Nominating examiners
Last reviewed 18 September 2026
You nominate two examiners once your candidate lodges their Notification of Intention to Submit. Both must be external to UNSW, and for a PhD at least one should be from outside Australia. The form asks you to justify each examiner's suitability and to declare any potential conflict of interest. The PGC, the Faculty and the Graduate Research School review the nomination before anyone is invited. The form's fields, with templates and examples from approved nominations, are on Nomination of Examiners: fields and templates.
Conflicts of interest
Before you nominate, check for conflicts of interest. Search online for the examiner's name together with yours, each co-supervisor's and the candidate's, using a search engine or an LLM, and look for any connection between them: joint papers, grants, a shared editorial board.
Raise every potential conflict with the PGC before you nominate, even one that seems innocuous, such as serving on the same editorial board. If you and the PGC agree that the conflict is manageable, answer Yes to the relevant question on the form and give the details; the PGC will defend the nomination to the Graduate Research School. A declared conflict does not automatically rule an examiner out, but an undeclared one that surfaces later annuls that examiner's report.
Once the nomination is approved, neither you nor the candidate may contact the examiners until the examination is over.
The rules are in section 8 of the UNSW HDR Examination Instruction.