40 Potential Question that a Master’s and Ph.D. Researcher faces at the time of Thesis Defense:
- Can you start by summarising your thesis?
- Now, can you summarise it in one sentence?
- What is the idea that binds your thesis together?
- What motivated and inspired you to carry out this research?
- What are the main issues and debates in this subject area?
- Which of these does your research address?
- Why is the problem you have tackled worth tackling?
- Who has had the strongest influence in the development of your subject area in theory and practice?
- Which are the three most important papers that relate to your thesis?
- What published work is closest to yours? How is your work different?
- What do you know about the history of [insert something relevant]?
- How does your work relate to [insert something relevant]?
- What are the most recent major developments in your area?
- How did your research questions emerge?
- What were the crucial research decisions you made?
- Why did you use this research methodology? What did you gain from it?
- What were the alternatives to this methodology?
- What would you have gained by using another approach?
- How did you deal with the ethical implications of your work?
- How has your view of your research topic changed?
- How have you evaluated your work?
- How do you know that your findings are correct?
- What are the strongest/weakest parts of your work?
- What would have improved your work?
- To what extent do your contributions generalize?
- Who will be most interested in your work?
- What is the relevance of your work to other researchers?
- What is the relevance of your work to practitioners?
- Which aspects of your work do you intend to publish – and where?
- Summarise your key findings.
- Which of these findings are the most interesting to you? Why?
- How do your findings relate to literature in your field?
- What are the contributions to the knowledge of your thesis?
- How long-term are these contributions?
- What are the main achievements of your research?
- What have you learned from the process of doing your Ph.D.?
- What advice would you give to a research student entering this area?
- You propose future research. How would you start this?
- What would be the difficulties?
- And, finally… What have you done that merits a Master’s PhD.