Contacting Potential Examiners

Suggested text for email to potential examiners:

I  am contacting you to enquire whether you would be prepared to act as an examiner for the [doctoral / Master of Philosophy] thesis examination of one of my candidates, [name]. His/her studies... [one to two sentence encapsulation]. A summary of this work is attached .

I anticipate that the candidate will submit within six to eight weeks time.

I would be very grateful if you could please advise by email whether you would be prepared to act as an examiner. The examination itself would require you to forward your recommendation to the university's Research Graduate School Committee on a report form, together with a supporting statement in which you could provide general and specific comments concerning the thesis. More information is available on the examinations section of the MRGS website.

The Research Graduate School Committee normally asks that examiners return their completed report within eight weeks of the receipt of the thesis. However, if you would require more time, could you please give me an estimate of the time needed. In addition I would need to know if you had any pre-conditions for examination of the thesis.

As I must indicate to the university whether you have examined doctoral theses previously, I would be grateful for a general statement of your experience. This could be of the form “I have examined over 20 PhD theses for universities in Europe and North America in the past 15 years”.

Please note that your identity will be revealed to the candidate once the thesis is dispatched for examination.

Thank you for your consideration of this request.