So… This strikes me as something I probably shouldn’t write on a blog… And as something that, if people do respond, they might prefer backchannels… But here goes anyway…
In the Australian system, doctoral dissertations are sent for external examination. The impression I’m getting from supervisors and other academic advisors, is that there is a level of general anxiety over who should examine my work… I don’t find this reassuring… Particularly as I have a not-so-general anxiety over this issue myself… I have the impression, without going into great specifics, that this is regarded as more of a problem for my thesis than it normally would be – make of this what you will…
So… making this a question: for those working in similar systems, where external examiners needed to be chosen – any helpful advice about how you winnowed down an appropriate examiner pool? Any immediate associations to people you think should examine my work? Any advice that I should take this post down promptly, and never write publicly on this issue again? ;-P
As a side note: one of the funnier things about the anxiety over who will examine my thesis is panic every time I mention thinking of corresponding with anyone in anything resembling my field – or with having a coffee with like-minded senior academics at conferences – or similar. This can’t be right, can it? I understand the general principle that someone can’t examine a work if they’ve been materially involved in advising that work, but I am receiving advice that is actually impeding me in substantive ways, from following up with established scholars whose ideas I find interesting and useful, and whose opinions I would value. There’s an academic just down the road from me, someone I run into several times a year at local functions – we have friendly, impersonal but animated, exchanges, and I have a particular issue I would like to follow up on with him, and I am under strict orders to stay away from him and under no circumstances to allow him to see any of my written work, as he might be a potential examiner… When I mentioned to a supervisor that I would be presenting a talk based on a chapter at an upcoming event, I was given strict orders not to distribute written copies of the talk, on the grounds that this might contaminate an examiner pool. I was a bit shocked at this, and pointed out that I almost always make copies of talks available on the blog – I was then told that this doesn’t “count”, but physically passing around copies would: this begins to sound a bit like academic superstition…
At any rate, just feeling frustrated, anxious, and slightly confused… ;-)
When I mentioned to a supervisor that I would be presenting a talk based on a chapter at an upcoming event, I was given strict orders not to distribute written copies of the talk, on the grounds that this might contaminate an examiner pool. I was a bit shocked at this, and pointed out that I almost always make copies of talks available on the blog – I was then told that this doesn’t “count”, but physically passing around copies would: this begins to sound a bit like academic superstition…
If that’s not ludicrous generally, it’s certainly sensible only in very specific contexts (e.g. your supervisor’s head, and potentially the heads of a few other figures in the discipline). I seriously cannot see how that is an issue, and it’s never been treated as an issue in my experience. At the very least, so long as you and your supervisors — having taken into account all the usual university policies and the available ethical frameworks, principles, etc. for evaluating the situation — feel that there is no good reason to think that an examiner, on account of having bumped into you or your work in some way, is likely to be anything less than professional in his/her assessment of the thesis, then surely it should be put to the potential examiner and left to their conscience as to whether they feel comfortable examining it.
As for who to examine, my suggestion would be to find someone who meets the following two criteria: they have slightly more than a passing knowledge of Hegel, Marx and Critical Theory, and they can appreciate the value and legitimacy of you deploying what you’ve been calling an “interpretative strategy”. It will be easy enough to find people who meet one or the other of the criteria, but far more difficult to find someone who meets both. The added complication is that readers who meet the second criterion will, I suspect, largely come from outside the disciplines in which you teach and research (and this has consequences for career progression).
A couple of names come to mind, but only on the basis of a passing knowledge of their work and no knowledge whatsoever of their, um, “idiosyncrasies”. A couple of names of other people (with whose work and idiosyncrasies I’m familiar) also spring to mind, but I’m not sure that either of them is any longer an employed academic.
But all of these people, institutionally speaking, are “outside” the disciplines/traditions in which you (again, institutionally speaking) sit.
Hey rob :-) I wasn’t sure you still lurked :-) Good to hear from you… I was thinking of you particularly in writing about Specters of Marx a few weeks back…
Yes, it’s the need for that combination that is causing the concern. It’s not a personal worry for me, that the work might “belong” in a different disciplinary space from where I am currently institutionally based – I suspect any career implications from this would be intrinsic to the work, rather than to the examination process per se, if that makes sense: I was aware that I might be buying myself disciplinary identity issues when I decided to undertake this project (and appreciated being given enough rope to undertake the project anyway) – whatever career consequences flow on from that are, in a sense, my own “fault”. I don’t think there is any in principle opposition to having the thesis examined from outside my official disciplinary base – just uncertainty over how to make a selection, and a sense that my thesis requires more caution that might normally be the case…
The concerns about my contacting other scholars have been, to be honest, a bit more of a worry for me: while I am broadly comfortable “supervising” myself, I do need critical kickback on the details of what I’m writing, and I had actually been counting on being able to seek this out – and at a level more detailed than just whatever quick responses people might fire off after a presentation somewhere. It would have been – would still be – immensely helpful for me to be able to speak to people with appropriate backgrounds, who could look at very small segments of what I have written, to make it possible for me to get some specific kinds of targeted feedback. But when I talk about doing something like this, at the moment I am making people nervous (I suppose it’s obvious that, if someone is nervous at the thought of my handing out copies of a talk to whoever shows up at the talk, they are going to be even more nervous at the idea that I might ask someone to read and comment on something). The issue is, though, that ultimately there will be only a few examiners, and it seems somewhat strange to think that there should be so few potential people in this pool, that I need to isolate myself from the rest of the universe of potentially helpful scholars working on related topics…
There are more complex issues around feedback for my work, and the nature of the situation – entirely of my own creation, so I’m in no position to complain – such that I feel that I am writing into isolation… I appreciate – very deeply – the trust that has allowed me to do this kind of work, and I probably am capable of criticising my own writing adequately – I hope (urk!!)… But it would be anxiety reducing to be able to get certain kinds of very specific feedback, and it looks at the moment as though there is no avenue for that…
At any rate: this is all a situation I chose. Just processing anxieties as I think more concretely about submission… ;-)
I find this prohibition on connecting to established scholars in the field on the grounds that it might contaminate the examiners’ pool hard to understand, and certainly was not in place during my time organising such things in the Australian system. In the States, dissertations are read from within the department or Faculty in which they are produced and are passed or failed by those intimately involved in their writing. Good dissertation advisors don’t let their students submit their dissertation if there is a chance they wont meet the standard.
Hi Chris – Thanks for this. I did my previous degrees in the US, and so that experience is shaping my reaction to this situation as well, since the US system does assume that people can be professional in marking something they have personally supervised (with various checks in the form of public defences and such). I’m also in the very weird position (which is my own doing – I simply hadn’t anticipated this as an additional complicating factor) of more or less needing to talk to people who aren’t local, if I would like certain kinds of targeted feedback before I submit. When I set out on this particular project, in the awareness that it’s a bit of an outlier in my program, I had been assuming that consultation with external scholars would be okay.
If I were certain who the examiners would be, I suppose it would be, as I could then be sure to avoid them specifically… I’m not yet ready to make that decision, though – and, in fact, one of the folks I’ve been asked not to talk to, is someone I had wanted to approach, specifically in order to workshop potential examiners… (the rationale for this prohibition is that the person to whom I want to speak might be an appropriate examiner themselves… But this places me in a somewhat comical situation, as my best chance to find people, other than the ones I already know, who might make appropriate examiners, would be to talk to the folks who already know me well enough that they might be willing to lend me their time…).
The major anxiety, I should note, seems to be prompted by my suggesting that I might show someone something I’ve written – I’ve been given cautious permission to meet people over coffee “as long as I’m careful” ;-P – but told not to pass on any written work. But what I most want to speak with people about, at this point, is almost impossible for me to do, unless I can show them at least something written, even if that is in the form of a spontaneous correspondence, rather than part of a chapter draft. I don’t need detailed supervisory-style comments on my writing, but some feedback from a couple of people with more specialist appropriate background, who have cast an eye over a line of argument… this seems to me at the moment that it would be a very efficient way for me to save myself a lot of anxiety I’m currently having trouble just wishing away… Admittedly, it may be that no one would even be interested – this may be the sort of thing people only do for students they are actually supervising. Since I can’t ask anyone (other than, you know, everyone on the net ;-P), I have no way of knowing… ;-P
Apologies for the rant-ish character of this post and my comments. This was a situation I hadn’t expected until the issue first came up around six months ago. I tried at the time to shrug it off and just keep plodding on but, as I get deeper into the writing process, I keep encountering questions I would like to discuss, but apparently can’t. I should emphasise that I’ve been incredibly fortunate in getting incredibly intelligent comments on my work here and within the local postgrad community – it’s just that there are some very specific issues where I need something like a “disciplinary” perspective. For the moment, I’ve been making my best guess on these issues, and that guess probably isn’t awful, but I really don’t know – and I’d sort of rather know now, than when I submit… ;-P But I’m venting nervous energy – apologies :-)
Would it be helpful to find help with the specific arguments from academics outside the system you’ll be defending in? Could you perhaps find (or does anyone know) a person in a European, Canadian, or US institution that could be of some help in talking about your arguments or would it be too difficult to organize these discussions that they may not actually be useful? I’m assuming here that the people you’re not supposed to be talking to are in the Australian university system.
Erasmus is spinning in his grave. Is this what passes for intellectual community down there?
I think this must just all be part of the ongoing overcompensation for Monty Python’s Philosophy Department sketch. ;-)
Anyway, I could think of a half-dozen people who would fit your bill just off-hand if you like. I’d be one of them (cv available on request). First, a story:
I had a friend in grad school who wanted to do history of philosophy. He was pretty bright and this was not an unreasonable interest on his part. However, he made a critical tactical error. For his preliminary examination committee he picked two of the biggest, baddest mofos in the Philosophy Department based on their publications and international stature but no personal relationship. They said yes, then promptly told him in open exam that he wasn’t smart enough to do their stuff, and that was that.
I also did history of philosophy, among other things (more focused on social and cultural theory but there’s so much overlap, especially 100-150 years ago where I concentrated). I used a different approach in assembling my committee. I looked at who was around who knew stuff overlapping my interests. I asked people they were working with what they were like as people. I read stuff that they had written and checked for signs of intellectual flexibility and self-irony. Once I got a short list I went and took a class or two with them. And once I was sure that they were smart, interesting people with senses of humor who played well with others, they were in.
As a result, my committee was about half ‘the right’ people and half oddball choices, with several ‘obvious’ choices excluded. I was fortunate to be at a big research university with lots of options. Anyway, I got none of the stupid nit-picky line-editing that makes so much of the lore of woe about this process, no one wanted me to write the book they hadn’t gotten around to writing, and both my prelims and my defense were fun, stimulating conversations with people who were excited about my work.
My point is that there is a third criterion you want to consider for your readers: ‘human being’ in the mensch-like sense. Once you’ve got those, the rest just sort of takes care of itself, and if you don’t got those, nothing but misery follows.
jd – Actually, doing something like that is what has created this situation :-) (Great minds, etc.) The request that I not distribute hard copies of any talks I give, was made with specific reference to some events coming up in Europe… And one of the reasons I had arranged a trip to Europe, had been specifically to obtain some non-local feedback on my work. This is one of the reasons I ended up finally venting about the problem here – I have been frustrated by this sort of advice for some time, with reference to scholars I know from local events – I had at one point been setting up coffees with scholars I met and clicked with from local events, with every intention of talking shop, but had stopped doing this due to a similar concern expressed many months back. But not being able to talk to anyone in the world, that’s quite a restriction :-) (The blog has been “allowed”, largely because no one seems to understand what it is – seriously, people refer to it in conversation as “that chat room thing you run”… *sigh*)
To be fair to folks offering this advice, I think the assumption with my thesis is that the examiners are somewhat likely not to be Australian, so if they think I shouldn’t be showing written work to people locally, it makes some sense that they think I shouldn’t be showing written work to folks overseas either. I’m just not sure the prohibition on sharing written work – particularly when we are talking about passing out copies of a talk I am delivering – makes sense full stop.
Our official written policy on this isn’t very helpful – and might be leading to these sorts of urban mythish expansions of what is prohibited. The policy prohibits examination of a thesis by anyone who has had “significant contact” with the candidate. What constitutes “significant contact”? The policy doesn’t say…
Cross-referencing with a somewhat random selection of policies from other local universities, I don’t see similar “significant contact” language: what I see is a prohibition on contact between the candidate and the examiner, in a situation in which that contact could be construed as an attempt by the candidate to exert influence on the examination process – which, of course, makes sense, but which would be a problem, I would think, only for contact that takes place during the examination period, or that otherwise places some sort of pressure on an examiner…
So I am wondering whether what I am seeing, advice-wise, is a sort of iatrogenic problem created by the policy wording. A couple of times faculty have mentioned needing to sign something on submission – needing to make sure that one can honestly sign something, etc.: my guess is that this form must say something about never having had “significant contact” with the examiner, and that people are trying to interpret what this means and be loyal to it. At least, that’s my best guess as to the genesis of this restriction…
Carl – Thanks for this. One of the difficulties is that the system here is so different from the one in the US. In principle, examiners are anonymous and candidates don’t know who they are. Examiners can choose to “out” themselves; candidates can break the seal of anonymity in certain circumstances; and in practice candidates very often do know who the examiners are – but, in principle, the supervisor or head of department chooses the examiners (the candidate is meant to have a veto, but not in a way that allows the candidate to know the actual examiners’ identities for certain). The supervisory process is entirely distinct from examination – work isn’t examined by faculty from the student’s own university…
There are elements to this system that work well – particularly for outlier projects like mine, which otherwise might not fit well within the program with which I’m formally affiliated: since the work will be examined externally, the university doesn’t need to be as concerned about disciplinary boundary issues, and students can pursue projects that don’t fully match with their supervisors’ expertise (taking on themselves the risk, of course, that they might run into problems if they move too far away from what can be effectively supervised).
My problem is that I have taken advantage of the ability to move outside of what can be closely supervised in my own institution – and I greatly appreciate the freedom I’ve been given to do this. But I had always been assuming that, around this point, I would be actively seeking out substantive contacts – not for purposes of examination, but for purposes of feedback. It had never occurred to me that external examination might become grounds for shutting down the cultivation of those contacts (with the Catch-22 dimension that, without the cultivation of those contacts, it’s then somewhat difficult for me to piece together a potential examiner pool, from which my supervisors could choose the actual examiners so that the examiners’ anonymity is potentially preserved…).
The “human being” issue you mention is of particular concern – I’ve had to select examiners myself for advisees doing Honours theses, and this can be a significant concern even there… Without talking to people, I have no idea how one begins to work out who might be an incisive potential reader for a thesis – and precisely because I’m doing an outlying project, the burden of assembling a pool of potential readers falls to me. Except that the interpretation of the “no significant contact” rule seems to be that I can’t talk to anyone… ;-P I’m waiting for someone to realise that I really do mean it, when I say that I workshop my writing on the blog – by the same principle used in the “don’t distribute hard copies of work” rule, what I do here is tantamount to ruling out from the examination process, anyone who has a net connection…
I will be following up on this: the underlying principle seems to be (if I’m fair in extrapolating from the policies of other Australian universities) that the student should not be in a position to influence the outcome of the examination process, other than through their work. I don’t see how this principle is violated by the simple distribution of written work. It might, depending on how broadly it’s interpreted, be violated by having substantial conversations with people while the work is in process – including the sorts of conversations I have with people on the blog. This might mean that I have to rule out of a potential examiner pool, anyone from whom I seek some sort of feedback or advice, where the conversation goes beyond some sort of Q&A session at a conference – I don’t really know. But this strikes me as a policy wording in desperate need of clarification…
In principle, examiners are anonymous and candidates don’t know who they are. Examiners can choose to “out” themselves; candidates can break the seal of anonymity in certain circumstances; and in practice candidates very often do know who the examiners are – but, in principle, the supervisor or head of department chooses the examiners (the candidate is meant to have a veto, but not in a way that allows the candidate to know the actual examiners’ identities for certain).
Funny. I always thought that there was no anonymity built into the process, simply because in practice it’s completely standard, if not universal, for examiners to be chosen by supervisors in consultation with students; the candidate’s name is printed on the copies of the thesis sent out to examiners; and the copies of examiners reports passed on to students show the name of the examiner. Maybe that was just my uni…
NP, about the only thing your supervisor has said/done that makes sense to me is his suggestion that you’ll be wanting examiners from overseas. For career advancement purposes (if you care about that sort of thing) you want high-profile examiners if possible, so that you can call on one or more of them to be a referee for any future job applications. For Australian PhDs, that generally means looking to the US, the UK or maybe Europe, though it doesn’t hurt to have a reasonably well-known and respected Australian examiner, if you’re considering staying here.
In the US, of course, there would be no anonymity – and in practice, I agree, students often do know their examiners here, as well. Most formal policies, though – including the ones at my uni – seem to want the examiners to have the option of remaining anonymous: perhaps it’s a relatively newly-enforced principle?
The whole issue of anonymity is puzzling precisely in light of the second thing you mention, which is that people generally want to be able to call on examiners in some capacity after the examination – anonymity would seem to make that… rather difficult… Perhaps the assumption is that, if examiners evaluate your work positively, they will reveal who they are, while anonymity will shield the bearers of bad news… ;-) (There is a section in our policy all about using an FOI request to figure out who examined your thesis: I suspect, if it’s come to that, the news must be very bad indeed…)
I know I’ve had my say already on all of this, but golly, there are just so many things wrong with your school’s policy and your peeps’ interpretation with it. So while I’m at it:
1. If the purpose is to preserve examiners’ anonymity, that’s merely chickenshit. Either stand behind your judgments or shut the hell up.
2. If the purpose is ‘objectivity’, see 1. Then get in your time machine and join the rest of us in the 21st century, where no one with half an education thinks selective ignorance=objectivity.
Harrumph, I tell you.
Just a quick update: I’ve been tracing the policy issue upstream, getting clarification on how “no substantial contact” is understood by folks higher up the food chain. The intention seems to be that this phrase is intended to mean “no conflict of interest” – the examples given in the conversations I’ve had today are things like co-authorship or collaboration, supervisory or mentoring interactions, work relationships, family relationships, and similar “substantial” connections. I’ve been asked to write up a formal request for clarification of the policy intention, so that this can be discussed in committee and then communicated to the faculty more generally in an official and less ad hoc way… Thanks all for the support and the sanity checking while I’ve been trying to sort this out… :-)