I have two supervisors (art/film research), and neither of them have a PhD, nor have they been supervisors before. My first supervisor has been teaching BA for years and not publishing or researching very much, although he is very nice. My second supervisor has more of a profile, but only equivalent to my own. I have full funding and was really looking forward to getting stuck into some serious and difficult work, but I am finding myself totally unchallenged.
Does anyone know if there are minimum requirements for supervisors? Should they feel like supportive and interested peers, or should I feel like they have something to teach me? What should I do?

Hi Jcc,

I don't have first-hand experience of this but a close friend is being supervised by someone without a PhD and is finding the experience very positive so far. I think it mainly hinges on whether the supervisors really know what a 'PhD-standard' piece of work should look like. Their supervisor has supervised PhD students before and is a leading expert in a very very niche field. Can they recommend any completed PhDs for you to peruse, for example? If one supervisor is inexperienced at supervising students, the other supervisor really ought to be more experienced. This is my situation, though both of mine have PhDs.

I'm not sure if there are official minimum requirements but if you're really worried, your university should provide a neutral third-party for you to speak to. You should do this before you get too far along. Hope that helps, and good luck.

I think different supervisors have different approaches and different agendas. When I look back on my own supervisor I reckon I had less than a dozen formal meetings with him about my research over a three and a half year period. At the time it was daunting, but now I can see he was giving me free reign to explore my own interests and develop my research myself. I would take your situation as an opportunity to have a strong influence over the direction of your work. As a benchmark, you could read some other theses in a related field (ones that you might be referencing anyway) to give you a feel for what is required.

My supervisor didn't have a PhD, but was excellent. Like pekeboo, my supervisor had a light touch partly because that is what I was happy with (and I got on with things without having to be chivvied along!). I wouldn't get hung on on bits of paper personally.