Thesis Preparation and Ph.D. Defence
A Doctorate thesis which has been written at the EUI's PhD Programme must be defended at the EUI.
Setting up the examining board
Once the supervisor (and co-supervisor if any) consider(s) that a thesis will soon be ready for defence (usually at the stage of the first completed draft) he/she will propose a jury to be approved by the department and submitted to the Executive Committee.
The composition of the jury is the responsibility of the supervisor who will propose names in consultation with the candidate. On no account is the researcher to contact potential examiners – the organization of the thesis is the sole responsibility of the supervisor.
Deposit of the thesis
When the jury has been approved by both the Department and the Executive Committee the organization of the defence procedure can begin.
The candidate sends the final draft thesis to the supervisor and when the supervisor deems the thesis ready to be sent to the jury members for review he/she emails the secretary responsible for organising the defence. The thesis is usually sent for language correction before it goes to the jury members for review.
Once the necessary corrections have been made the candidate deposits 4 bound copies (the Department and the Library have spiralbacked binding machines) of his/her thesis for review with the organizing secretary, who will send out the thesis to the jury with the necessary instructions.
The thesis needs to be accompanied by a 300-word abstract.
Timing
In normal circumstances please calculate at least three months from the day of consignment of the 4 bound thesis copies to the organising secretary to the day of defence. Occasionally, jury members may ask for considerable changes and in this case one needs to calculate more than three months. The Department encourages reviewers to deposit their reports within one month of receiving the thesis.
Once the amendments/corrections have been inserted the candidate sends the final corrected version of his/her thesis to the organizing secretary at least one month before the date of defence.
Examining Board reports
Each examining board member is required to send in a short review report (of at least one A4 page) to the thesis supervisor with the organising secretary in copy. The department asks referees to send in their reports within 4-6 weeks of receiving the thesis and to state whether the thesis can be defended as it stands.
In case major changes are required the defence date will not normally be set until the changes have been made and approved by the jury. Researchers may ask to defend the thesis even if all the examiners are not satisfied, but this is at the candidate’s own risk.
Once all reports are received by the supervisor they will be forwarded to the candidate. At a later date, when the candidate has made changes in accordance with the reviewers’ suggestions all the reports will be circulated among the jury members.
Language correction subsidy
The thesis candidate may be eligible for a subsidy to help with the language correction costs of the thesis. The granting of the subsidy will depend on whether or not the candidate was asked to follow language classes when he/she arrived at the EUI and whether in fact the classes were followed. The candidate needs to be within the 5-year limit to qualify for the subsidy. For details see the Language Centre website .
The organising secretary will arrange for the HEC department’s contribution to correction costs to be allocated. This sum will only be transferred to the candidate (who pays the language editor him/herself) when the candidate confirms satisfaction with the final corrections.
Thesis formatting
The thesis needs to be sent in as one pdf file. Please leave a margin of 2,5 cm on all sides and use an easy to read font that uses a full character set. One-and-a-half line spacing is recommended. The thesis must contain page numbers throughout; use Roman numerals for the front matter (acknowledgements, abstract, table of contents) and Arabic numerals for the thesis text. Every new chapter and section must start with an odd page on the right-hand side of your text. You will need to insert a blank page when a chapter ends with an even number. Blank pages need to be numbered.
The thesis front matter and text needs to be sent in one .pdf formatted file. Insert tables, graphs and other images directly where they belong in the text (remember to apply 2,5 cm margin to these too). The EUI cannot guarantee reproduction of colour graphs, photos etc. The title page has to be sent as a separate Word file using the appropriate template.
See also our Guidelines fo the Preparation of the Thesis
Final version of the thesis for the print shop
When the supervisor authorizes the printing of the final version, the candidate supplies the organising secretary with the thesis cover pages (in a Word file) and the thesis text in a .pdf file. The thesis is then sent to the EUI print shop which makes 15 copies – 8 for the candidate, 4 for the jury members, 2 for the Library and 1 for the Department archive. The final version for the print shop must be ready at least 1 month before the date of defence.
When the candidate submits his/her final (revised) thesis version he/she should provide a cover letter in which it is clearly indicated what changes have been made to the thesis and where these changes are. This letter should be sent to the supervisor with the organising secretary in copy. It will then be forwarded to the jury.
On the day of the defence the candidate is expected to make a presentation lasting approximately 20 minutes. The jury will then pose their questions (the supervisor will be the last one to ask his/her questions). A general debate can then follow. At the end of the discussion the candidate and guests will be asked to leave the room for a few minutes while the jury deliberates in camera.
The doctor should indicate to the organizing secretary in which language(s) he/she defended and in which language the diploma and the certificates should be issued. On the basis of this information the Academic Service, will prepare the diploma and certificates.
The four original reports are given to the doctor and one copy is kept in the departmental files. The doctor also receives the evaluation form of the thesis defence (relating to publication suggestions), written by the President of the jury. The Doctorate of the European University Institute is ungraded, and this fact shall be clearly stated on the diploma issued to the doctor concerned.