Authoring a PhD Thesis How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation by Patrick Dunleavy

and establishing or anticipatingwhat might be said about them later on. But do not give any form of potted version of your later ...

through how you can reach a ‘say it once, say it right’ pattern of chapter organization. If you still have a methods chapter emb ...

with a 100,000 limit. The formal limit is inclusive of everything except the bibliography, so your notes, appendices, preface, a ...

THE END-GAME◆ 209 your research plan was badly flawed all along, or that you did not previously know what you were doing. Instea ...

To ‘submit’ your doctorate is to initiate its final evaluation. This stage is marked off by various university bureaucratic proc ...

summer vacations. In Britain the blanked-out space where you cannot usually get your thesis examined runs from mid-June to the e ...

university performance indicators) might lead departments to pressure lagging students to submit theses prematurely or to chance ...

college of the university.) Very zealous universities (like London) will debar as examiners people who have worked or published ...

have close ties to senior figures in the profession, but the same relationship may not extend to you as well, especially with qu ...

advantages. Their advice on how to generate journal articles (or even a book publication) from your research may be more valu- a ...

It is permissible for your examiners to have read and even com- mented on conference papers or journal articles that you have wr ...

The final oral examination (viva) Life-changing events often need to be marked by a rite of pas- sage, and so it is with the doc ...

218 ◆AUTHORING A PHD members of the department, although there will always be at least one external examiner whom the student ma ...

research for several years, both you and your supervisors will easily understand many research decisions and issues which strang ...

background doubts they may have had about granting you the doctorate easily drop away over the course of this specialized conver ...

America these revisions are rarely a problem, because the exam- ining or dissertation committee has insisted on all the changes ...

a substantial, value-added contribution to knowledge. This advice does not mean that you should adopt a completely inflexible or ...

can get her to put it into a different, less threatening perspective. Try to adapt and absorb a hostile argument in ways that de ...

◆ Danger signs to look out for occur when an examiner is unusually insistent on certain points, returning to them repeatedly. Sh ...

on getting the doctorate. But in many cases where you have actually passed satisfactorily, as well as in the minority of cases w ...