Realistic viva practice for every candidate
Not every doctoral candidate gets a serious mock viva. The ones who do walk in calmer and answer more sharply. MockDefense gives your whole cohort a committee to rehearse against — on methodology, contribution, and the gaps they haven't patched — whenever they need it.
Doctoral colleges & graduate schools
Offer viva and defense rehearsal as a researcher-development service across every department, not just the ones with a strong mock-viva culture.
Researcher development teams
Add a practice tool that maps onto the questions examiners actually ask — methodology, contribution, limitations — and runs on the candidate's own schedule.
Supervisors & DTPs
Give cohorts a consistent way to rehearse under examination pressure between supervision meetings, before the formal mock.
What it develops
A mock defense rehearses the researcher-development competencies a viva actually tests — defending a contribution, justifying a methodology, acknowledging limitations without conceding the argument, and engaging an examiner under pressure. It complements the formal supervisory mock rather than replacing it: candidates arrive at that mock already fluent on their own work, so the human time is spent on the room and the politics, not the basics.
How a 90-day pilot works
1. Scope
We agree a cohort — a department, a DTP, or a cross-faculty group of candidates approaching submission — and a 90-day window.
2. Access
Candidates get full access to the three-member committee, all session modes, per-question scoring, and the written readiness debrief.
3. Use
Candidates practise from a short summary of their work — no thesis upload required — as often as they need across the window.
4. Review
We share anonymised, aggregate usage with your team and gather candidate feedback to decide whether to continue.
Data protection
MockDefense is built so candidates never upload their thesis — they work from a short summary they paste in. Session content is never used to train AI models, and candidates can export or delete their data at any time. We operate under UK GDPR; a data processing agreement and our sub-processor list are available for your data-protection team on request.
Start with one cohort
Tell us roughly how many candidates and when they submit, and we'll propose a pilot. No procurement marathon to find out whether it helps.