Mentor and the ‘Tea and Cookies’ Mentorship Approach: A Conversation With Ian Winchester

This article seeks to explore the complex relationship between mentors and mentees and how it may impact the development of junior researchers’ potential. The study applies an ethnography approach to explore the perceptions of experiences of Ian Winchester, a scholar with over 50 years of research and teaching who has mentored hundreds of doctoral and master’s level graduate students at two large Canadian universities, the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary. It is an ethnographic conversation between the mentor and a mentee on the journey of mentorship in academia. The results are drawn from Winchester’s answers to ten semi-structured questions guiding many novice researchers on the path to humanities and social sciences scholarship. This ethnographic conversation may contribute to a better understanding of the challenges facing current mentorship practices in academia. It may also partly serve as a guide to those just entering the practice, whether as mentors or mentees.