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Nathan

Your Choice

Daily Post

You don’t get to choose your examiners, officially, but you can have a conversation with your supervisors about who might be a great examiner for your viva. Make sure you do that.

You don’t get to veto potential examiners either, but you could raise your concerns and expect your supervisors to listen. Don’t simply say yes if there’s someone you really don’t want; dig into why you are concerned and see how the conversation goes.

You don’t get to choose or veto your examiners, but you can choose to lead the conversation. Be pro-active: think about what you are looking for, who might be great, and start the discussion with your supervisors.

 

Nathan

Needs & Examiners

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You need to talk about them with your supervisors.

You need to know why they’re a good choice.

You need to know why they might be interested in your work.

You need to explore their research.

You need to think about how their work is related to yours.

You need to believe they’ll be fair.

You need them to do their job.

And you need to accept that they’re just people, same as you; they’re not on a great high pedestal, they’re just humans, filling a necessary role, and doing it because they’re highly qualified to meet the needs of your viva.

Nathan

Five Lists To Help Choose Examiners

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You don’t get to formally pick your examiners, but you can usually steer the selection in conversation with your supervisors. They’re the ones who have to sign off on the choice. As you’ll likely be consulted, it’s a good idea to have some names to share. Perhaps start with the following process:

  1. Make a list of all of the people you’ve met at conferences who might be credible examiners.
  2. Make a list of all of the staff from your department who could be good choices.
  3. Make a list of any researchers you have cited who might be interested.
  4. Make a list of any academics you think are nice or agreeable.
  5. Make a list of any researchers who could be a good addition to your network.

Five lists. If any names are duplicated, put them at the top of a new, master list of possible examiners.

Now when you talk with your supervisors you have some good names to explore in the discussion.

Nathan

Engaging With Criticism

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If your examiner tells you they don’t like something in your thesis you have options:

  • You could say sorry, and do whatever they say as a result.
  • You could stare them down, insist that you’re right, and see what happens.
  • You could argue with them and try to show you’re right.
  • You could discuss things, listen to what they have to say and put your best case forwards.
  • You could ask them, “Why do you think that?” and listen before responding.

And you could do a lot more. I’m not suggesting you could have 100% control over how you feel or what you would automatically say as a result of criticism. It can cut deep, you might not know what to do. But there are different options open to you.

How you engage with your examiners can lead to very different ways of being in the viva.

Nathan

Pros & Cons

Daily Post

It can be useful to think through the pros and cons of different things related to your viva:

  • Whether you start preparing for the viva a month or two weeks before the viva…
  • Whether or not you try for an examiner who you’ve cited in your bibliography…
  • Whether or not your supervisor will be present on the day…
  • Whether or not you have a mock viva…

Some you can weigh up and get a clear idea of what to do. Some aren’t so clear. Is it better or worse to have an expert in your field examine your thesis? Should you create summaries of every chapter?

There are pros and cons for everything. Sometimes they lead you to a clear answer, sometimes they don’t. Sometimes you just have to listen to your gut feeling.

At some point you have to take action. Whatever the pros and cons, however clear the issue, you still get to choose the course you take.

Nathan

Tearing Off The Paper

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About six weeks ago I watched as a dozen children almost went to war in my living room. The reason?

Pass The Parcel.

It was my daughter’s fifth birthday party, and she’d insisted on playing a lot of games, including Pass The Parcel. We decided it would be like Pass The Parcel from our childhoods, with a single prize in the centre, and no little prize with every layer.

Well.

The kids were in uproar. We told them there was just one in the centre, but they were confused. Wh- Why?! Where were the little prizes? Then I want to win the one in the centre! They were desperate to hold on to the parcel in case this layer was the layer. They stopped having fun. We thought it would be alright, they would see the fun in taking part, taking a layer off getting closer to the prize, but they didn’t. Wanting the prize was too much for them. In the end, we fudged the final round so a particularly desperate child won.

(I feared tears and physical violence if they didn’t)

I was thinking about this game of Pass The Parcel the other day and was reminded of my PhD, and research more generally.

Sometimes, you only get to tear the paper off; sometimes, you don’t get to the big answer, the thing you were looking for. You get closer, but not all the way to the prize.

And that’s fine, you learn, you grow and you move everyone in your field forward.

It can be hard though, doing a PhD, writing a thesis, preparing for the viva, to see it that way. It might be true, but will your examiners see it that way? Or will they focus solely on why you didn’t get to the end goal? Examiners appreciate that not every research journey ends at the point one might want. They’ll have the experience to recognise what you’ve done if you don’t reach the point you wanted.

Your job, if this is your situation, is to be able to talk about how far you went. How close you came. What the different layers you tore off were. How you might have done it differently. And what other steps someone might need to take to reach the prize.

Nathan

7 Questions For Selecting Examiners

Daily Post

Need some help thinking of who could examine you? Start with these six questions to get a list of names:

  1. Whose work have you built on in a meaningful way?
  2. Who have you met at conferences?
  3. Who has a good reputation?
  4. Who is an expert in your field?
  5. Who have you cited a few times?
  6. Who do you think you can trust to do a good job?

With these six questions you can get a long or short list quite quickly. Then you have to figure out how you narrow it down so that you can have a chat with your supervisors.

A more useful question perhaps: what are you really looking for in an examiner?

Once you know the answer to this, you can have a more meaningful conversation with your supervisors about who might be a good choice.

Nathan

Ask Your Examiners

Daily Post

Consider your examiners. Two people sat across the table from you and they’re interested. They’ve read your thesis, thought about it and now have questions for you. You’ve got to answer their questions to pass, but maybe you can get some answers to questions of your own. You might ask:

  • What did you think of this?
  • I haven’t published a paper about Chapter 3; what journals might be good for that?
  • I was thinking of extending my work in this way – what do you think?
  • What next steps might I take?

You don’t have to ask them questions, but there’s an opportunity in the viva to get ideas and insights from two experienced researchers who’ve read your thesis.

What do you most want to know?

Nathan

Why-How-What For Examiners

Daily Post

Long term readers will know that I like Why-How-What as a way to frame and explain ideas. I share it a lot in workshops when people ask me how they can explain what their research is about. I think it’s also useful to generate questions and unpick aspects of the viva process that worry people, and one of the biggest sources of worry for PhD candidates is the examiners themselves.

What do they do? What will they ask? How will they behave? What if….?

Instead of aiming at the worries, let’s start with three questions.

Why are they examining me? A basic one to start with, but important. They’re examining you because they’ve been chosen. They’re examining you because you’ve done something special. They’re examining you because that’s how PhDs are assessed in the UK. They’re examining you because they are supposed to.

How will they examine me? Professionally. There are rules and regulations. There are expectations. They’ll try to live up to them, and seek help beforehand if they need it. They will be asking you questions, but they don’t come to the viva with a malicious agenda. They’re not there to tear you or your work apart.

What will happen in the viva? A discussion. A series of questions that drives conversation and leads to a conclusion. They’re not there to torture you. Your examiners want the best possible outcome they can find for you, given your thesis and performance. They want you to pass as well as you can and they want your thesis to be the best representation of your research that it can be.

There are other ways that we can take these questions; different people might answer them differently. There aren’t full details about rules and regulations, about outcomes, about what the examiners will do to prepare, but that information is out there if these starter questions and answers do not comfort you enough.

If something about your examiners or how they conduct the viva troubles you then your next actions are to find out more, do more, so that you can get back to what’s important.

Why? How? What?

Nathan

What Examiners Do

Daily Post

Their job.

They read your thesis. Think about it. Make notes. Think some more.

Think about topics that need to come up in the viva. Check some of your references, and maybe do some more background reading. Think about specific questions to ask in the viva.

They think about whether or not your thesis is good enough. They think about what to do on the day of the viva. They write a report and think about what the likely outcome of the viva.

Your examiners understand what this all means in terms of your thesis, the process and the outcome of the viva. They understand what your viva means to you.

Your viva is a big deal for you. It’s not trivial for them either.

They take your viva seriously, and although it could feel overwhelming that they do so much, it really is good for you.

Your examiners do their job.

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