Annual Review
The Director of Doctoral Studies assesses progress each year during the Summer Term and decide on the most appropriate registration for the following year. For many students, the recommendation will be to continue as a full time doctoral student. For some, who have completed their empirical work and are writing up their thesis the recommendation will be to take up continuation status.
Entry into the next year of the programme is conditional on evidence that you are successfully engaging with doctoral study and likely to submit your thesis well within the period of maximum registration indicated in your original offer letter. To make such a recommendation the Director must be assured that the quantity and quality of your work over the current academic year is commensurate with the award of a doctoral degree. In making this assessment
The Director will draw on three sources of evidence.
First, your own report on your work during this academic year.
Second, your main supervisor will submit a separate report on the quantity and quality of your work.
Third, you are asked to submit a piece of work completed during the last year. This will normally be assessed by your second supervisor (or assessor) and who will then pass his/her assessment. Assessor's report form.
The piece of work you submit should be something you have produced this year which will be included in your thesis or is a good draft of part of your thesis. The most usual submission will be a draft chapter completed this year. However, the Director is also happy to receive a draft manuscript you intend to submit to a journal or an empirical report of a completed experiment (or set of experiments) or piece of theoretical analysis which will be important to your thesis. The exact form of this piece of work should be agreed with your
supervisor. It must not exceed 8,000 words including all pages but could be considerably shorter. The key criterion for choosing a piece of work is that it demonstrates the doctoral level quality of your research during this academic year.