A steadily increasing number of early career educators from developing countries apply for doctoral study at western universities.  What happens to them when they graduate? How do they use the knowledge and skills they gained as well as the paper qualification? How do they navigate the differences between the western academy where they studies and their home context?

This paper presents a case study through three interwoven narratives: two from doctoral graduates and one from their former supervisor.   Both graduates are now in roles where they are able to exercise some leadership. They are also still both involved in collaboration with their former doctoral supervisor.

The  paper reports:

• Tensions and discoveries experienced in navigating between the values, needs and local perspectives of the students’ local contexts and the expectations of western scholarship
• Experiences of both reconnection and displacement on the return home
• Two different accounts of returning to or finding work, and implications of each account
• Ways in which the shifts in understanding and knowledge that came through the doctorate inform current work of the graduates
• Continuing collaboration between graduates and supervisor
• Account of a publication project
• Exploration of the continuing tensions between western and local approaches to education and its administration

The case study research that informs this paper follows from previous research from the three authors that has been presented at ECER in previous conferences (Alam, 2016; Salahuddin & Greenwood, 2016; Greenwood, 2016a; Greenwood et al 2015).   

In particular the research builds on understandings of the importance of place in doctoral study (Greenwood, 2016) and on the concept of a fair academic trade in education between western and developing countries (Greenwood, Alam & Kabir, 2014; Greenwood, Alam, Salahuddin and Rasheed 2015).  It also draws on understandings of learning communities (Wenger 1998; Greenwood, 2016) and the role they can play not only in supporting doctoral research but also in supporting post-doctoral collaborations.  

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