You are not alone: comparing challenges and support in PhD journeys during pandemic through dissertation acknowledgements across five contexts

• In Event: Research and Writing Standards and Violations in Today's Academy

Proposal

In the context of global higher education massification, particularly at the doctoral level, longstanding challenges associated with PhD training have been further intensified by the academic job market crisis (Morris, 2025; Ganning, 2024; Horta & Li., 2023). This period of life, marked by intellectual rigor and personal transformation, has increasingly been reported in the media and academic literature as fraught with mental health struggles (Mackie & Bates, 2019), burnout (Peltonen et al., 2017), and professional uncertainty (Chen & Lalovic, 2019). These issues have become especially acute during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which has both magnified the isolating nature of doctoral study (Ali & Kohun, 2006), and disrupted established norms of academic mobility (Phan et al., 2025) and career planning (McGee, 2021).
More recently, heightened geopolitical tensions and global economic instability have further complicated the PhD journey. However, comparative research remains limited on how systemic and institutional factors shape the challenges faced by PhD students during crises, and how they acknowledge and solicit support across different higher education contexts.

This study addresses these gaps through a comparative analysis of struggles and support of the PhD journey based on dissertation acknowledgements across five higher education contexts: Canada, Hong Kong (SAR), Mainland China, UK, and USA. The dissertation acknowledgement genre provides a unique window into how PhD graduates articulate sources of support, struggle, and resilience during a period of unprecedented multiple disruptions.
This study focuses on the challenges and support systems that shaped the PhD experience during the pandemic (2020–2024). By analyzing dissertation acknowledgements, the study seeks to uncover not only personal reflections but also the broader structural and institutional dynamics at play. The research question is: What are the reported struggles and sources of support experienced by PhD students during their doctoral journeys in a period of crisis, i.e., the pandemic, — in dissertation acknowledgements—across the five higher education systems of Canada, Hong Kong (SAR), Mainland China, UK, and USA?

Existing literature on doctoral dissertation acknowledgement studies often center around lexical and linguistic comparisons in different languages (See Ghai & Alghazo, 2024; Šinkūnienė & Dudzinskaitė, 2018; Zakeri & Samimi, 2021). These studies regarded the acknowledgement section as a genre for doctoral authors to express their identity, navigate cultural norms, and develop academic belonging. For example, sociocultural and religious/spiritual influences shape gratitude norms and address forms in different language contexts (see Al-Ali, 2010; Rahimi et al., 2024; Leshem & Bitzer, 2021; Yang, 2013). Research into social support networks highlights who is acknowledged and how academic relationships and emotional ties are constructed (Leshem & Bitzer, 2021; Mantai & Dowling, 2015). Recent work also explores gender differences (Alotaibi, 2018), acknowledgements as expressions of scholarly identity (Kelly & Manathunga, 2021), precarity and frustrations in graduate studies (Ferreira et al., 2023).
Challenges encountered during the PhD journey are also reflected in dissertation acknowledgements. For example, Renbarger et al. (2022) identified key challenges faced by US doctoral students with marginalized identities, who often cope through their personal networks, cultural values, and social knowledge. Existing research often investigates doctoral experience through interviews or case studies, typically within specific countries or institutions. In contrast, this study takes a comparative, cross-system approach to better understand how broader cultural, structural, and contextual factors shape the PhD experience.

Hyland (2003) first identified six reasons for giving credit in graduate dissertation acknowledgements. Hyland and Tse (2004)’s went on to propose a framework of dissertation acknowledgments involving reflecting, thinking and announcing moves. Doctoral students tend to acknowledge those who provide them with academic assistance, resources and moral support. This framework was widely adopted in acknowledgement studies (Ghai & Alghazo, 2024; Yang, 2013; Zakeri & Samimi, 2021) to study acknowledgement pages across disciplines. Our study will adopt this framework and examine the challenging contexts during the pandemic.

This study examines five representative higher education systems not only because they are among the leading global producers of PhD graduates (Morris, 2025), but also due to the authors' positionality and direct engagement with these contexts. Collectively, the authors have lived, studied, taught, and worked in universities across all five systems. This lived experience offers an insider’s perspective and deep contextual understanding, enabling more nuanced institutional and systemic analysis.
The study employs a qualitative design, collecting approximately 100 acknowledgements (around 20 from each system) from dissertations submitted between 2020 and 2024 in Education Studies. This cohort was selected to reflect those who pursued and/or completed their PhDs during the pandemic, a period marked by reduced in-person engagement, limited travel and heightened academic precarity. We are particularly interested in comparing and contrasting the acknowledgement patterns among students across the five systems, who may differ in backgrounds, life experiences, and personal circumstances. Data were purposefully sampled based on richness of content and analyzed using systematic thematic coding.

This is a work in progress. Preliminary findings reveal common themes of gratitude toward supervisors, families, and peers following Hyland and Tse (2004)’s framework. Interestingly, elements of spirituality and emotional resilience remain visible in navigating the doctoral process. For example, one graduate from the UK specifically mentioned “I am deeply grateful to… to all my spiritual teachers and nonviolence advocates who have inspired me; those who remain and those who have left.” The analysis also highlights cross-system variations in the types of challenges faced and the nature of support acknowledged, offering insight into how different institutional and cultural contexts shape the doctoral experience and formation of scholarly identity.

This study contributes to the global conversation on doctoral education by providing a nuanced, comparative understanding of the PhD journey. It offers implications for enhancing institutional and systemic support for doctoral students, particularly during times of crisis, as the challenges experienced during the pandemic parallel many of the current challenges in higher education across North America and beyond, including reduced funding and diminished academic job prospects. Limitations include the sole reliance on acknowledgements, which may not fully capture all aspects of the journey. Some students may omit difficult experiences or filter their narratives in light of the celebratory tone typical of successful dissertation submissions.

Authors

• Sze Ling Hung, University of Iowa

• Leping Mou