Your supervisor

You will be allocated a personal supervisor as part of your programme induction. You should ensure that you arrange to meet them in Week 1 of Semester 1.

You will meet your supervisor two times per semester, plus up to three times in the summer period, to discuss your academic progress and to check that all is well with you and your studies. This is an important point of academic contact for all students. Your personal supervisor will encourage you to develop your academic and personal skills and can also act as a referee for any job and academic applications you might make in the future. They can advise what to do if things go wrong and refer you to the right people in the University for help with more personal matters.

Meeting with your supervisor

It is primarily your responsibility to book and attend appointments with your supervisor, and it is better to arrange these in advance preferably by email. This is an important point of academic contact for all students. Meetings will take place online or face-to-face. If you are unable to attend a supervisory meeting you should make reasonable attempts to contact your supervisor and to re-arrange the meeting. However, if you persistently fail to make contact with your supervisor and/or you fail to attend scheduled supervisory meetings then this will be reported to your programme leader and Chair of the Postgraduate Teaching Committee.

Records of your meeting will be kept between you and your supervisor – these may be accessed by other staff if necessary, for example, for continuity purposes if you change supervisor. You can access notes from supervision meetings via your e:Vision record. As a postgraduate student we would encourage you to make notes from the meeting and put these on e:Vision with a plan of agreed actions.

Personal supervisors can also help you with choosing your Module options. These need to be submitted by the end of Week 8  of Semester 1. An important aspect of your programme is your dissertation and we recommend that you start thinking about this early on in your programme and discuss this with your supervisor. The dissertation module lead will be in touch with dates to introduce the module in Semester 1. 

Although supervisory meetings usually happen face to face it is possible for them to take place remotely via telephone or video-conference (e.g. Zoom, Google Meet, …..).

i. The University will monitor attendance at or engagement with scheduled academic supervision meetings. This policy requires that all Supervision meetings be recorded in e:Vision as soon as possible after the event, and not later than two weeks after the meeting took place. 

ii. The University requires that two personal supervision meetings take place in semester 1 and 2 for all students. Meetings can be delivered flexibly (in groups or over zoom), but at least one of these meetings per semester needs to be 

delivered in person, on a one-to-one basis. 

iii. For the summer semester period (PGT students), we require that there are three engagement points recorded.  These must be face-to-face for Student Visa holders.  These could include Personal Supervision, Capstone Project Supervision, or any other form of pastoral support within the department/school.  For non-student visa holders, at least one of these three must be in person. Unless the student is undertaking research, fieldwork or is on a placement away from York, in which case they can take place online.  These meetings must be spread out throughout the semester and not take place within three weeks of each other.

Please refer to the Student Academic Engagement and Wellbeing Procedure for more information.

Dissertation supervision

Once your selected dissertation topic is approved,  you will be typically assigned two dissertation supervisors; this is in addition to your personal supervisor. In some cases, your personal supervisor might also be one of the dissertation supervisors.  It is your responsibility to ensure that records of your dissertation supervision meetings are promptly completed and confirmed by your dissertation supervisor(s) in your e:Vision record. When you wish to request that your dissertation supervisor provides feedback on your dissertation please ensure you give them adequate notice to do so and negotiate this date with them. Generally your dissertation supervisor(s) will acknowledge receipt of draft work by email, indicating when they will be able to provide comments.

Information relating to the frequency of supervision meetings and timelines for providing feedback can be found on the Information for Dissertation site.

Procedure for changing your supervisor

Occasionally, the supportive relationship that we hope will develop between you and your supervisors fails. You are encouraged to discuss any difficulties with your supervisor to try to resolve these. However, if you find that you cannot communicate well with your supervisor, for whatever reason, then talk to your programme leader, the Chair of the Postgraduate Teaching Committee, or if you prefer, contact one of the other support services staff.

Module leader

The module leader co-ordinates module-specific learning activities and provides academic supervision regarding the module specific content. They are responsible (with members of the module team) for marking module assessments. In addition, the module leader will be responsible for providing support for the assessment. This might be delegated to a member of the module team. Questions should be directed to the module leader as per information communicated  during the start of the teaching.

Programme leaders

Each postgraduate degree has a Programme Leader who oversees all aspects of your programme. They should be the first point of contact for any questions, comments or problems specifically relating to the programme.

MSc Health Research

Programme Leader: Dr Sarah Blower (email: sarah.blower@york.ac.uk)

Deputy Programme Leader:  Dr. Lyn Rrobinson-smith (email: lyn.robinson-smith@york.ac.uk)  

MSc Mental Health Research

Programme Co-Leaders: Prof Dean McMillan (email: dean.mcmillan@york.ac.uk) & Dr Katie Pybus (email: katie.pybus@york.ac.uk)

MSc International Humanitarian Affairs

Programme Leader: Dr Jo Rose (email: jo.rose@york.ac.uk)

Deputy Programme Leader: Dr Claudia Adler (email: claudiamilena.adler@york.ac.uk)

Master of Public Health

Programme Leader: Dr Noreen Mdege (email: noreen.mdege@york.ac.uk)

Deputy Programme Leaders: Dr Omara Dogar (email: omara.dogar@york.ac.uk) & Dr Gerardo Zavala Gomez (email: g.zavala@york.ac.uk)

PGCert Health Research & Statistics

Programme Leader: Dr Han-I Wang (email: han-i.wang@york.ac.uk)

Director of Postgraduate Education

The director of Postgraduate Education oversees the quality and standards of the postgraduate teaching portfolio. 

Director: Prof. Mona Kanaan (email:mona.kanaan@york.ac.uk)