and establishing or anticipatingwhat might be said about them
later on. But do not give any form of potted version of your
later arguments in the lead-in chapter, lest you crudely travesty
your major points to come. Instead linkages must be set up,
which then need to connect with your research in the rest of
the thesis.
The conclusion sections of the middle chapters
Each of the substantive chapters (that is, those numbered 2 or
3 through to 7 in an eight-chapter PhD) should be flexibly
linked via their conclusions to the themes from the opening
chapter(s). The conclusions (note, not the chapter openings)
should pick up on at least one or two of the themes developed
in the lead-in chapter, but in a variable-geometry way. The
theme that each conclusion links to should be wholly relevant
to the specific materials in that chapter and also adapted to the
role which the chapter plays in the thesis as a whole. Do not try
to cover allthe thesis themes in the conclusions to everychap-
ter. Such an approach can easily look mechanistic and inau-
thentic, as if you are running a kind of intellectual bookkeeping
operation, rather than using genuinely relevant key ideas for
analysing what that chapter has shown. The job of the conclu-
sions section is to pull the focus away from the research detail,
to bring out the chapter’s key findings in a stand-back mode.
You can make some small sideways links to other middle chap-
ters relevant to the same theme(s), especially those chapters
which have just been covered or are the next to be covered. But
you should not make comparative comments at these points,
nor begin discussing material from other middle chapters in
any substantive way.
Refocusing the middle chapters and sharpening up their
conclusions is also an opportunity to make some crucial checks
that your work is structurally well founded. Each of your chap-
ters should do a discrete and distinctive job, well signalled from
its start, and effectively building the thesis. If there are overlaps
in chapter ‘jurisdictions’, now is the time to simplify them.
Assign one function to each chapter, and make sure that this
role does not overlap with those of its neighbours. Think
206 ◆AUTHORING A PHD