This text was originally presented at the UKCGE (UK Council for Graduate Education) event ‘Opportunities & Challenges in the Development of Doctoral Education in the Arts & Humanities’, held in Glasgow on 1 February 2016. It was published on the University of Plymouth’s Arts Institute blog on 25 March 2016: http://blogs.plymouth.ac.uk/artsinstitute/2016/03/25/feature-reflections-on-the-arts-humanities-doctoral-thesis-training/