Creative, Scholarly and Practical Work

The MPhil and PhD degrees are available either by thesis or by creative, scholarly, or practical work.

A student may undertake a programme of research in which the student's own creative, scholarly or practical work forms, as a point of origin or reference, a significant part of the intellectual enquiry. Such work may be in any field but must have been undertaken as part of the registered research programme.

In such cases, the presentation or submission of creative, scholarly or practical work must be supported by documentation in the form of a dissertation or thesis which sets the work in its relevant theoretical, historical, critical or design context.

The dissertation or thesis must itself conform to the usual scholarly requirements and be of appropriate length. The ratio between creative, practical and scholarly work is negotiable. In cases where there is a good balance between theory and practice, a portfolio may be submitted with a dissertation of ca. one half length of a scholarly one, thus ca. 35,000 – 40,000 words.

The final submission must be accompanied by some permanent record (for instance, computer disk, video, photographic record, musical score, choreographic notation, diagrammatic representation) of the creative, scholarly and practical work where practicable, bound with the dissertation or thesis.

Where the presentation or submission consists substantially of material in other than written form or the research involves creative writing or the preparation of a scholarly edition, the written dissertation or thesis should normally be within the range:

for PhD 10,000 - 12,000 words
for MPhil 6,000 - 8,000 words

page updated 15 September, 2010 12:15