Chairing a viva

When I was in the Netherlands, I attended lots of PhD thesis defences, aka vivas. They are public there, and ceremonies with lots of pomp and ritual. Since moving to Britain I hadn’t attended any. Here they take place behing closed doors, and you need to be directly involved to be in them. If you’re not the candidate, you have to be either the internal examiner, external examiner, or the chair. And I just never was. But here in Bangor, I was roped in as either the internal or the chair for several PhD projects. And then, one reached completion. I was the chair. And for logistic reasons, this viva would be online. 

This project was special; this was a PhD by publications. Most PhD projects concern a person who does a dedicated piece of research with the explicit aim of getting a PhD. And then they are likely to publish at least part of their thesis in peer-reviewed journals. But you can also do it sort of backwards; you just work in a particular field, publish your stuff, and then see if you can get that work recognised as a PhD thesis afterwards. You need to bundle your publications, and write some additional text to tie it all together. 

This viva was of a man who had worked for quite some years as a biologist on the SAASC project in Kuwait; this is a new city, built where some sabkhas were dug out and festooned with serrated channels. Then houses were built on the artificial shore. And this man was involved in monitoring and managing the marine life that established itself in the channels. And had published loads of papers about it. 

Sabah al-Ahmad Sea City (SAASC); pic by SAASCKuwait

As I had never attended, let alone chaired, a British viva before, I asked the candidate’s supervisor to beforehand talk me through the process. He kindly obliged. Then I felt ready.

That day I made sure to have a smart shirt in my bag. I wanted to look sharp by my standards. Above the waist, that is. Below the waist I was wearing pink shorts. 

On the day of the viva I had a brief pre-meeting with the examiners. Obviously I knew the internal, and I knew the external from my time in York. It was good to see him again. 

When we were all happy we were prepared, we ended the meeting, and saw each other again in the real meeting, which also included the candidate and his supervisor. The supervisor bowed out and left us to it. So I welcomed the candidate, established he was ready, and then invited the external to kick things off. 

It took him and the internal only an hour to run out of questions! That was a very quick viva. I asked the candidate to leave the meeting while the examiners agreed on whether they would grant him minor corrections, or publish as is. And then we called both the candidate and the supervisor back in.

The candidate was really happy he had passed! And so were we. I suppose I couldn't have dreamed of a more pleasant first British viva!