Third-Year Researchers

Compulsory Requirements for the Third Year of the Doctoral Programme

Written requirements

- Draft for mentoring session, by 14 October 2024
- Two Thirds of thesis, by 2 May 2025

Third-year researchers have no formal requirement for seminar attendance; they are, however, strongly encouraged to attend the Advanced Dissertation Writing Workshop in the first term and to give at least one presentation in another workshop.

Mentoring Sessions

The third year is the most demanding in quality and quantity of work, and the department organises a mentoring session in which researchers discuss their work in progress with the supervisor and the second reader on 25 and 28 October 2024.

For this mentoring session third year researchers are expected to prepare in advance a draft of the structure of their thesis which will constitute the basis of the discussion. This draft has to be sent to the Departmental Coordinator by 14 October 2024. Besides the selfassessment of the progress of the PhD and the identification of existing problems and challenges, the draft should include an updated table of contents and a section on the planned work ahead.

Passage to the Fourth Year: Two-Thirds of the Thesis

By the end of their third year of study, researchers must complete Two Thirds of their thesis in order to become eligible for the fourth-year grant. The electronic file of the Two Thirds of thesis must be submitted by 2 May 2025. Researchers wishing to receive the fourth-year grant must apply for it explicitly together with the submission of their Two Thirds of thesis.

General formatting of Two-Thirds of the thesis

- The cover page should state the title of the paper, the name of the author, the name of the supervisor and second reader and the word count. Please use this cover-page template 
- It is essential to insert a proper table of contents
- Pages should be numbered throughout the paper
- Graphs, maps and tables should be clear and easy to read
- While proofreading it may be useful to double-check our Brief Guide for Academic English