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This article reports on a recent small-scale phenomenological study into the student experience of the doctoral viva voce. It was prompted by strong concerns about viva voce processes on the part of a Director of Graduate Studies in an English university. The study involved semi-structured interviews with 20 respondents from eight English universities in a range of disciplinary areas. An initial analysis of the interviews illuminated the powerful affective dimensions of the viva voce and the gendered nature of its processes. Resisting the binary separation of reason and emotion, the paper draws upon discursive theories of affect, gender and subjectivity to consider the affective economies that are illuminated in this data and suggests that this involves the reproduction of gendered hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]