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While the title is a slight overexaggeration of what I will accomplish next week, I wanted to come back after the week off from my conference to talk about the next step in my journey: my dissertation defense. This step is the last major step of a PhD program, and while it can vary widely across countries, intranational variability is minimal in this process. Here I'll lay out what the process looks like and add a few notes and resources on some differences in the process in other countries.
A dissertation defense is the last major step of a PhD program because it is the stage when the candidate presents their research to the public, responds to questions and feedback, and then has a meeting with their advisory committee to answer additional questions and feedback. The defense, therefore, has two separate aspects: the public defense or open session, and the private defense or closed session. Across many universities, these two sessions serve as a combination of two steps the candidate already accomplished: the seminar and the preliminary examinations. In the open session, a candidate presents their work in the form of a research seminar and fields questions and sometimes critiques from the audience at the end of the talk. Because this session is often open to the public, as the name implies, candidates often focus on presenting their work in a comprehensive way, and save some of the more technical information for the closed session (see below). This less jargon-filled seminar is not the approach in some European nations, where the candidate is evaluated by external adjudicators or sometimes by an opponent, who is an expert in the area of research. At the end of the open session, all attendees who are not part of the candidate's advisory committee are asked to leave so that the closed session can proceed. This session is similar to the candidate's preliminary examinations, where the committee is asking about research methods, theory, data analyses, and possibly implications of the candidate's work. Since many candidates cannot present their entire dissertation during their open session, the committee may also ask about research the candidate conducted but didn't have time to discuss with the public. Additionally, the candidate's committee usually has a copy of the dissertation well before the defense, so they have time to think about questions, pry for more information, and evaluate the candidate's thinking regarding their own research and research field. In some countries, candidates are expected to publish their full dissertation before their defense, which is an interesting concept because the publication process requires peer reviewers who critique your work and then your committee or evaluation team is critiquing you again. If you're curious about some various PhD defense formats around the world, Lantsoght (2022) summarized defense formats in 24 countries. At the end of this process, in the US at least, the candidate is ushered from the room so that the advisory committee can deliberate about the seminar and how the candidate fielded questions and critiques. At Florida State, this process also includes the committee members assigning a grade (I have no further information here), and then the candidate is told their status. Overall, this whole process lasts a few hours, and if a candidate is successful they then spend the next weeks making suggested edits to their dissertation before submitting a final version to the university. For next week's blog, expect an update, of course, and some insight into my students' first experimental day, as they will begin their independent projects. I got to hear about their methods today, and I'm really excited to see how these projects turn out in the field. Stay tuned. Lantsoght, E.O.L. (2023). Doctoral defence formats. Studies in Higher Education, 48(2), 343-355. DOI: 10.1080/03075079.2022.2137123
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