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What does it mean to succeed in a PhD?

鈥淪tudent success鈥� in UK higher education remains a surprisingly vague concept, encompassing a range of priorities from retention and completion to employability and satisfaction. Over the past two decades, as UK higher education has undergone broad transformations, doctoral education has come to sit within a metric-driven environment, where notions of success are reduced to measurable outcomes aligned with regulatory and managerial agendas (Lowe, 2023). What tends to fall out of this view is how success is conceptualised and experienced by students themselves (Cook-Sather, 2018). This gap becomes particularly pronounced for Global South¹ scholars, who are often cast through deficit and homogenised lenses, flattening the diversity of their doctoral experiences. 

This blog post draws on a year-long UKRI-funded, multi-method project – PhD@Cam: What it Takes, Breaks, and Makes – that examines how international PhD students from the Global South (IGS) at the University of Cambridge experience and navigate doctoral 鈥渟uccess鈥� – what it means, how it is pursued, and what it costs – beyond narrow, outcome-driven definitions. Study details in Fig 1.

This project is led by three scholars from the Global South: Nidhi Singal, who has been at Cambridge since 1999 – charting a journey from MPhil student to full Professor; and two members of her research group, Nikita Jha and Surya Pratap Deka, who began their PhDs in 2021. All three studied at Cambridge on full scholarships, came from varied middle-class backgrounds in India, and continue to reflect on their own Global Southness and what it means to pursue and inhabit 鈥渟uccess鈥� within a historically white institution like Cambridge. In a field where the 鈥渋nternational student鈥� experience is largely studied from a Global North vantage point (Mittelmeier et al., 2023), this work begins from our positionality as Global South scholars, foregrounding lived experience as both method and object of inquiry.

The blog post opens with a vignette from a scholar鈥檚 life – Arlo鈥檚² – grounding the analysis in his first-person account of everyday doctoral experience, before moving to some key findings and recommendations.

Arlo鈥檚 doctoral journey – A vignette

Arlo is the first in his family to attend university. A chance encounter with his current supervisor, then teaching a short course in his home country, set in motion a chain of events that eventually brought him to the University of Cambridge on a fully-funded PhD scholarship. For his family and community, going to 鈥渁 place like Cambridge鈥� (鈥渆veryone had heard of the Cambridge dictionaries鈥�) marked a significant milestone.

Arlo鈥檚 transition to Cambridge was a mixed experience. While he found academic footing with a supportive supervisor, pressures beyond his research began to pull him from his 鈥渃ore PhD work鈥�. Plans to relocate with his family had fallen through due to funding constraints. His PhD thus began with an unplanned separation – his wife and children remained back home.

To sustain two homes on his stipend meant juggling a tight fiscal arithmetic: rent in Cambridge, rent back home, school fees, medical bills etc. He recalls, at times, 鈥済oing without lunch鈥� and withdrawing from social life. The strain seeped into his sense of belonging and mental health. 鈥淚nstead of worrying about PhD progress,鈥� he found himself worrying about survival – 鈥渇or myself and my children.鈥�

Yet, Arlo chooses not to be defined by these constraints. In the second half of his PhD, he started an online mentorship initiative, drawing on his experience as a first-generation student to support others navigating access to elite universities and scholarships. What began as a small effort has grown into a social media platform with close to a 1000 subscribers, having supported more than 40 individuals to 鈥渨in international scholarships.鈥� The project has somewhat stabilised his finances and, just as importantly, renewed his sense of purpose. 

Looking back on his life, Arlo reflects, 鈥淚t鈥檚 not breaking news that I鈥檝e gone through a hard life.鈥� What matters is how he has 鈥渘avigated through it.鈥� He is now writing a book documenting his life-journey, hoping, 鈥渋t inspires another child from a humble background鈥� to reach their potential. 

Today, alongside his academic outputs – publications, conference presentations, and newly acquired research skills – this possibility of giving back makes his sense of success feel complete, like 鈥渁 story coming together.鈥�

The triple labour of doctoral success

While Arlo鈥檚 account reflects a distinct doctoral journey shaped by particular life circumstances, it also reveals a broader pattern across our study: the extent of work that remains unseen in conventional accounts of doctoral life and success. We conceptualise this as the 鈥榯riple labour鈥� of doctoral life – academic, bureaucratic, and emotional/relational labour (Fig. 2) – that sustains success for IGS scholars, yet remains largely unrecognised within institutional frameworks that privilege measurable outcomes over the conditions that sustain them.

The first amongst these is academic labour. Beyond the technical demands of research work, participants described the labour of learning to thrive in new professional cultures (鈥渇ast-paced鈥�, 鈥渉ands-off鈥�) which often differed from those in their home contexts. Navigating this 鈥渟teep learning curve鈥� of positioning oneself within Cambridge鈥檚 academic culture, often without sustained mentorship, intensified self-doubt for some, as in Tesrae鈥檚 account of not feeling 鈥済ood..or smart enough,鈥� with implications for scholars鈥� mental, emotional, and academic lives.

The second is bureaucratic labour, encompassing the work of navigating opaque information systems, and institutional and geopolitical norms. Participants described grappling with institutional bureaucracies, where access to information, networks, and even timely scholarship payments was uneven and delayed, intensifying both practical and emotional strain. For Ritwik, this meant taking 鈥渆xtra bureaucratic steps鈥� in planning his overseas internship – negotiating visa regulations and permits – adding months-long non-academic work simply to sustain his academic progress, unlike his Global North peers.

The third is relational or emotional labour. Participants described the work required to persist amid underrepresentation, microaggressions and racism, and for navigating cultural differences in predominantly white academic spaces. Tesrae recounts being singled out to show her ID at her college entrance, revealing how her belonging is policed along racial lines. For Nathaniel, even informal spaces of 鈥渟mall talk鈥� became sites of exclusion, where shared cultural references among peers shaped conversations that often bled into academic discussions and potential collaborations, limiting his entry into both. 

Relational labour also involved contending with entrenched epistemic hierarchies and claiming academic legitimacy within them. As Sheena explains, her attempts to pursue global, comparative research triggered pushback – 鈥渨ho are you to do this research?鈥� She noted that such scrutiny, whereby 鈥渓iterally no one else in my group was asked,鈥� fell particularly on 鈥渨omen of colour scholars.鈥� This reflects a differential expectation: Global South scholars are expected to research within their 鈥渙wn contexts,鈥� relegated to 鈥渃ase study work,鈥� while 鈥渨hite scholars鈥� are not subject to the same scrutiny. These encounters point to a persistent 鈥渃olonial lens,鈥� through which Global South scholars must continually negotiate recognition as legitimate knowers in global academia.

The 鈥渢riple labour鈥� performed by participants is substantial and often gendered: female participants described heavier relational and emotional demands, while male participants framed their navigation pragmatically but reported more acute isolation and mental health strain. Across participants, this labour remained largely invisible within institutional frameworks. This invisibility has important implications. It obscures the unequal distribution of labour – disproportionately borne by IGS scholars – and allows similar outcomes to be read as comparable achievements, despite being produced under unequal conditions.

Beyond the deficit discourse

Even under significant structural constraints, participants described the PhD as a deeply transformative experience. They narrated their journeys through a dual lens of labour and resilience. Rather than approaching their Global South location through a deficit frame, participants recounted a repertoire of knowledge, skills, networks, and capacities, what Yosso (2005) terms 鈥榗ommunity cultural wealth鈥�, that they mobilised alongside institutional infrastructures to navigate success. 

For instance, in the face of challenges, participants drew on emotional and social support from families back home (familial capital), as well as informal student-led networks (鈥渨omen鈥檚 collectives鈥�) within the University that shaped their sense of belonging (social capital). Others described skillful engagement with institutional cultures through strategies such as being 鈥渓ike water鈥� – patient, attentive, and responsive to where change is possible (navigational capital) – while sustaining hope through agentive meaning-making (aspirational capital). These forms of cultural wealth, rooted in their lived experiences, are central to how doctoral success is sustained. Sara鈥檚 statement – 鈥淒oes it matter that white Cambridge approves? I don鈥檛 think it does,鈥� echoes a sentiment running through participant accounts: that success is redefined through scholars鈥� own practices of navigation, rather than resting solely on institutional validation or support. In these accounts, students succeed because of, not despite, their Global South backgrounds.

Finally, participants articulated a temporally evolving understanding of success itself. Over time, it broadened from a narrow focus on outputs, such as publications, to a wider orientation towards wellbeing, inner-growth, and societal contribution. This shift was captured through a range of metaphors: a journey of becoming, where the PhD was understood as a process of personal growth and ongoing learning (Steven); fulfilling a moral responsibility, reflecting a commitment to giving back to one鈥檚 field, community, and the world (Jamal, Nathaniel, Tesrae, Sara); and the coming together of a coherent story, where success was experienced as the alignment of research into a holistic thesis and career trajectory (Arlo, Mei).

Rethinking doctoral education and success

The recommendations emerging from this study call for moving beyond one-size-fits-all models of doctoral support towards more responsive frameworks that recognise the PhD as a relational process and position doctoral students as whole persons embedded in social, institutional, and personal contexts. First, universities must strengthen relational support structures by investing in supervision, college-based support, peer engagement, and accessible services. Second, institutional responses must move beyond individualised deficit framings to address structural barriers – funding insecurity, bureaucratic rigidity, and cultural gaps – through more flexible, responsive processes. Third, universities must engage with epistemic diversity by expanding the knowledge cultures they privilege and recognising IGS scholars like Arlo not as mere recipients of support or inclusion, but as agents in reshaping doctoral education and institutional research cultures.

By foregrounding the lived experiences and cultural wealth of IGS scholars, this study seeks to extend that conversation.

Note: The full report for the PhD@Cam project is available at . The PhD@Cam team aims to share findings from the Cambridge study with diverse audiences and academic spaces this year to co-develop a more comprehensive set of recommendations for UK higher education. We welcome your engagement, please get in touch at: ku.ca.macobfsctd-2d6fe0@142ns

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¹As classified by NORRAG in the following list at

² This is a pseudonym; all participant names in this blog have been changed for confidentiality.

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