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Tag: viva rehearsal

Nathan

What’s The Point?

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Find ways to explore and explain what your work is all about.

  • Summarise your work by writing a page or a paragraph or a sentence about each chapter. The differing scales give you different ways to think it through.
  • Take opportunities to rehearse how you describe your research. You’ll say something different to a casual friend compared with a departmental colleague.
  • Read recent and relevant publications to give more context to how your work matters and relates to your discipline.

There’s a limit to how much you can do for viva prep. The more ways you find to consider the point of your work the better you will become at responding to questions about what it means and what it does.

You don’t need to know everything or have it all worked out but you can build up experience for explaining why your work matters.

 

PS: I’ll dig into these topics a lot more at my live 3-hour Viva Survivor webinar on Wednesday 25th March 2026. You’ll get four-week access to a recording of the session and follow-up materials too. There’s more information at the link but please get in touch if you have any questions or want to know more. Thanks for reading!

Nathan

Lots Of Lists Of Questions

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You only have to search for “phd viva questions” in your search engine of choice and you will find many, many resources that people have created. It’s likely that your AI-service of choice can also offer a lot of general questions from similar sources. If you want examples of the kinds of questions that can be asked by examiners then there are many resources to explore.

The value of these questions isn’t found in simply reading over them though. Making notes will help but will only do so much. The real value is in being asked questions by someone else so that you can rehearse being in the viva and seeing how it feels to respond to a question in real time. It helps not to just skim over a question on a page and think for a moment – but to be surprised by a question and know what it is like to cope with it.

There’s a place for reflecting on questions. Creating summaries is a big boost to viva preparation. Rehearsing by responding to questions is absolutely essential.

You can’t get what you really need to be ready for your viva by simply looking through lots of lists of questions.

 

PS: Looking for more viva prep ideas? Then check out my Viva Survivor webinar on Wednesday 25th March 2026 where I’ll talk about viva prep and a lot more. You’ll get four-week access to a recording of the session and follow-up materials too. There’s more information at the link but please get in touch if you have any questions or want to know more. Thanks for reading!

Nathan

Creative Rehearsal

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A mock viva is one approach that you can take to rehearsing for your viva. It’s typically a good approach. Sitting down with your supervisor and responding to questions that are representative of what you’d find at the viva is a great practice.

It’s not the only way though:

  • Have a mini-viva: ask friends to use a resource to have a chat!
  • Go for coffee: if your friends know a little they can ask relevant questions!
  • Give a seminar: invite a group to ask questions after a short presentation!
  • Ask me anything: sit down in your department with a sign saying that you’re accepting all questions about your research for a few hours!

You can get creative with rehearsing for your viva. The closer your practice to the expected viva experience the better – but don’t undervalue the emotional help that doing something fun could have.

How else could you get creative with your viva prep?

Nathan

Refreshing Your Memory

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Photographic recall isn’t needed for viva success. You are expected to know about your field and remember your research but you don’t need to know everything. Your thesis is a resource you can use in your viva to support your memory, your thinking in the moment and what you’re saying in response to your examiners’ questions.

If you worry about remembering things or simply want to be well prepared then you can take steps in your viva preparation to refresh your memory and support yourself in the viva.

  • Read your thesis carefully during prep.
  • Add sticky notes or bookmarks to help you navigate your thesis.
  • Annotate anything in your thesis that you want to stand out.
  • Find opportunities to rehearse responding to questions.

Build your knowledge, refresh your understanding and find ways to prompt your memory. That’s enough to help you be ready for your viva.

 

PS: if you’re looking for more ideas of what you need to be ready for your viva (and what you can do to help yourself) then check out Viva Survivors Select Volume 1. This is my complete collection of helpful viva zines I made last year. Volume 1 has eight issues, 165 curated posts from the archives and lots of new helpful resources – plus an introductory offer price until 31st January 2026!

Nathan

Greater Than

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Years of work and learning won’t make you infallible.

It’s entirely possible to get to your viva and be faced with a question you’ve never considered before. You can forget or go blank. And you can always be asked a question that – through lack of understanding, lack of knowledge or a glitch in the moment – it feels like the only thing you can say is “I don’t know.”

Taking all of this into account, how much more likely is it that you know something?

It’s not wrong to worry about what if’s, brain freezes or feeling uncertain as you respond to an important event like the viva. You can do something about all of these through preparation and through recognising that you don’t need to know everything.

Years of work and learning won’t make you infallible – but, for your viva, what you know is greater than what you don’t.

Nathan

The Technical Stuff

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If there are any technical or specialist terms in your research that you struggle with – or which you need to feel more certain about – then take steps during your preparation to help remind you.

  • Make a list of ten terms and write short definitions or reminders.
  • Underline or highlight terms as they appear in your thesis.
  • Add notes in margins to help you unpick meaning or make connections.
  • Ask your supervisor or a friend to have a conversation with you about any difficult topic to help you practise.

What else could you do to be ready for the technical stuff at your viva?

Nathan

“I Had To”

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Those three words might be true but they will never be enough for a response to a question in your viva.

There’s always a reason and it’s always worth digging into. You always need the “because” or the “why” behind doing things a certain way in your PhD.

 

“I had to” might be the first words that come to mind with something difficult or even something particularly challenging in your research journey. If you know of situations like this ahead of your viva then it will be helpful to consider what else you could say. If it’s a sensitive topic you’ll probably still need to say something more than “I had to” – so think in advance what you might feel comfortable saying.

Nathan

Unpacking & Reframing

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Summaries are a helpful viva prep tool.

A good summary could help you to unpack ideas. You can take out, examine and remind yourself of what something is, why it helps and what it’s for.

A good summary could allow you to reframe your work. You can find a new perspective by taking a particular focus or by examining a specific aspect of what you’ve done.

Summaries allow you to think ahead. The information can be the foundations of responses in the viva. You wouldn’t be expected to read from summaries in the viva but they can help you to rehearse what points really matter.

Unpack your ideas. Reframe your thinking. Use summary creation as a useful part of your viva prep toolkit.

Nathan

Exploring Context

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A key part of a viva discussion might be really getting to the heart of why you did something.

What motivated your research? Why was it worth doing? Why did YOU want to do it?

What was the need?

Why did you use your methods as opposed to other approaches? How did you select them and how did you come to think they were the best way to tackle your research problems?

A response to any of these questions might involve unsolved problems, supervisor advice, your gut feelings, your personal history, necessity, limitations and constraints, things you want to say and things you’d rather not. Exploring the context for your research helps you and your examiners discuss what you did, why you did it and how you did it. Whatever’s true will help you to have that discussion.

Be clear, share detail and explore your context at the viva. Get ready for this by finding opportunities to rehearse before you meet your examiners.

Nathan

Conversations

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You have to talk at your viva.

Your examiners prepare with your thesis, assemble a plan for what they think needs to be talked about and arrive ready to facilitate a series of conversations.

The viva isn’t an interview or a question and answer session. Your examiners’ plan is to help guide them and prompt you. They steer the conversations to explore everything that needs to be talked about.

 

So: if you can expect your viva to be a series of conversations then you can prepare for it by having a series of conversations before then. You need to read your thesis and you need to make notes but that won’t be enough to be ready to talk.

You could organise a mock viva with your supervisor. You could give a seminar and take questions. You could go for coffee with friends and get them to prompt you with interesting and relevant questions. None of these will be exactly like your viva but they could be exactly what you need to help you be ready to talk.

The viva is a series of conversations. It’s clear what you need to do to get ready for it.

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