LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Guidelines for the nomination of Examiners for PhD, MDRes & MPhil students.
From: Dr Andrew Stoker, FPHS Faculty Graduate Tutor
It is the primary supervisor’s responsibility to nominate suitable internal and external examiners for
the examinations of their PhD, MDRes and MPhil students. This is an important decision and needs
careful thought so that the examiners have optimal expertise and experience. There are
nevertheless some pitfalls in this process and these guidelines are intended as an advisory
document to help supervisors and tutors with these issues.
There are general UCL guidelines and procedures available for choosing examiners.
The UCL procedures spell out the requirements for examiner experience and the potential
restrictions that may preclude an examiner(s) from being nominated. These restrictions are
expanded upon below. Note that there are many different combinations of issues that can arise and
each set of examiners is therefore unique. There are few absolute answers to some of these
questions and so there can be some flexibility.






The internal examiner must be from UCL or have an honorary contract with UCL
The external must be from outside UCL and have no substantive relationship with the
supervisors and student
In exceptional circumstances two externals can be chosen, but full justification is needed
Examination Experience. Ideally, both examiners will have significant examination
experience within UCL/UOL and in other institutions. However, this is often not feasible
o Between the two examiners, therefore, we advise that they need to have carried out
at least two UCL/UOL examinations in recent years, so that they are aware of UCL
examination procedures and regulations.
o If one examiner has little or no examination experience, then they should be
matched with another who has significant experience
 In rare cases where both are relatively inexperienced, then the local graduate
tutor (or nominated deputy) must be on hand on the day of the viva in order
to assist if questions arise; they need not attend the actual viva
o Where non-UK examiners are nominated, they must be made aware of the UK
examination system beforehand, since this differs from many other European
countries; if the non-UK examiner has little or no UK experience, they must be
matched with an experienced UK examiner
Frequent examiner use. Examiners should not be used too often by the same research unit
or department (see UCL regulations)
Relationships with supervisors or students - This presents more challenging issues
o Essentially these rules are in place in order to obtain as much impartiality as
possible in the examiners
o The examiners must not have had any connection to the student’s project, or have
taken part in the upgrade process
o The examiners should ideally not have published with either supervisor (or the
student!) in the last three years
 Exceptions can be made, but the reasoning behind using such examiners
must be spelled out clearly by the supervisors on the nomination form
 Examples of exceptions can be: (1) they are middle authors on a multiauthor paper and have had not direct interactions with each other; (2),
they have contributed data for a project, but this is not part of any
significant, on-going collaboration
 The excuse that “we currently collaborate, but on a completely unrelated
area”, does not hold water (the examiner is still too close professionally to
the supervisor)
o The golden rule is for supervisors to be open about any professional relationships on
the nomination form, then the tutor(s), plus registry, can discuss the matter with
them. Recent co-publication for example is easily identified in PubMed, and is usually
grounds for return of forms to supervisors for further explanation.
o An internal examiner from the same immediate research unit/team is seldom
permitted.
Once the departmental tutor is satisfied with the examiners, the forms are sent for approval at
faculty level and then by Registry. Supervisors can appeal any decisions if they feel strongly about
the matter.