Common PhD viva questions and how to practise them

Preparing for the PhD viva often begins with question lists — compilations of the questions examiners commonly ask. These lists are genuinely useful. They help you understand what examiners are looking for and give you a framework for your preparation.

But question lists have a limitation: they are generic. The viva you will sit is specific to your thesis. And the practice that matters most is not memorising answers to generic questions — it is being able to respond, in real time, to questions grounded in your actual work.

This article covers the common question categories, what examiners are looking for in each, and how to make your practice as specific and effective as possible.

Research contribution

This is often the first and most important area of the viva. Examiners want to understand what your thesis actually adds to the field — not in vague terms, but with precision.

Typical questions include:

• "What is the central contribution of your thesis?"
• "What would the field not know without this work?"
• "How significant do you think your contribution is, relative to existing work?"
• "How does your contribution relate to [specific body of work]?"

The challenge is answering these questions precisely for your specific thesis — which is why practising the spoken answer, not just thinking about it, matters.

Methodology

Methodology questions often take up a significant portion of the viva. Examiners probe your design choices, your data collection decisions, your analytical approach, and how you addressed limitations.

Typical questions include:

• "Why did you choose this research design?"
• "What alternatives did you consider?"
• "How did you ensure rigour in your data collection?"
• "How does your methodological approach affect the generalisability of your findings?"
• "What would you do differently if you ran this study again?"

These questions require you to justify decisions that felt obvious when you made them — and that justification is harder to articulate out loud than it seems.

Engagement with the literature

Examiners want to know how your work relates to existing research. This includes both what you engaged with and what you chose not to include.

Typical questions include:

• "How does your work relate to [author or study]?"
• "Why did you not engage with [area of literature]?"
• "Where does your work agree or disagree with the current consensus?"
• "Which of your sources was most influential in shaping your argument?"

Limitations

Every thesis has limitations, and examiners expect you to know yours precisely. Being caught out by a limitation you didn't acknowledge is far worse than acknowledging it clearly.

Typical questions include:

• "What are the main limitations of your study?"
• "How do those limitations affect the validity of your conclusions?"
• "If you had more time or resources, what would you have done differently?"

Results and interpretation

Examiners will ask you to explain your findings and discuss how confident you are in your interpretation.

Typical questions include:

• "Can you summarise your key findings?"
• "Could your results be interpreted differently?"
• "How robust are your conclusions to alternative explanations?"
• "What surprised you most about your findings?"

Originality

PhD theses must make an original contribution. Examiners want to be sure the work is genuinely yours and that you can articulate what is new about it.

Typical questions include:

• "What is the most original aspect of your research?"
• "How does your theoretical framing differ from existing approaches?"
• "What specifically is new in your argument that was not there before?"

Future work

Examiners often end the viva by asking where the research should go next. This rewards genuine intellectual engagement with the field beyond your own thesis.

Typical questions include:

• "What are the most important next steps for this research?"
• "If you had three more years, what would you pursue?"
• "What questions does your thesis leave unanswered?"

Why thesis-specific questions matter

All of the categories above are useful preparation frameworks. The step that most candidates find most valuable is taking those generic question categories and practising them for their specific thesis — out loud, with follow-up questions that respond to what they actually said.

That is what makes spoken practice with a thesis-grounded examiner different from a question list. Defensia grounded questions in your actual thesis — so when the examiner asks about your methodology, it is asking about the methodology you chose, not a generic methodology question.

The goal of preparation is not to memorise answers. It is to know your work well enough that you can explain and defend any part of it in real time — and practising out loud is the most direct route to that.