On nurturing hedgehogs: Developments online for distance and offshore supervision. Gina Wisker Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England g.wisker@apu.ac.uk Sharon Waller Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England s.l.waller@apu.ac.uk Uwe Richter Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England u.m.richter@apu.ac.uk Gillian Robinson Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England g.d.robinson@apu.ac.uk Vernon Trafford Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England v.n.trafford@apu.ac.uk Kathryn Wicks Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England k.m.wicks@apu.ac.uk Mark Warnes Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, England m.warnes@apu.ac.uk Abstract: Increasing numbers of domestic and international postgraduates are studying at a distance or offshore. For their supervisors, this could present particular challenges concerning negotiating issues and practices related to demands of studying and undertaking research at a distance, balancing research, work and domestic responsibilities and, for international students, negotiating cultural difference, differences in preconceptions and expectations of PhD processes and culturally inflected learning styles. Distance supervisors might never actually get to know their students or negotiate face-to-face ways of dealing with issues. At Anglia Polytechnic University (APU), a successful, offshore, international cohort based PhD programme has run for 5 years involving180 students, with a high success rate (45 PhDs to date). To address supervisors' needs so they might best support, enable and empower students' research and PhD achievement, we constructed an online development and support programme that was unpatronising in tone, that was a shaped process which marked PhD development stages, and one that involved: • Negotiating differing demands of new and well established supervisors; • Supervisors contributing to development and discussion;