Manchester Institute of Innovation Research ANNUAL REPORT 

3. PhD Research and Training
The Institute runs a PhD programme with a total of 40 doctoral students supervised by
Institute staff. In 2011, nine new starters arrived. This means we have an additional PhD
researcher working on corporate social responsibility and innovation and new starters to
join themes on evaluation, sustainability, services and regional dimensions of innovation
policy. They are following the MIoIR/MBS training pathway, which consists of core courses
in epistemology and literature/topic development, and a suite of workshops on
quantitative and qualitative methods, including statistics and techniques such as network
analysis. MIoIR staff contribute to the whole MBS doctoral training programme, taking
responsibility for the ‘Philosophy and Epistemology of Management Research’ core course
and one cohort of the ‘Literature Review’ core and delivering workshop style courses on
‘Elite Interviewing’ ‘Social Network Analysis’ and ‘Managing Large Datasets’ . Professor
Philippe Laredo, with support from Kate Barker, leads the core course for MIoIR PhDs (and
any others who wish to join) where the PhD researchers undertake a “mini-PhD” project in
a small group and present their work for debate and discussion, complemented by lectures
presenting key concepts and disciplinary perspectives. They participated in the MBS annual
doctoral conference.
Core elements of the MIOIR PhD Doctoral experience
The following elements to the MIoIR Doctoral experience which help us build a strong peer
community of early career researchers:
- All PhDs have two supervisors selected from eligible MIoIR academic and research staff. In some
cases co-supervisors are drawn from other schools and parts of MBS depending on the research
topic
- All undertake a structured programme of training in their first year, leading to an ‘Upgrade’
Review to approve continuation to year two, with annual progress reviews thereafter adjudicated
by a formal panel.
- All research projects contain fieldwork activities within the research methodology.
- We maximise the involvement of our Doctoral community in the work of the Institute, through
opportunities to work on MIoIR Research projects and contracts (17 in 2010/11) and as Teaching
Assistants.
- The Doctoral community organise their own internal seminars to support each other in terms of
Doctoral development, which the MIoIR Researchers and academics attend to provide feedback;
and participate actively in the MIoIR seminar series.
- All have multiple opportunities and are encouraged to attend international conferences to present
their work and access peer networks. All present at the MBS Doctoral Conference at the end of
their first year, and produce posters for display first at internal MIoIR poster days, and at
international conferences.
- All have opportunities to produce articles for submission to high-ranking journals, on their own or
co-authoring with supervisors.
Our second and third year students designed and presented posters on their PhDs at the
MIoIR Poster day. Staff and fellow doctoral researchers spend the day touring the posters
and many are now on display in the Institute building. Several participated in the EU-SPRI
doctoral conference held at MIoIR in September 2011.
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