A defense in France

I recently served as reporter/committee member for a PhD thesis at the University of Toulouse. As the thesis was codirected by a professor from the National Polytechnic School, the defense was held in hybrid form, with those of us in Quito joining in person and the rest of the committee and supervisor from France joining remotely.

The format of the defense was as follows:

• 45 minute presentation by the candidate
• 20 – 30 minutes of questions by each of the reporters (committee members who were asked to write a written evaluation of the thesis)
• 15 minutes questions by each of the examiners (committee members evaluating the defense)
• Short speech by the supervisors (in this particular defense, this part came after the deliberation)
• Deliberation on the outcome of the defense, signing all the paperwork
• Announcing the outcome to the candidate and public
• Celebrations 🙂

There are no strict dress code requirements, and the defense in this case was held in Spanish (there is flexibility in the use of languages). There is no strict protocol and formalities, except in the part of signing the documents.

All in all, this experience was quite interesting (and lovely to be invited by a colleague from another university in our city).