Sachiko Ishihara
Does anyone have tips for good resources on how to structure your PhD dissertation (monograph)? Particularly struggling with how I want to write my Introduction (and what should go under Theory chapter vs Introduction).
#academicchatter #phd #geography #writing
Jan 26, 2024 at 11:01amWeb
Show threadSteven D. Brewer 🏳️‍⚧️Jan 26, 2024
@sachbon The only person you really need to satisfy is your advisor. Maybe you should look at their dissertation and see what they did.
Show threadSachiko IshiharaJan 26, 2024
@stevendbrewer In our department there is also two other researchers that are not my advisors that will read it as the "internal review," but anyway good idea to look at my advisors' dissertations! I haven't done this in a long while and notice this could be helpful 😊
Show threadBen F. MaierJan 26, 2024
@sachbon hey! Maybe I can offer at least my own perspective if I don't have resources to point to. When I wrote my monograph thesis, I thought of the introduction as "setting the scene": I started with what I thought was the most general description of what the things I worked on touched in the world, and what generally were problems that need solving. I very briefly touched on how others approached these problems and what perspectives my work can offer on top of that or in contrast to their
Show threadBen F. MaierJan 26, 2024

@sachbon work. Then I continued describing, again very briefly, what each chapter will be discussing and what the conclusions are, finishing with a paragraph that lined out what exactly I achieved with regard to the initial problem and what my results potentially contributed. Basically, a mini version of the thesis, incredibly boiled down.

For the theory section, I put everything in there that my argumentation in the main text actually needed to feel sound, so for instance i elaborated on

Show threadBen F. MaierJan 26, 2024
@sachbon contributions by others, explained in greater detail what their arguments were or what their methods are that I either used or improved upon. Basically, something you would crossref to when in your results section you base your work on it. For instance, in the introduction I would write, "to argue X, we'll make use of Y, a measure that quantifies Z", but in the theory section I would put the actual mathematical definition of Y including a short explanation, so that in a later chapter
Show threadBen F. MaierJan 26, 2024

@sachbon you can just write "the measure Y (see Theory, Sec. 2.1) gives W".

I think a good distinction is "if I want to refer the reader to sth I touched upon earlier, they should not be referred to the introduction. The introduction just sets the scene and briefly explains why someone would want to read my thesis at all". This somehow made sense to me :) and to the reviewers, as well, it seems.

(Apologies if this doesn't make sense or is trivial, I just typed out my stream of thoughts)

Show threadSachiko IshiharaJan 26, 2024
@benfmaier These reflections were very helpful, thank you! I think especially the focus of the Introduction of "why someone would want to read my thesis" resonates with the other tips I gathered from my colleagues, and is also the approach I am deciding to go for now😊
Show threadBen F. MaierJan 26, 2024

@sachbon I thought of some resources, too. This one helped me tremendously even though Sune wrote it for Master theses, but I still think the general gist is very helpful and applicable for PhD theses too:

https://sunelehmann.com/how-to-write-a-masters-thesis/

And then there's also this one by Jari Saramäki: https://jarisaramaki.fi/tag/how-to-write-a-scientific-paper/

Which is for papers, but nonetheless helpful :)

How to write a Master’s Thesis

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