project thesis book

Mastering Your Dissertation

The Answers to Your Questions on Bachelor´s, Master´s and Project Theses

• © 2023
• Sue Reeves   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3017-0559 0 ,
• Bartek Buczkowski   ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4146-3664 1

University of Roehampton, London, UK

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK

• Essential reading for any student embarking on their first research project
• Clearly explains the different types of dissertations on offer
• Written by University Lecturers with more than 20 years of experience

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Table of contents (15 chapters)

Front matter, what will this book cover.

• Sue Reeves, Bartek Buczkowski

How Can I Get Organised?

How do i choose a project type and title, what is the best way to work with my supervisor, do i need to complete an ethics form, how do i write an introduction and literature review, how do i write the methods chapter, how do i present the results, how do i write the discussion chapter, how do i write the conclusion, how do i reference, does my dissertation need an abstract, what else should i include in my dissertation, how do i prepare for a successful defence, other frequently asked questions, back matter.

• Study skills
• Undergraduate Dissertation
• Writing skill
• Research project
• Dissertation
• Student question

About this book

Authors and affiliations.

Bartek Buczkowski

About the authors

Dr Sue Reeves is the Head of Teaching and Learning in the School of Life and Health Sciences at the University of Roehampton. She has taught nutrition for over 20 years, has won several teaching excellence awards, has been an external examiner, and is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE.  She is a Registered Nutritionist and a Fellow of the Association for Nutrition.  Her published research includes many aspects of nutrition including the role of diet in obesity, coeliac disease, and healthy and sustainable restaurants.  Sue is part of the international Toybox Malaysia team that has been awarded two Medical Research Council grants for projects to improve healthy behaviours among pre-schoolers in Malaysia and is an advisor on degree programmes in Malaysia and Singapore. Along with Dr Yvonne Jeanes, she is the co-author of the Study Skills Handbook for Nutritionists and Dietitians.

Dr Bartek Buczkowski is the Department Education Lead in the Department of Health Professions at Manchester Metropolitan University and Senior Lecturer in Nutrition. He is a Higher Education lecturer with 13 years’ experience, Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA), nominated for numerous teaching awards and winner of Teacher of the Year in 2019 Manchester Met Student Union Teaching Awards. Bartek has a long track of supervision of students at BSc, MSc and PhD levels. Bartek is a Registered Nutritionist and is active in the Association for Nutrition (AfN). He was elected to AfN Council in December 2022, and appointed Chair of the Accreditation Committee in January 2023.

A Guide to Thesis Writing That Is a Guide to Life

“How to Write a Thesis,” by Umberto Eco, first appeared on Italian bookshelves in 1977. For Eco, the playful philosopher and novelist best known for his work on semiotics, there was a practical reason for writing it. Up until 1999, a thesis of original research was required of every student pursuing the Italian equivalent of a bachelor’s degree. Collecting his thoughts on the thesis process would save him the trouble of reciting the same advice to students each year. Since its publication, “How to Write a Thesis” has gone through twenty-three editions in Italy and has been translated into at least seventeen languages. Its first English edition is only now available, in a translation by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina.

We in the English-speaking world have survived thirty-seven years without “How to Write a Thesis.” Why bother with it now? After all, Eco wrote his thesis-writing manual before the advent of widespread word processing and the Internet. There are long passages devoted to quaint technologies such as note cards and address books, careful strategies for how to overcome the limitations of your local library. But the book’s enduring appeal—the reason it might interest someone whose life no longer demands the writing of anything longer than an e-mail—has little to do with the rigors of undergraduate honors requirements. Instead, it’s about what, in Eco’s rhapsodic and often funny book, the thesis represents: a magical process of self-realization, a kind of careful, curious engagement with the world that need not end in one’s early twenties. “Your thesis,” Eco foretells, “is like your first love: it will be difficult to forget.” By mastering the demands and protocols of the fusty old thesis, Eco passionately demonstrates, we become equipped for a world outside ourselves—a world of ideas, philosophies, and debates.

Eco’s career has been defined by a desire to share the rarefied concerns of academia with a broader reading public. He wrote a novel that enacted literary theory (“The Name of the Rose”) and a children’s book about atoms conscientiously objecting to their fate as war machines (“The Bomb and the General”). “How to Write a Thesis” is sparked by the wish to give any student with the desire and a respect for the process the tools for producing a rigorous and meaningful piece of writing. “A more just society,” Eco writes at the book’s outset, would be one where anyone with “true aspirations” would be supported by the state, regardless of their background or resources. Our society does not quite work that way. It is the students of privilege, the beneficiaries of the best training available, who tend to initiate and then breeze through the thesis process.

Eco walks students through the craft and rewards of sustained research, the nuances of outlining, different systems for collating one’s research notes, what to do if—per Eco’s invocation of thesis-as-first-love—you fear that someone’s made all these moves before. There are broad strategies for laying out the project’s “center” and “periphery” as well as philosophical asides about originality and attribution. “Work on a contemporary author as if he were ancient, and an ancient one as if he were contemporary,” Eco wisely advises. “You will have more fun and write a better thesis.” Other suggestions may strike the modern student as anachronistic, such as the novel idea of using an address book to keep a log of one’s sources.

But there are also old-fashioned approaches that seem more useful than ever: he recommends, for instance, a system of sortable index cards to explore a project’s potential trajectories. Moments like these make “How to Write a Thesis” feel like an instruction manual for finding one’s center in a dizzying era of information overload. Consider Eco’s caution against “the alibi of photocopies”: “A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many.” Many of us suffer from an accelerated version of this nowadays, as we effortlessly bookmark links or save articles to Instapaper, satisfied with our aspiration to hoard all this new information, unsure if we will ever get around to actually dealing with it. (Eco’s not-entirely-helpful solution: read everything as soon as possible.)

But the most alluring aspect of Eco’s book is the way he imagines the community that results from any honest intellectual endeavor—the conversations you enter into across time and space, across age or hierarchy, in the spirit of free-flowing, democratic conversation. He cautions students against losing themselves down a narcissistic rabbit hole: you are not a “defrauded genius” simply because someone else has happened upon the same set of research questions. “You must overcome any shyness and have a conversation with the librarian,” he writes, “because he can offer you reliable advice that will save you much time. You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation.”

Eco captures a basic set of experiences and anxieties familiar to anyone who has written a thesis, from finding a mentor (“How to Avoid Being Exploited By Your Advisor”) to fighting through episodes of self-doubt. Ultimately, it’s the process and struggle that make a thesis a formative experience. When everything else you learned in college is marooned in the past—when you happen upon an old notebook and wonder what you spent all your time doing, since you have no recollection whatsoever of a senior-year postmodernism seminar—it is the thesis that remains, providing the once-mastered scholarly foundation that continues to authorize, decades-later, barroom observations about the late-career works of William Faulker or the Hotelling effect. (Full disclosure: I doubt that anyone on Earth can rival my mastery of John Travolta’s White Man’s Burden, owing to an idyllic Berkeley spring spent studying awful movies about race.)

In his foreword to Eco’s book, the scholar Francesco Erspamer contends that “How to Write a Thesis” continues to resonate with readers because it gets at “the very essence of the humanities.” There are certainly reasons to believe that the current crisis of the humanities owes partly to the poor job they do of explaining and justifying themselves. As critics continue to assail the prohibitive cost and possible uselessness of college—and at a time when anything that takes more than a few minutes to skim is called a “longread”—it’s understandable that devoting a small chunk of one’s frisky twenties to writing a thesis can seem a waste of time, outlandishly quaint, maybe even selfish. And, as higher education continues to bend to the logic of consumption and marketable skills, platitudes about pursuing knowledge for its own sake can seem certifiably bananas. Even from the perspective of the collegiate bureaucracy, the thesis is useful primarily as another mode of assessment, a benchmark of student achievement that’s legible and quantifiable. It’s also a great parting reminder to parents that your senior learned and achieved something.

But “How to Write a Thesis” is ultimately about much more than the leisurely pursuits of college students. Writing and research manuals such as “The Elements of Style,” “The Craft of Research,” and Turabian offer a vision of our best selves. They are exacting and exhaustive, full of protocols and standards that might seem pretentious, even strange. Acknowledging these rules, Eco would argue, allows the average person entry into a veritable universe of argument and discussion. “How to Write a Thesis,” then, isn’t just about fulfilling a degree requirement. It’s also about engaging difference and attempting a project that is seemingly impossible, humbly reckoning with “the knowledge that anyone can teach us something.” It models a kind of self-actualization, a belief in the integrity of one’s own voice.

A thesis represents an investment with an uncertain return, mostly because its life-changing aspects have to do with process. Maybe it’s the last time your most harebrained ideas will be taken seriously. Everyone deserves to feel this way. This is especially true given the stories from many college campuses about the comparatively lower number of women, first-generation students, and students of color who pursue optional thesis work. For these students, part of the challenge involves taking oneself seriously enough to ask for an unfamiliar and potentially path-altering kind of mentorship.

It’s worth thinking through Eco’s evocation of a “just society.” We might even think of the thesis, as Eco envisions it, as a formal version of the open-mindedness, care, rigor, and gusto with which we should greet every new day. It’s about committing oneself to a task that seems big and impossible. In the end, you won’t remember much beyond those final all-nighters, the gauche inside joke that sullies an acknowledgments page that only four human beings will ever read, the awkward photograph with your advisor at graduation. All that remains might be the sensation of handing your thesis to someone in the departmental office and then walking into a possibility-rich, almost-summer afternoon. It will be difficult to forget.

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Home > PMGT > Dissertations and Theses

Dissertations and Theses

Theses/dissertations from 2020 2020.

Challenges to Adopting Hybrid Methodology: Addressing Organizational Culture and Change Control Problems in Enterprise IT Infrastructure Projects , Harishankar Krishnakumar

The Difficulty With Introducing Project Management Techniques in Digital Startups , Isabela Mantilla

Theses/Dissertations from 2018 2018

Reasons for Success and Failure of Projects , Tamunogbenye Dago

Impediments in Transitioning to Agile Time-boxing Testing Efforts , Taniya Dasgupta

Implementing Agile Methodology Techniques in Automobile Industry , Nikhil Kranthi Datrika

The Role of Project Management in Fostering Creativity: Towards Successful Architectural Design Projects , Angeliki Giannoulatou Destouni

Implementing Project Management Principles in Digital Advertising Age , Yuanqing Jiang

BIM and Project Management in AEC Industry , Nazanin Kamyab

IMPACT OF MOTIVATION ON PROJECT TEAMS’ PERFORMANCE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY , RAMU KARANAM

Adopt Agile Methodology for Building Wealth Management Platform Building , Mandar Shripad Kulkarn

STUDY ON RECOVERY OF BAD SOCIAL MEDIA REVIEWS IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY USING PROJECT MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES , FRANCK LEGRAND

AGILE ADOPTION IN INVESTMENT BANKS , JIAYIN LIANG and Suman Shekhar

SCRUM IN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY TO IMPROVE PROJECT PERFORMANCE IN DESIGN PHASE , YINGCHEN LIU

IMPROVING SOFTWARE PROJECTS WITH CLOUD COMPUTING , SUNIL MADDIPATLA

BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE E-BANKING SYSTEMS IN INDIA , DIVYA NALLURI

Applying the Agile Mechanism in the Clinical Trails Domain for Drug Development , Jitendrakumar Narola

IMPLEMENTING AGILE LEAN IN TELECOM INDUSTRY , SWAPNIL NARVEKAR

Internet of Things (IoT) and Changing Face of Project Management , Vikram Singh Prasher

Risk Management in Telemedicine Projects in Healthcare , Shalini Sakinala

Study of the impact of team morale on construction project performance , Adrian Gerard Saldanha

Key Competencies for Project Managers: An Empirical Study , Sahil Sandhu

IDENTIFICATION OF RIGHT LEADERSHIP STYLE FOR AGILE TEAMS , AASHIK SEKHARAN

ROLE OF EFFECTIVE QUALITY RISK MANAGEMENT IN DRUG SAFETY PROJECT , Bhawna Sharma

SOFT SKILLS INFLUENCE IN PROJECT MANAGERS IN THE CLOUD SPACE , KATHERINE SILVA

Managing Business Process Transformation Projects Using Contextual Hybrid Agile Methodology , John Tu

Using IOP as a mechanism for project team management , Maryam Selah Varzi

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEADERSHIP STYLES AND JOB SATISFACTION IN LUXURY RETAIL PROJECT , CUIPING ZHANG

Theses/Dissertations from 2017 2017

Applying Agile Lean to Global Software Development , Piyansh Gupta

Agile in Construction Projects , Chen Jin

Role of Agile Methods in Global Software Development , Dinesh Chandra Kalluri

Innovation through Agile Project Management , Raju Kona

The Use of Effective Risk Management in Cloud Computing Projects , Usha Kiran Marichetty

Feasibility in Applying Agile Project Management Methodologies To Building Design and Construction Industry , Roy S. Moriel

Pharmacovigilance: The Role Of Pharmaceutical Companies To Protect Patients From Adverse Drug Reactions , Srikanth Nukala

Team Performance and Project Success , Ijeoma Okoronkwo

Key to Success of Offshore Outsourcing , Deep Patel

Implementation of Agile Methodology in Public Sector , Kajal Patel

Project Manager’s Perception of Agile Methods Success , Ankit Sachdeva

Adapting Agile in Regulated (Pharmaceutical) Environment , Prachiben K. Shah

The Implication of Agile & Traditional Method as a Practice in Pharmaceutical Industry , Vishant Shah

Project Management for E-Commerce Businesses , Jui Tamhane

Critical Risk Assessment and Management in Pharmaceutical Industry , Abida Zameer

Theses/Dissertations from 2016 2016

Improved Sprint Results with Offshore Indian Teams , Fnu Abdul Hasheem

A Different Approach to Project Management: The Use of Soft Skills , Hannah Adams

ERP Critical Success Factors: Importance of ERP Consultants in ERP Implementation , Adekunle S. Balogun

Scrum Sim - A Simulation Game to Learn the Scrum Agile Framework , Anshuman Bassi

Hybrid Project Management Approach for Software Modernization , Chintan Bhavsar

Adopting Agile Scrum , Anirudh Chaganti

Supply Chain Risks: Causes & Mitigation Strategy for the Medical Device Companies , Dipak Patil

Research Paper on Content Management Systems (CMS): Problems in the Traditional Model and Advantages of CMS in Managing Corporate Websites , Elanchezhian Ramalingam

Challenges When Using Scrum in Globally Distributed Teams , Sweta Shah

A Case Study on PPL's Journey to Agile Transition , Jayalakshmi Tenali

To Overcome Communication Challenges in Distributed/Virtual Scrum Teams , Priyamvada Walimbe

Hybrid Agile Approach: Efficiently Blending Traditional and Agile Methodologies , Rashmi Wankhede

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Student's Guide For Final Year Project Thesis: BSc, MSc, MA, and MBA Paperback – August 4, 2016

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 78 pages
• Language English
• Publication date August 4, 2016
• Dimensions 6 x 0.18 x 9 inches
• ISBN-10 153690385X
• ISBN-13 978-1536903850
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (August 4, 2016)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 78 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 153690385X
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1536903850
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.1 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.18 x 9 inches
• #5,333 in Research Reference Books

About the author

Dr fadi safieddine.

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Consisting of a final body of work and a written component , the thesis is both a culmination of the graduate experience at RISD and a catalyst for future professional and creative practice.

To view examples of discipline-specific projects online, please visit Digital Commons @ RISD or search the Fleet Library at RISD’s graduate thesis index . You may also view highlights from recent thesis projects in the Book of Thesis Books .

Required Electronic Submission of Thesis Book

Go to Digital Commons@risd and upload your thesis PDF by Friday, May 24, 2024 (or before). The electronic thesis (which does not have to include signatures) will be cataloged by the Library and will also be posted to RISD’s Digital Commons.

A complete set of submission instructions can be found here .

Library requirements for cataloging :

• Official title page that includes your full name, the names of all thesis committee advisors, department, year, etc. Use this sample page for guidance. Thesis committee signatures would be added in the bound copy, typically during final critique.
• Copyright page
• Table of contents
• Captions or list of illustrations (including image credits as needed)
• Footnotes/endnotes and bibliography (source citation)
• Page numbers

Your thesis will be recorded in both the Fleet Library’s online catalog and the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)—an international bibliographic database.

Making your master’s thesis available to the RISD community and future grad students, and to artists, designers, scholars and employers worldwide is an important and valuable part of higher education. However, you may not want to have your thesis available online for reasons of publishing agreements, patents or other intellectual property issues.

If you need to opt-out or have any questions, email [email protected] .

Optional Submission of Bound Thesis Book

If you would like to submit a bound, physical copy of your thesis to the risd library, check with your department or contact marc calhoun ([email protected]) to make arrangements..

The physical copy must be the same content as the digital version. Your thesis is a snapshot of a moment in time, the library cannot accept re-edited or substantially different versions. All materials must be archivally sound (acid-free paper, sturdy binding, etc.). If your thesis is bound unconventionally and/or includes original artwork such as prints or loose pages, please include an appendix describing the materials and/or process to ensure accurate library cataloging, and please note it will be housed in Special Collections (viewable by appointment), rather than on the open, accessible shelves.

Watch a thesis presentation

Thesis presentation: jiaai he, interior architecture.

Recent Interior Architecture graduate Jiaai He shares her thesis and experience in the MFA program.

Thesis Presentation: Steven Kaplan-Pistiner, Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Recent Jewelry + Metalsmithing graduate Steven Kaplan-Pistiner shares his thesis and experience in the MFA program.

Thesis Presentation: Ayumi Kodoma, Furniture Design

Hear about the thesis making and writing experience from recent Furniture Design program graduate Ayumi Kodoma.

Thesis Presentation: Rohit Sen, Industrial Design

Recent Industrial Design graduate Rohit Sen shares his thesis and experience in the MFA program.

Thesis Presentation: Joon June Yoon, Digital + Media

Recent Digital + Media graduate June Joon Yoon shares her thesis and experience in the MFA program.

Requirements

Each graduate department has its own written thesis guidelines. Please consult your graduate program director and thesis chair, and familiarize yourself with departmental guidelines for written thesis criteria and deadlines for proposals, outlines, drafts and final copy.

Past graduate thesis books—which are archived in the RISD Fleet Library and stored in many departmental offices—provide general examples. The Center for Arts & Language offers thesis workshops, individual tutoring and additional support materials.

RISD Grad Show 2023 on view online

In celebrating the collective accomplishments of this year’s graduating class, RISD Grad Show 2023 invites viewers to experience an expansive range of exploratory work by emerging artists and designers. The culmination of extensive research, experimentation, critical thinking and production, the works on view represent each student’s experience in RISD’s dynamic and diverse graduate programs.