8-11 September 2026 for academics who were either preparing to become PhD supervisors or were already supervising doctoral students but had not previously received formal supervision training. The course provided an opportunity to explore supervision practices and challenges through discussion and shared experiences. This blog post reflects on one of the issues that emerged during these discussions including the leadership role of the main supervisor in co-supervision and is co-written by Kenan Dikilitas and Ronald Semyalo.

The leadership role of the main supervisor

One of the important themes that emerged from the discussion during our PhD supervision course at Makerere University was the leadership role of the main PhD supervisor within a co-supervision team and in relation to the PhD student. As Kenan Dikilitas raised, the main supervisor often assumes that they carry the greater share of responsibility for the doctoral candidate and therefore that they should also be doing more of the actual supervisory work. In practice, however, this can result in the main supervisor taking on too much responsibility while making insufficient use of the expertise of co-supervisors.

The problem is not simply one of workload. It is also a question of leadership.

Being appointed as the main supervisor does not necessarily mean becoming the person who does everything. Rather, the main supervisor needs to create the conditions in which the collective expertise of the supervisory team can be used effectively. This requires leadership, coordination and communication, yet these aspects of supervision may receive surprisingly little attention. For example, how often do supervisors communicate with one another about the student’s development? How do they negotiate different perspectives? How do they decide who takes responsibility for particular aspects of the research? How do they communicate a coherent message to the student when supervisors have different views? These questions become particularly important when supervisors have different areas of expertise. One supervisor may have greater methodological expertise, another may bring disciplinary knowledge, while another may have particular expertise in theory, academic writing or professional networks. Effective co-supervision should make these differences an asset rather than allowing them to become a source of competition.

There is another dimension to these relationships that deserves attention: cultural differences within supervision. Supervision does not take place between culturally neutral individuals. Supervisors and students may have different understandings of authority, hierarchy, academic roles and appropriate ways of communicating. Cultural expectations may also influence how a student relates to a supervisor of a different gender, how comfortable they feel questioning someone in a position of authority, or how they respond to a supervisor from a different disciplinary background. Similar differences may exist between co-supervisors themselves.

Such differences do not necessarily create problems, but they can shape how relationships are established and how supervisory interactions are interpreted. A student who is accustomed to a highly hierarchical relationship with an academic may, for example, be reluctant to challenge feedback or openly disagree with a supervisor. A supervisor may interpret this as agreement or engagement when the student may instead be showing respect for authority. Likewise, differences in disciplinary cultures can influence what supervisors consider appropriate evidence, methodological rigour, writing conventions or standards of academic argument. This means that supervision leadership also involves recognising and working with the cultural intricacies of relationships among the student, the main supervisor and co-supervisors. The main supervisor has an important role in bringing these differences into the open, creating space for dialogue and ensuring that they do not prevent meaningful participation. Rather than expecting everyone to relate to supervision in the same way, the main supervisor can help the team negotiate how they will work together.

In this sense, the main supervisor’s role is not to eliminate differences but to harness them productively. This may involve clarifying expectations about authority and communication, encouraging the student to ask questions and express disagreement, acknowledging different disciplinary conventions, and ensuring that relationships among supervisors do not unintentionally constrain the student’s development.

Ronald Semyalo from Makerere University emphasised that 'main supervisors need to practise leadership and move beyond power struggles'. This is an important distinction. Leadership in co-supervision is not about asserting who has the greatest authority. It is about creating a productive environment in which different forms of expertise and different perspectives can contribute to the student’s development.

Kenan Dikilitas from Bergen University therefore suggested that a main PhD supervisor develop a supervision leadership plan at the beginning of the doctoral journey. Such a plan could make responsibilities and areas of expertise explicit: Who leads on what? What particular expertise does each supervisor bring? When should the team meet? How will disagreements be handled? How will feedback be coordinated? How will the student’s changing needs influence the distribution of supervisory responsibilities? Such a plan could also include discussion of how the supervisory relationships will work across disciplinary and cultural differences. What expectations do supervisors and students have about authority and communication? How comfortable are they with questioning or challenging one another? How might gender, disciplinary background or previous academic cultures influence their interactions? Making these issues discussable early on may help prevent unspoken expectations from becoming barriers to effective supervision.

The plan could also provide recognition and credit for specific expertise and contributions. Instead of viewing co-supervisors as secondary figures whose role is defined in relation to the main supervisor, their particular contributions could be explicitly acknowledged and valued. This could enable a deeper form of collaboration. The main supervisor would not need to carry the supervisory burden alone, while co-supervisors would have clearer opportunities to contribute meaningfully. Most importantly, the doctoral candidate would benefit from access to a collective pool of expertise rather than a single supervisory authority.

There is also an important leadership lesson here for the development of future supervisors. If we want academics to become effective leaders of doctoral supervision teams, then we need to prepare them not only to supervise individual students but also to lead relationships among co-supervisors and the student, including relationships shaped by different disciplinary, cultural and social expectations. Perhaps the main supervisor’s most important leadership task is therefore not to ask, “How much of this work am I doing?” but:

“How can I bring together the different expertise and perspectives in this team so that we collectively provide the best possible conditions for this student’s development?”

Seen in this way, co-supervision becomes more than a division of labour. It becomes a collaborative leadership practice in which the main supervisor coordinates rather than controls, recognises rather than competes with expertise, works constructively across cultural and disciplinary differences, and creates the conditions for both the student and the supervisory team to learn.