Defending a doctoral thesis and facing viva questions is a very critical part of every research scholar. After the submission of your thesis, you will be asked to defend your research work in the “final viva voce “.

Defending your master thesis in front of the domain experts, co-scholars, and students is a quite interesting experience. Difficult part of the viva for every researcher is facing unexpected questions.

In this article, ilovephd provides 38 possible PhD viva questions frequently asked during the thesis viva.

Thesis Defense Viva Questions

1. Can you start by summarising your thesis?

2. Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?

3. Now, can you summarise it in one sentence?

4. What motivated and inspired you to carry out this research?

5. Which of these does your research address?

6. What are the main issues and debates in this subject area?

7. What is the idea that binds your thesis together?

8. Who has had the strongest influence in the development of your subject area in theory and practice?

9. What are all the three most papaer related to your thesis?

10. What published work is closest to yours? How is your work different?

11. What do you know about the history of [insert something relevant]?

12. How does your work relate to [insert something relevant]?

13. What are the most recent major developments in your area?

14. How did your research questions emerge?

15. What were the crucial research decisions you made?

16. Why did you use this research methodology? What did you gain from it?

17. What were the alternatives to this methodology?

18. What would you have gained by using another approach?

19. How did you deal with the ethical implications of your work?

20. How have you evaluated your work?

21. How has your view of your research topic changed?

22. How do you know that your findings are correct?

23. What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?

24. What would have improved your work?

25. To what extent do your contributions generalize?

26. Who will be most interested in your work?

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27. What is the relevance of your work to other researchers?

28. What is the relevance of your work to practitioners?

29. Which aspects of your work do you intend to publish – and where?

30. Summarise your key findings.

31. What are the main achievements of your research?

32. How do your findings relate to literature in your field?

33. What are the contributions to the knowledge of your thesis?

34. How long-term are these contributions?

35. Which of these findings are the most interesting to you? Why?

36. What have you learned from the process of doing your Ph.D.?

37. What advice would you give to a research student entering this area?

38. You propose future research. How would you start this?



