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Boud and Lee (2009) discuss the emergence of doctoral education as a primary organising idea in practical and theoretical work on the doctorate, as distinct from notions of research training. This pedagogising of the doctorate has opened up important new spaces for thinking about doctoral processes, structures and outcomes, although we acknowledge the importance of adding notions of pedagogy alongside other doctoral discourses, rather than replacing those of research and knowledge production. Given the strong emphasis on the doctorate as an educational endeavour, we were collectively struck by the lack of engagement with one of the central concepts within the field of education: curriculum.

According to Green (2009), questions of knowledge in doctoral education are fundamentally questions about curriculum. Rethinking the doctorate in these terms directs attention to the forms of knowledge in which it is grounded and how these are articulated in the documentation and assessment of the degree (Gilbert, 2009). But curriculum may be about more than this. The panel brought together scholars with experience in a range of countries, and with varying interpretations of ‘the doctoral curriculum’. As panel we did not speak with one voice, but rather sought to engage each other and our audience with this rich, powerful, contested, difficult and sometimes slippery notion.