How to Structure your Thesis (Late Stage)

Across the disciplines, and even within a single discipline, theses can take on a sometimes baffling range of forms. Some are written like a book, in others, most chapters are largely self-contained, while for creative-work-based projects, the written component must weave itself around the artistic elements. In this workshop, we will begin by looking at the various possibilities, and the guidelines of the Western Sydney University and, where applicable, the various Schools or Institutes.

In the main part of the workshop, we will shift to the two big goals that all theses share: developing a compelling research question, and persuading the reader that your research activities help to answer it. Writing a thesis that achieves these goals requires that you can co-ordinate your efforts across multiple levels of scale: from writing sentences and paragraphs, to ensuring that the thesis flows, and is coherent. Many newcomers to research writing struggle because, in thinking about how to makes their text coherent, they draw upon an inappropriate “mental map”, or schema of a research document. I will introduce you to the “research blueprint” schema, a highly effective perspective on the writing, and research, of research texts.

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Graduate Research School

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