Episode 25: Dr Nathan Ryder

No, that’s not a mistake in the title! For this episode I asked my good friend Dr David McGrogan (who you might remember from Episode 16) to interview me about my PhD and viva. I’ve mentioned bits and pieces about my doctoral experiences over the previous twenty-four episodes, but thought it might be interesting to talk about the viva as a whole. In the autumn it will be ten years since I started my PhD at the University of Liverpool, and so it seemed like a good sort of time to look back and reflect. I hope you find it interesting!

Just in case you don’t know, when I’m not doing the podcast I work freelance as a skills trainer in Higher Education, working primarily with postgraduate researchers all over the UK (and soon, the world!). In the last few years I’ve met close to a thousand PGRs on a workshop that I deliver called Viva Survivor, which was the inspiration for this podcast. In turn, that workshop inspired me to write Fail Your Viva, a book about viva preparation (despite the title!).

So that’s what I do in a nutshell! If you have any questions or comments about this or any other episode then please get in touch: comment on a post, email me or tweet away!

Thanks for listening,

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

Episode 23: Dr Peter Rowlett

In this episode I’m talking to Dr Peter Rowlett, who recently completed his PhD at Nottingham Trent University.  Peter’s research was multidisciplinary and was in the areas of computing and maths education; he did his PhD part time as well, and so we had a lot to talk about for this episode! You can find Peter on Twitter at @peterrowlett.

We’re heading towards twenty-five episodes… I wonder if we’ll have something a bit different to mark the 25th? Maybe!

At the time of writing my research into the viva experiences of PhD graduates in the UK is ongoing, and if you’re able to share your experiences (by answering seven quick questions) or if you’re able to share the survey with others you would be helping me a lot. The survey is here: tinyurl.com/VivaSurvivorsSurvey. Thanks!

As ever, if you have questions or comments then please get in touch, it would be great to hear from you. Leave a comment on any of the posts, email me or tweet me.

More posts coming soon!

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)