It’s the moment almost everyone who completes a PhD both dreads and looks ahead to for years—the defence. It signals a major achievement, but in people’s imaginations, it can seem like the stuff of nightmares… standing frozen in front of everyone, unable to answer a tricky question posed by a committee member and feeling like you must look incompetent. The format of a doctoral defence varies from field to field, but the worst fears of the candidates remain largely the same. Though most people know it probably won’t go so badly, the open-ended-ness can certainly be intimidating- you’re up there alone in front of a panel of experts who get to ask you whatever they’d like, and you may have to deliver your answers in front of an audience of your peers. There are few experiences in academic life more geared to be stressful for the person at the centre of them.
It doesn’t have to be that bad. I spent the weeks leading up to my PhD defence in a state of near panic, but I can honestly say that once it actually got underway, I sort of enjoyed it. You’re the star of the show and get to walk your peers through the finer points of your research. It can be a really invigorating experience. So let’s try to break this down into bite-sized chunks and look at strategies and tips for making your defence an event you might actually look back fondly on.
What the committee wants
Let’s start with what the committee is actually looking for. They want to see a firm grasp of the subject matter, an understanding of the implications of the work, and the ability to see weaknesses in the methodology and possible routes to take for future work. This means creating a presentation that gives a clear, logical overview of your topic, the question you’re addressing, what you did, your results and conclusions, and where the research can go from here. Remember, your jury members are not out to get you. The questions you receive from them will generally fall under one of three headings- those that test your subject knowledge, those that clarify a confusing point, and those that arise from genuine curiosity. If your presentation does a good job of conveying your knowledge of your topic, you can expect more questions from the second and third categories, allowing you to think of the defense more as a conversation amongst experts than a test from on high.
How to prepare
Practice is obviously very important here. Once you’ve put your talk together, find a trusted friend or mentor (ideally, several of them) who knows your field to go through it with you. They can both help you to pare down unnecessary parts and point out logical leaps you may not have noticed because you’re so close to the subject matter. You also want this to be a person who will ask you tough questions and try to spot holes in your reasoning, so choose your test audience carefully. It can be tempting to spend a lot of time obsessing over your slides, trying to make them perfect, but there’s a lot of studying you’ll need to do to be ready for more tangential questions, so don’t lose too much time this way.