Stan Taylor

Biography

Dr Stan Taylor was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Warwick. For many years he researched and taught in the social sciences at Warwick before moving into academic staff development. Subsequently he became Director of Quality Enhancement at the University of Newcastle and then Director of the Centre for Academic and Researcher Development at Durham University.
He retired from Durham in 2013 and immediately took on new roles as an accreditor and consultant for the Higher Education Academy (HEA) and as an independent academic developer.
As an accreditor, he assesses individual applications for Fellowship of the Academy and
institutional applications for continuing professional development schemes. He also provides consultancy on behalf of the Academy to institutions on the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF).
As an academic developer, he has worked across the range of academic practice but his specialism is doctoral supervision. He has worked with doctoral supervisors in over 20 universities in the UK and also overseas in institutions in Austria, Denmark, France, Ireland, Malaysia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, and Thailand. He was co-author (with Nigel Beasley) of ‘A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors’ (Routledge 2005) and more recently (2014) authored the modules on ‘Managing and Monitoring Student Progress’ and ‘Issues in Doctoral Supervision’ for the Epigeum ‘Supervising Doctoral Students’ on-line supervisor development programme.
In 2016, he combined his interests in the UKPSF and doctoral supervision by undertaking a project funded by the HEA to support doctoral supervisors to use the framework to enhance their practice and to provide evidence to support applications for Fellowship. Additionally, he compiled an extensive topic bibliography for research supervisors, which was published in April 2017 by the UK Council for Graduate Education.
He is currently engaged in two projects. One is working with Dr Margaret Kiley (Australian National University) and Dr Robin Humphrey (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) on a second edition of ‘A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors’. The other is working with Professor Alistair McCulloch of the University of South Australia on mapping the landscape of awards for excellence in doctoral education in the UK and Australia. They gave a paper on this topic to the International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education and Training organized by the UK Council for Graduate Education at Stratford upon Avon on April 3rd 2017.
He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Education

BA, MLitt., PhD

Areas of Research / Professional Expertise

Doctoral education

Personal Interests

Reading, gardening

Books

Articles