Hi there

I would be interested in hearing accounts of how your viva examiners were selected, e.g., whether you had a say/your supervisors chose them, did you know them beforehand, if so in what capacity, were they very familiar with your line of research etc. I'm starting to think about this now and am keen to get some insight as to how it all works/what might be best.

Thanks in advance!

Tudor

Hey Tudor,

My partner is going through this process now. He discussed it with his professor and they made a list of five people. The hard part was deciding if the contacts should be based more on methods or knowledge of the case study. (This is in a humanities discipline.) In the end, they had a good mix. They personally knew some of them. He prepared a 3-page thesis rationale (outline) and an abstract and the professor sent to the first one. It took about 3 weeks until one was chosen, as the supervisor sometimes had to field some questions about the topic if the potential examiner was unsure if they'd be suitable.

I had a lot of say in mine, and used contacts I had to get recommendations. We started by drawing up a plan of the important bases to be covered, so that we had an examiner who knew the topic well and between the external and internal, there was expertise in each of the different methods I'd used.

I chose mine with my supervisors. I had one internal and one external examiner. Chosing the internal was the easy part, as there was only one emeritus professor who had similar reserach interests and theoretical background to me. The external examiner was the most difficult part. I really liked a professor that I had met at a conference, but my supervisors were against that choice, because she was not (as the implied) a very good person. So, we discussed my second choice, an cademic with very similar research interests to mine. My supervisor asked her and she accepted, but a few weeks before my final submission (at my uni the examiners are selected bout 4 months before submission) she declined due to heavy work load. But she proposed a couple of other academics. I knew one of them from a conference (great for networking!!!) and I had cited her work in my thesis, so my supervisor contacted her and she accepted.They proved out to be great examiners and they managed to make the stressful examination process an (almost) enjoying one!

Thanks all : ) I am a year away from submission. Too early to begin planning?

Tudor, at my university, you have nothing to do with choice of examiners. The only choice you do have is that you can specify to your panel and the Graduate Research team (not your supervisors) that you wish a particular examiner excluded and if you do this you need to complete an online form and state your reasons in writing. That is about it as far as any choice or influence goes. I think this would be the same for many (if not all) universities in Australia.

Thanks Pjlu. I am in the UK so I think we do it a little differently here. I'll raise it at my next supervision and see what the status quo is.

A wide variety of experiences above.
I was asked if I knew anyone or had any preferences or wanted to exclude anyone.
My supervisor then presented me with a shortlist of people he thought would give me a tough but fair viva and we discussed it together. The main thing was to choose an examiner who wouldn't be a total arsehole (and there are plenty of them out there) because that would have likely ended in disaster as the two of us would have clashed strongly.
In the end it was my internal who I clashed with during the viva. So much so that the external had to calm things down. I can smile about it now but at the time I was a very unhappy bunny.

Cheers. I think mine will be similar to that pm133 - as in a kind of joint decision guided by the supervisor. I mentioned it in our last meeting and she asked me if I had anyone in mind. I've got a list but am not sure who might potentially be particularly difficult... maybe it is just a risk I have to take as who knows how they might act in the viva. I think I would prefer it to be two people who don't normally work together so that I feel like I am actually talking with two minds, not one.