Changing supervisor before starting PHD (Europe)

[testanon]

I am starting a PHD in Europe at a top institution very soon. In the time since I have accepted the offer I have developed the feeling that I am more interested in working with a different supervisor on a different research area. They are both in the same subfield, but the nature of the research is very different. I would like to enquire if it is possible to switch. If that is not possible I am very happy to continue as is. I am very anxious about making this enquiry. I would be very grateful for any advice.

 

[Orodruin]

This cannot be answered generally. It depends on the country, the university, the source of funding, etc.

While there may be provisions in the university rules for changing supervisors, those are mainly intended for situations where student and supervisor do not see eye-to-eye. For example, in my university you have the right to change supervisor as a student, however, it would probably not be very well received if you all of a sudden just decided that you liked someone else's research better. This would be particularly true if the funding for your PhD position was dedicated to your original project or supervisor (such as they getting a grant for having a PhD student do a particular project).

Without further information, there is little else that can be said.

 

[testanon]

This cannot be answered generally. It depends on the country, the university, the source of funding, etc.

While there may be provisions in the university rules for changing supervisors, those are mainly intended for situations where student and supervisor do not see eye-to-eye. For example, in my university you have the right to change supervisor as a student, however, it would probably not be very well received if you all of a sudden just decided that you liked someone else's research better. This would be particularly true if the funding for your PhD position was dedicated to your original project or supervisor (such as they getting a grant for having a PhD student do a particular project).

Without further information, there is little else that can be said.

Thanks for your response. The funding came out of a general pot. I could have chosen the other project at the time, but didn't. The difference between the projects is one is data analysis/statistics based, the other is numerical simulations.