This course is delivered by the Researcher Academy

Researcher Academy courses are very popular and the majority are run in both semesters to give you the opportunity to attend at a time of the year that suits you. Semester 1 courses will be available for booking from the second week of October and Semester 2 courses from the second week of February.

Target audience

Late stage postgraduate research students [writing a doctoral thesis]

This course is aimed at students who are in the latter stages of their research and writing up (i.e. in their final year of doctoral study). They are likely to be close to finishing gathering material; have analysis of material and data well underway; have a sense of how their thesis might be structured and what the main claims or findings are; have a good idea of their main argument(s).

This course is not for Masters dissertations. Academic Support offers support for writing dissertations.

Process 

This is a half-day participative small group workshop.

Objectives

By the end of the course, you will have:

- discussed the original contribution of your thesis
- considered the thesis as an 'argument' and the structure of an argument
- discussed the claims and argument of your thesis with someone else
- completed a timetable for writing and submission
- considered the features of effective writing

Related courses

This course is one in a series that looks at aspects of writing for postgraduate students. 

These are best taken in the following sequence:

- Getting into habit of writing
- Shut up and write
- Getting going on your thesis
- Finishing your thesis

These courses are aimed at researchers approaching their viva.

- Preparing for your Viva (online)
- Preparing for the Viva 

Latecomer policy
Researchers should plan to arrive prior to the advertised course start time. Except for exceptional reasons, there will be no admittance to a Researcher Academy or Faculty Training Programme (FTP) course 15 minutes after the advertised course start time.

Importance of booking commitment
When booking on to a Researcher Academy short course you are entering into a commitment to attend. If you find that you are no longer available to attend you MUST cancel your place (on the system if more than three days before the course or if at short notice by emailing pg-training@nottingham.ac.uk). This will ensure that your place can be offered to another researcher on the waiting list. Failure to cancel a place results in other researchers missing out on places through the waiting list process.
It is unacceptable for researchers to just not attend when booked onto a course. Researcher Academy maintains records of those who repeatedly do not attend courses they have booked. This may affect future eligibility to book onto further Researcher Academy courses and will affect considerations for Researcher Academy funded opportunities.