This is the million dollar question, and while there are no guarantees, I’m confident the answer is yes! In order to produce a tool that is general enough to work for a mass audience the questions are not specific to any discipline or topic. That said, feedback received so far suggests that they are useful, and have helped people to focus at a time when the task ahead of them was quite daunting, and very little support was available.

Liz, one of the people who received an original hand written version of the cards, had this to say about them:

The cards were very helpful in helping me realise how much I knew. They probably saved a lot of preparation time in helping me to identify areas I was less sure about to focus on. What the cards couldn’t predict were a couple of curved balls in the viva itself, but then that is in the nature of the viva!

My own background is in social science and so far the cards have been used by MPhil and PhD students studying design, law, social care and social work, special education, social policy and digital civic architecture. I’m confident that they offer something to anyone approaching a viva, but they are intentionally high level, so would need to be used alongside wider conversations and reflections with your supervisor(s). Over time we hope to add to the questions, and it may be that more tailored packs are developed for certain disciplines or topics, so watch this space.