‘She says she would like to know more about me’: Minoritised applicants’ doctoral subjectivity formation in the pre-application stage
| Dates: | 17 February 2026 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 16:00 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Environment, Education and Development |
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| Speaker: | Emily F Henderson |
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Guest lecture from Emily F. Henderson, Professor and Director of the Doctoral Education and Academia Research Centre (DEAR) at the University of Warwick
Doctoral admissions tend to be researched as a formal, institutional process by which candidates apply to a higher education institution. However, there are many informal processes which surround doctoral admissions, which have the potential to exclude particular groups of applicants from even applying for doctoral study. This talk focuses on the notion of ‘Pre-Application Doctoral Communications’ (PADC), which we have defined in outputs from our project bearing the same name as: the informal communications between potential doctoral applicants and university staff before an application for doctoral study is submitted. While the PADC project included several methods and stakeholders, this talk is based on the narrative-style interviews we conducted with doctoral students who self-identified as minoritised, where the participants recounted their process of navigating PADC. The talk introduces the notion of PADC and situates the term within the doctoral admissions literature, gives brief detail on the PADC project, and discusses findings from the student interviews through a Butlerian lens in terms of how pre-application contact with potential supervisors can be theorised as moments of doctoral subject formation and recognition.
Speaker
Emily F Henderson
Role: Director of the Doctoral Education and Academia Research Centre (DEAR) at the University of Warwick
Organisation: University of Warwick
Biography: Emily F. Henderson is Professor and Director of the Doctoral Education and Academia Research Centre (DEAR), at the University of Warwick, and is located in Education Studies (SELCS). She can be found on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/emilyfhenderson Evan Zheng is a third-year PhD student in Education Studies (SELCS) and the DEAR Centre at Warwick, funded by the Chancellor’s International Scholarship. Evan also serves as a Senior Graduate Teaching Assistant in Psychology Department and a Research Assistant at the DEAR Centre. Her doctoral project explores Degree Mobility Market in China and Its Influence on Doctoral Students’ Admissibility. She can be found on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-z-927b93153/
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