Each PhD thesis has an external examiner in addition to the internal examiners. The proposed external examiner should be at arm’s length from the PhD candidate, from the thesis research and from the thesis supervisor. Examiners must be seen to be able to examine the student and the thesis free of substantial conflict of interest. The test of whether or not there is a conflict of interest is whether a reasonable outside person could consider a situation to exist that could give rise to a potential for bias.
To enable the faculty to check that external examiners have appropriate expertise and to validate that they are not in conflict of interest, a curriculum vitae, including a list of publications, must be provided for each proposed examiner.
In signing the form with the names of the proposed examiners, the chair of the academic unit or delegate is indicating that, to the best of their knowledge, no conflict of interest exists.
For more information, or if there is any question about whether a potential external examiner is at arm’s length, please contact your faculty.