have close ties to senior figures in the profession, but the same
relationship may not extend to you as well, especially with
quirky senior people. Above all it is you who has to live with
the outcomes in terms of the examiners’ judgements and
making any revisions to the thesis which they may require.
So what should you (and your supervisors) look for in an
examiner? In addition to relevant expertise and some seniority,
the key element is non-neuroticism. The ideal examiner should
have a cheerful personality and strong confidence in herself.
She must not feel threatened or challenged by new entrants
crowding into her area of expertise, nor affronted by upstart
youngsters in the field who take a different view from hers. She
should be open to new ideas. She must be able to work
constructively with her fellow examiner(s), rather than pursu-
ing hobbyhorses or fixed ideas of her own as if they were all-
important. A person of this kind will have a realistic grip on the
mechanics of doing research in your discipline. She will be able
to appreciate the hours of work it takes to stand up a piece of
data analysis, the collection of documentary materials, or the
production of a carefully argued piece of text. She will also
know very well at least a substantial aspect of your thesis topic,
so that she is confident about recognizing original work and
identifying additions to knowledge in the field. Finally the ideal
examiner should come from a university department at which
a reasonable number of doctoral students are being supervised
and graduating every year, so that she has an accurate current
feel for where the doctoral standard lies.
Finding two or more examiners who fully meet this demanding
brief is often difficult. Younger academics are often more cheer-
ful (less ground-down and cynical) and more accessible than
senior people. They also have more recent experience of PhD
work and are more open to new ideas. But younger staff may be
overinfluenced by their own recent PhD experience and they
will know less than senior staff about the diversity of other peo-
ple’s topics and approaches. For instance, they will have had
less opportunity to act as supervisor to other people. In any
event, your faculty board will probably restrict the choice of
PhD examiners to senior staff such as full professors (or readers
or senior lecturers in the UK). Senior academics should be
more familiar with looking at PhD work, and may have other
214 ◆AUTHORING A PHD