“See you on the other side”: researcher identity, threshold concepts and making a ritual of confirmation

Abstract

With the requirement of making a contribution to new knowledge in the field, in doing a PhD the researcher creates a curriculum. The researcher is also changing, in relation to what matters to them and the world they are making. But when the ritual of the ‘PhD confirmation’ is instrumentalized, the format of confirmation doesn’t relate to the scholarship of doing a PhD as ‘doctorateness’, threshold concept, or liminal process. If the PhD and its supervisory processes are to remain relevant, we need to re-situate the centrality of the pedagogical and ontological practices at stake in original knowledge production.