Mario Small: On Power and Ambiguity in the Student-Adviser Relation

Date: 

Wednesday, November 8, 2017, 4:00pm to 6:00pm

Location: 

The Kresge Room (Barker 114)

Universities: Past, Present, and Future is a new seminar sponsored by the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University, which seeks to connect scholars and students from Harvard and beyond with interest in higher education research. 

Small will present work from his forthcoming book, Someone To Talk To (Oxford), a study of how people decide whom to talk to when they need a confidant. The book is based partly on the experiences of a set of PhD graduate students as they navigated the first year in their programs, a time that for many is filled with difficult transitions. In the talk, Small will examine the complications that may arise when students think of confiding difficult issues to their advisers, especially when the student and adviser share a strong bond.