Research Degrees Programme Management

Research Degrees Programme Management provides a service to postgraduate research students, ensuring you receive consistent and accurate advice on all of the stages of your course from registration to award.

Key responsibilities

  • Faculty welcome and induction programmes
  • Monitoring and reporting of progression, suspension, transfers and withdrawals
  • Advice to students and staff on progression and research degree processes
  • Liaison with Directors of PGR and supervisors
  • Co-ordinating the organisation of vivas, with faculty staff as appropriate
  • UKVI monitoring, working closely with Visa Compliance Manager
  • Referring students to other support services accordingly
  • Systems development and enhancement.

Our aims

  • To provide current research students and supervisors with consistent and accurate advice on all stages of undertaking a doctoral programme from registration to graduation
  • To liaise with other support services such as the Doctoral College, student finance and international student support to ensure research students have access to the right support
  • To manage an efficient and timely examinations process for research degree students
  • To monitor and report on the academic progress of research students to ensure timely submission and completion
  • To review existing processes and implement process improvements in collaboration with IT and the Doctoral College. 

How we support you

We are responsible for your initial induction to the University, managing progression milestones and the examinations process, working with student finance and student records to answer student data and funding queries.

Post-induction we can support you to complete your doctoral programme in good time, ensuring administrative processes are managed efficiently, helping you to progress and supporting mechanisms to help you get back on track if there are any problems. We also help process requests on temporary withdrawals, change of mode of attendance, change in supervisory team, change to completing status and exam entry form.

Progress review

The team are responsible for managing the progress review, which is conducted every six months – interim and end of year.

This is submitted March to May and September to November each year.

The progress review is an opportunity for you and your supervisory team to evaluate progress on your project over the past six months and to set objectives and goals for the six months ahead. It can be used as a mechanism to put in place measures for getting you back on track if progress has stalled.

Monthly supervisory meetings

In addition, PGRs are expected to log monthly supervisory meetings. A new system has been developed to help postgraduate researchers and their supervisors manage supervisions more easily. The anticipated benefits of the system include:

  • Automated process for recording supervisory meetings
  • PGR-led approach facilitates their ownership of the process
  • Facilitates monitoring to help identify and deal with any issues early on
  • Provides easy access to catalogue of previous supervisory meetings, including access to objectives and actions
  • Helps to ensure both students and supervisors are fulfilling their responsibilities under the Code of Practice

Postgraduate researchers will be sent an email at the start of each month to log their supervision for that month. Your first email will go out on the 5th day of the month after you register and thereafter on the 5th of each month. Once you have submitted the log, your supervisor will be sent a notification to check and approve the record.

Guidance documents on how to navigate the workflow are available on SurreyNet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Thesis and examinations

You will need to submit an electronic copy of your thesis for examination to researchdegrees@surrey.ac.uk.

Following submission and approval of the exam entry form, which confirms your examination panel, the team will ensure that each of your examiners is sent an electronic copy of your thesis. For all faculties, excluding the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, the team will help arrange the viva and once the viva has taken place, they will process the examination paperwork and send you official confirmation of the examiners’ recommendation.  

Once you have made any necessary corrections to your thesis and you are ready to be awarded, the team will send you details of how to upload your thesis to the repository in the library. The team receives confirmation when you have successfully uploaded your thesis, and will then ask fees and funding to carry out a final debt check so you can be put forward for award. Awards are made monthly, and as soon as the monthly awards have been confirmed the team will contact you to inform you of the good news.

Opening hours and location

  • Opening hours: 9am to 5pm
  • Location: Hybrid working. Please check office hours with your Faculty programme administrator
  • Email: researchdegrees@surrey.ac.uk

Contact us

Admin team

Head of Doctoral College Operations

Clare Wunderly c.wunderly@surrey.ac.uk


Senior Administrative Officers

Jackie Gallagher (FEPS) j.gallagher@surrey.ac.uk

Emma Proctor (FHMS) e.proctor@surrey.ac.uk

Karen Collins (FABSS) k.collins@surrey.ac.uk


Administrative Officers

Sarah Crawford (FEPS) s.crawford@surrey.ac.uk

Renata Richardson (FHMS) r.richardson@surrey.ac.uk

Lisa Sketchley (FABSS) l.sketchley@surrey.ac.uk

Jo Sharp (Doctoral College) joanna.sharp@surrey.ac.uk

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