ABSTRACT
The University Of Aveiro (UA) is a relatively young university, founded in 1973, which has quickly become one of the most dynamic and innovative higher education institutions in Portugal, as highlighted in recent university rankings. This chapter focuses on the experience of doing a doctorate at a Portuguese higher education institution, the UA, drawing on interviews conducted with 21 institutional actors involved in four doctoral programmes in the humanities and social sciences, and considering the themes of supervision, languages and identity. It presents data that show how languages influence the process of doing a PhD, underlining that this process involves “questions about identity, power and control over research processes that go beyond language as a technical concern”. The chapter organized into three main themes: impact of working with or in a second or third language; the role of English as a lingua franca; and acquisition of the language of the discipline.
