Authoring a PhD Thesis: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation

The book provides a good overview of the dissertation process - ranging from selection of a topic through to post-doc publication strategies. Written from a British perspective, but applicable to any "written" doctorate, the suggestions are practical and actionable. More importantly, from my perspective, was the "inside baseball" elements and strategies around the oral defense, the suggestions on formatting, and the recurring theme that done is better than perfect. A good read that is surprisingly easy to read as well.

I am in the early stages of contemplating a Phd, and found this book a great place to start.The book covers a lot of territory, not only describing how to structure and write a Phd but also where a Phd fits within a broader academic landscape. The book discusses potential emotional and mental traps as well as giving clues on how to manage supervisors, advisers, publishers and examiners. The book describes the nuances of the different accreditation systems along the British US divide.On starting the book I was half expecting a self-help version to writing a Phd with lots of how-to dot point lists - LOL. This book is more of a discussion on the topic than series of dot points, and it needs to be because of the topic's complexity and diversity.One thing not covered in this book that would be useful is the mature-age Phd. Traditionally a Phd is the completion of an apprenticeship into academia. However for me, as for many that I know, a Phd is a consolidation, reflection, articulation and contextualisation of a life's professional experiences and professional development. It would have been useful to have a chapter or a theme address this type of Phd.This a good read, highly recommended for anybody contemplating a Phd and needing the words and concepts to get around and talk to people on this topic.

This product is unusable in the Kindle format. The words are all jumbled together. DO NOT BUY. Some of it is legible, some of it is not. The return window is very short so you'll get stuck with an illegible copy.The material is likely quite good, it's Kindle that is at fault here.

Very solid, thoughtful, and very original advice.At times it feels like a gigantic list of dos and don'ts, but there is also much wisdom and considered advice giving that really engages with the PhD student mind, and the almost universal mistakes in thinking we all make as trainee academics.

I'm in my last year, and was thinking, "okay time to knuckle down and write this thing, yet I need some guidance!". Read some of the reviews for this title and thought I was onto a winner. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations. It didn't offer anything thing ground breaking and when I got over the half way hump I started thinking it was a chore to continue.The writing style is clear and logical and that made it an easy read, yet when it comes to authoring a PhD it doesn't give you any thing which you wouldn't already know. If you've managed to publish a paper already to a conference or a journal as part of your Doctorate don't waste you time with this title. However, if you're stating out and have no idea what is involved with a Doctorate and would like to get a good grounding, well... this book should give some insight.

This is a very well written book that addresses the issue of how to plan and construct a PhD, considering issues including length and balance of individual chapters and literature review, methodology and research findings and discussion. The overall theme running through the book is one of writing to manage reader expectations, which Dunleavy does expertly, clearly outlining what this book can accomplish and giving advice backed up with years of experience. I would strongly recommend this title to postgraduate students looking for a reference to assist with managing the mechanics and structure of writing a PhD dissertation.

I have finished two chapters at the moment. However, this is a book which is an eye opener. I am hopeful that when I shall finish reading the book..i will read it over again and again. This is a kind of book with which all other books on research / PhD should be compared . I am sure that this book is going to be one of the best books that I shall ever read in life. Thank you Patrick Dunleavy for making such a wonderful contribution.

Brilliant. There's a part where Dunleavy says, "Here's a typical example of a poorly written doctoral dissertation." He then proceeded to describe exactly what I was planning to do! Thank you, Dr. Dunleavy, for saving me months of wasted work and edits. I'm thrilled I discovered you at the start of my doctoral research.

The advise is very good but in the Kindle version you only get the text. This makes a whole chapter worthless as the chapter on layout for charts and diagrams is unusable without the examples the author talks about. I'm not sure why the publisher hasn't fixed this? Its not like the diagrams have been omitted - someone has actually typed out all the information as text! So they know there are no diagrams now - but the info is of no use at all. There are also no chapter names, just pdf files with numbers, which is annoying as you can't navigate the book easily.This book needs updating. The Kindle problems could be very easily fixed.The author also uses 'she' many times, which sounds odd now we tend to all use 'they'. The writing comes across as a bit out of date because of this, although I'm sure the majority of it is still relevant.Very useful book, shame about the Kindle version.

The text for this book is excellent but, although I am an avid KIndle reader, the conversion to Kindle for this book is by far the worst I have seen. The headings, subtitles, etc appear in the text - which is enough for me to downgrade the Kindle version - but worst still all tables, charts and diagrams are omitted [leaving just the text from them]. This makes the chapter on tables, charts and diagrams virtually useless. The contents page only references the PDF files that appear to have been joined to produce the book and, as the chapter headings are embedded in the text, it is extremely difficult to recognize where a new chapter starts and what it is about. Do not waste your money on the Kindle version - buy the physical book.

Having just passed my viva I can say with full hindsight that Dunleavy's book was a very useful guide to the whole process. It is clearly written and offers a lot of insight and practical advice. Throughout the four years of my (p/t) research it was a reassuring touchstone to help me navigate the fathomless PhD forest. Recommended.

I got this book when I was writing my MA dissertation and simultaneously writing research proposals for PhD applications. It's really a great idea for a book as it aims to fill in the blanks about what's involved in PhD writing that universities seem to think students know automatically. A lot of it will be things research students probably already know, but it's worth going through for the things you haven't thought of and to remind yourself what you're supposed to be doing when you're confused in the midst of all your writing. It's mostly focussed on organising chapters, paragraphs, etc. and presenting data - don't expect it to give you ideas for the content of your theory or research.It seems suited to social science/humanities subjects, and I found a lot of it could be applied to my MA dissertation, obviously adapting for the shorter length.

It gives a balanced general view of a phd. It must be hard to write a generic book which is equally applicable to a phd in astrophysics, childhood development, archaeology, or music. This book inevitably struggles to do this at times but given the impossibility if the task, it fares quite well.