Research Matters 16 - Aberystwyth University

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final submission date – 30 th September 2008. My final conference had been attended and discussions of potential external examiners became the topic of conversation, rather than research. For a while, I had felt that each chapter had a life of its own and I couldn’t see how it was all going to fit together. However, once editing began in earnest, the thesis began to gel. My life now revolved around editing, tidying up references, double checking the bibliography and generally making sure that the presentation was as perfect as possible. Meanwhile, the intention-to-submit form was filled in, my internal and external examiners were organised and the editing continued unabated. There came a point when I had to decide when to stop and have the thesis printed and bound. It was when my supervisor commented that he was happy if I was happy to hand in the thesis that I finally did so. Once handed in to the department, there was a moment of euphoria followed swiftly by a sense of ‘What now?’ Suddenly, evenings and weekends became free of research, writing and referencing and it took a while to not feel guilty over doing nothing! The next moment of pure anxiety came when the date of the viva was set – 18 th December 2008. The mock viva was organised for the week before and this ended up being the best rehearsal I could have. I was questioned for over an hour on my work which made me focus my thoughts, and along with extra guidance from several willing academics from the department, this meant that I was as prepared as I could be for the main event. Nerves, adrenalin and my supervisor accompanied me into the room on the 18 th December. However, what I had built up to be a terrifying inquisition 10 became an in-depth discussion of my research, my reasons and results. The feeling of being told I had passed was probably one of the best moments imaginable. The grin that spread across my face did not fade for days. Memories of that day still have the power to make me smile. Nicky Cashman _____________________________________ Nicky Cashman’s thesis on Self, Family and Community in African American Literature, 1940-1970, was successfully completed at <strong>Aberystwyth</strong> in January. She currently manages CADAIR, the <strong>University</strong>’s online repository. _______________________________ The Insider, or, On Being an Internal Examiner I sometimes wonder (and sometimes while actually doing it) what internal examiners are for. I mean as examiners, rather than as the main host-figure on the big day – the person who shows the external where the loos are, and provides such essentials as coffee, the use of a computer, and somewhere secure to leave coats and bags which would otherwise have to be carted round all day. These are important duties, and entirely pleasant to perform, but they are really just the side-effects, so to speak, of being one of the examiners. So I ask again, what are internal examiners for? No such question ever need be asked of external examiners, for their role is, self-evidently, to be the independent subject expert and ‘scholarly scrutineer’ who ensures that the thesis is a genuine contribution to knowledge in its field or sub-field. The internal’s
ole, by contrast, is much less definite, so much so that he or she can often seem to be just a pale shadow of the external, someone who also has expertise in the sub-field of the PhD topic, but not quite so much of it (since if they had, they would presumably have been the supervisor rather than the ‘mere’ internal). Just a witness? So in what ways might internals define and refine their roles and hence feel that they contribute something distinctive to the viva? For it is certainly dispiriting for an internal to sense that they are really just there as a witness - someone whose most important contribution to the examination process is a signature on the sheaf of pink, yellow, blue and green forms which have to be processed at the end of the proceedings. If the internal is truly little more than a glorified witness, then the considerable work of reading the thesis, and then composing a detailed critique and a set of pertinent questions seems rather a waste of time. Perhaps one useful way to conceive of the internal’s role is to see it as providing the breadth of knowledge and expertise which complements the external’s depth. On this model, the internal’s questions would be broader in scope than the internal’s, aimed more at finding out (for instance) about the candidate’s sense of the relationship between the main author(s) studied and the period as a whole, rather than just about the author’s specific texts and ideas. An internal with such a brief might usefully be thought of as a ‘dissemination scrutineer’, rather than a ‘scholarly scrutineer’, that is, as someone whose job is to ensure that the thesis is capable of communicating 11 to an audience beyond its immediate sub-field, and of meeting basic criteria of readability and accessibility. From thesis to book Such a distinction would recognize that there is a potential conflict between the profession’s need for scholarliness and originality on the one hand, and considerations of impact, knowledgetransfer, and dissemination on the other. The effect of this shift in the internal’s role might be to close the gap a little between the thesis and the book-of-the-thesis which most candidates hope eventually to develop from it. In this way, the two examiners would reflect the contrasting demands of the two poles of the ‘dual support’ system of research funding in the UK. Thus, the RAE/REF pursues an ideal of pure academic excellence, based on the assumption that research of high quality is recognisable as such by competent peers in its own field, and that they alone are able to decide that a given piece of research is ‘an essential point of reference in its field or subfield, mak[ing] a contribution of which every researcher in the field ought to be aware’ (RAE 2008 documentation, my italics). But the AHRC measure of excellence is very different. To receive grant funding, AHRC applicants must be aware of the demands of ‘knowledge transfer’, which means ‘interaction with other audiences’ (my italics, and I take ‘other’ to mean other than a narrow group of relevant professional sub-fielders). Successful grant applicants must produce research which is ‘widely disseminated’, and which seeks ‘interaction with other audiences’. So on this model, the external examiner would put to the candidate RAE/REF-type questions, speaking on behalf of other researchers in the same field, while the internal would speak from the AHRC
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Research Matters 16 - Aberystwyth University

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