Purpose – The purpose of this paper revolves around the informal coming together of various doctoral students in the area of qualitative accounting and management research and the attempt to learn from their respective experiences. Together, the authors share personal reflections and valuable insights in revealingtheir vulnerabilities, aspirations and how they make sense of the PhD journey and their becomingas academics.

Design/methodology/approach – This paper builds on an open discussion and written reflections among the authors, who represent a diverse set of both doctoral students at various levels and recent graduates from different countries, schools and backgrounds.

Findings – The discussion highlights the struggles the authors experience as doctoral students, how they learn to cope with them as well as how they are socialized throughout their PhD journey. This allows them to take a critical stance towards increased productivity demands in academia and to embrace doctoral students as a powerful collective, whose aspirations may inspire a change of academic reality for the better.

Originality/value – While guidance on how to succeed as doctoral students is common, we seldom hear about doctoral students as particularly “fragile selves” (Knights and Clarke, 2014) who, as opposed to more established scholars, are more actively experiencing difficulties with finding their ways in academia. The authors are thus motivated to create a rare common voice of a group of doctoral students here by providing a more intimate account of the PhD journey.

Keywords Doctoral students, Accounting, Management, Discussion

Paper type Research paper