1 Before the Viva

• Get the philosophy of your thesis absolutely correct

• Identify contentious statements
• Focus on conclusion chapter
• Keep the subject alive in your head
• Know your thesis inside-out
• Check mathematical formulae
• Be familiar with the references
• Be familiar with the literature
• Check for recent papers in your area (What are the recent developments in
your field?)
• Read the examiners’ publications
• Try to publish a paper or two

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2 During the Viva

2.1 To Bring

• A copy of your thesis

• List of anticipated viva questions
• The chapter-summaries you made for revision
• Any papers you’re vague about
• Water, tissue, paracetamol

2.2 Categories of Questions

Clarification
The examiners ask you to explain a particular statement in the thesis. In some
cases, their lack of understanding may be due to a typo

Justification
Your ability to justify what you have done.

Alternatives considered
Be honest if you didn’t consider alternatives, otherwise you’ll be digging a hole for
yourself.

Awareness of other work

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Distinction from similar work
Especially recent publications where others are working in the same area - what
are the similarities and differences between your work and theirs?

Correction of errors
Typos, technical errors, misleading statements, and so on.

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3 Typical Viva Questions

3.1 Generic

1. What are the philosophical assumptions in your work?

2. What is the area in which you wish to be examined? (particularly difficult

and important if your thesis fits into several areas, or has several aspects, or
seems to fit into an area of its own).

3. Does the title represent the content?

4. Summarise your thesis in a sentence.

5. Summarise the context.

6. What are the key findings?

7. Describe your thesis in brief.

8. Why did you choose this topic?

9. How did you decide to order your thesis?

10. What is your overall argument?

11. Which topics overlap with your area?

12. What have you done that merits a PhD?

13. What are you most proud of, and why?

14. What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?

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 15. What are the motivations for your research?

16. Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?

3.2 Contributions

1. What’s original about your work? Where is the novelty?

2. What are the contributions (to knowledge) of your thesis?

3. Why is this topic important?

4. What is the relevance of your contributions?

• to other researchers?

•to industry?

5. How long-term is your contribution, given the anticipated future develop-

ments in X?

6. How do your contributions generalise?

7. Who are your envisioned users? What use would your work be in situation
X?

8. What is the implication of your work in your area? What does it change?

3.3 Literature

1. Who are the key names in this area?

2. Which are the three most important papers in X?

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 3. Who are the project’s key influences?

4. How does your work relate / differ from theirs?

5. Where did you draw the line on what you included in your literature review?

6. Where did you draw the line on what you included in the theoretical litera-
ture?

7. How did the literature inform your choice of topic and the thesis overall?

8. Where does your work fit into the literature?

9. Do the findings confirm, extend, or challenge any of the literature?

10. How does your work connect to that of your reviewers?

11. What do you know about the history of X?

12. What are the recent major developments in X?

13. How do you expect X to progress over the next five years?

3.4 Research Design & Methodology

1. Summarise your research design.

2. Did you think about applying a different design?

3. What problems did you have?

4. How did you develop your research questions?

5. Did the research questions change over the course of the project?

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 6. How did you translate the research questions into a data collection method?

7. Where are YOU in this study?

3.4.1 Sample & Data

1. Describe your sample.

2. How did you recruit your sample?

3. What boundaries did you set on your sample?

4. What are the weaknesses of your sample?

5. What boundaries did you set on your data collection?

6. What are the strengths and weaknesses of your data?

7. What other data would you like (or have liked) to collect?

8. What other data could you have included, and what might it have con-
tributed?

3.4.2 Framework

1. What is the theoretical framework in this study?

2. Why did you choose this conceptual framework?

3. Did you think about using any other theories, and if so, why did you reject
them?

4. How do you think the theoretical framing was helpful? Can you share some
examples?

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 5. How did you construct this framework?

6. What didn’t you include in the framework?

3.4.3 Methodology

1. Is there anything novel in your method?

2. What is the current state of the art in X? (capabilities and limitations of

existing systems)

3. What techniques are commonly used?

4. Where did you go wrong?

5. Why have you done it this way? You need to justify your approach - don’t
assume the examiners share your views.

6. What are the alternatives to your approach?

7. What do you gain by your approach?

8. What would you gain by approach X?

9. Why didn’t you do it this way (the way everyone else does it)?1

10. How do scientists / philosophers carry out experiments?

11. Under what circumstances would your approach be useable? (Again, does it
scale up?)
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This requires having done extensive reading. Be honest if you never thought of the alternative
they’re suggesting, or if you just didn’t get around to it. If you try to bluff your way out, they’ll
trap you in your own words.

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 12. How would your system cope with bigger examples? Does it scale up?2

3.4.4 Limitations

1. What are the limitations of this kind of study?

2. How do/would you cope with known problems in your field?

3. Have you solved the field’s problem that you claim to have solved?

3.4.5 Ethical

1. What ethical procedures did you follow?

2. What ethical issues arose in the course of your study and how did you address
them?

3.5 Analysis

1. Describe your frame of analysis.

2. What problems did you have in the analysis?

3. Did you combine induction and deduction in your analysis? Can you share
some examples?

4. Describe the findings in more detail.

5. Briefly summarise the findings as they relate to each of the research questions.
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This is especially important if you have only run your system on ‘toy’ examples, and they
think it has ‘learned it’s test-data’.

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 6. Could the findings have been interpreted differently?

7. What do your results mean?

8. How do you know that your algorithm/rules are correct?

3.6 Review

1. What are the strengths and weakness of your study?

2. What sense do you have of research being a somewhat untidy, or iterative

and constantly shifting process?

3. How confident are you in your findings and conclusions?

4. What the implications of your findings?

5. How has the context changed since you conducted your research?

6. Where do your findings sit in the field in general?

7. How do you see this area developing over the next 5-10 years?

8. Where does your work fit within this?

9. What haven’t you looked at, and why not?

10. What, if any, of your findings are generalisable?

11. How would you like to follow this project up with further research?

12. Which aspects of your thesis could be published?

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 13. What would you publish from this research, and in which journals?3

14. Is your field going in the right direction? This is kind of justifying why you
have gone into the field you’re working in.

15. How could you improve your work?

3.7 Reflection

1. How did the project change as you went through?

2. How has your view of the area changed as you have progressed through your
research?

3. How did your thinking change over the course of the project?

4. How have you changed as a result of undertaking this project?

5. What did you enjoy about your project?

6. What are you proudest of in the thesis?

7. What were the most difficult areas?

8. What surprised you the most?

9. If you started this study again, what would you do differently?4

3
Just as popular musicians promote their latest albums by releasing singles and going on
tour, you should promote your thesis by publishing papers in journals and presenting them at
conferences. This takes your work to a much wider audience; this is how academics establish
themselves.
4
This requires a thoughtful answer, whilst defending what you did at the time.

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10. What have you learned from the process of doing your PhD?

11. Where did your research-project come from? How did your research-questions
emerge? can’t just say ‘my supervisor told me to do it’ - if this is the case,
you need to talk it over with your supervisor before the viva. Think out a
succinct answer (2 to 5 minutes).

12. Has your view of your research topic changed during the course of the re-
search?

13. You discuss future work in your conclusion chapter. How long would it take
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to implement X, and what are the likely problems you envisage?

14. How have you evaluated your work?

• intrinsic evaluation: how have you demonstrated that it works, and

how well it performs?

• extrinsic evaluation: how have you demonstrated its usefulness for a

specific application context?

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Remember that the aim of the PhD process is to train you to be a fully professional researcher
- passing your PhD means that you know the state of the art in your area and the directions in
which it could be extended, and that you have proved you are capable of making such extensions.
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Do not underestimate the time and the difficulties - you might be talking about your own
resubmission-order! ;-)

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