Doctoral Defense Training

This is a one-day workshop for last-year PhD students, offering a comprehensive preparation for the defense or doctoral viva voce, your last step towards finishing your doctorate, besides the mandatory publication. After years of specializing in your dissertation's subject, methods, and theoretical framework, of focusing on the written word, you are required to actually speak up and deliver your condensed or selected research findings and deliver them in a nutshell, or to expand your focus on a variety of subject matters or even other fields, depending on your PhD regulations. This workshop provides you with essential tools and input that will guide you in your preparation for the doctoral defense. We will address all issues pertaining to the doctoral defense.

Topics:

• What are the aims of the doctoral defense?

• How to efficiently and strategically prepare for the defense

• How to design an interesting and fascinating research narrative

• How to anticipate and deal with (killer) questions

• How to deal with exam anxiety and stage fright

The workshop puts theory into practice, including one full mock defense for one participant. Prior to the workshop all participants will receive a questionnaire and those interested in preparing the presentation for the mock defense are required to send in a short abstract.

Dates

The course will take place online on the 20th June 2024, from 9 am to 4:30 pm. Please note that this course is GIGA internal only.

About the lecturer

Dr. Dunja Mohr is a certified coach and trainer, has been offering workshops, group and individual coachings for foundations, universities, and universities of applied science for over fifteen years and She also worked as a trainer for uni-support, Institut für Hochschulberatung, for ten years and taught English Literature at universities in Germany for roughly twenty years. As senior scientist she is on several boards of international professional associations and an ambassador scientist with a large scholarship foundation.