oxford university master thesis

Theses and dissertations

Read our guidance for finding and accessing theses and dissertations held by the Bodleian Libraries and other institutions.

Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

• Graduate school
• Information for postgraduate research students
• Submitting your thesis

This section contains essential information and guidance for the preparation and submission of your thesis.

Preparation and Submission of your Thesis

IMPORTANT - When preparing your thesis please ensure that you have taken into account any copyright or sensitive content issues, and dealt with them appropriately. 

COVID-19  Additional academic support – Supporting Students to Submission

Additional academic support is available for postgraduate research students impacted by the pandemic. If your research has been disrupted by COVID-19, it will now be possible to have this taken into account in viva examinations.

Tips on planning your thesis

At an early stage you should:

• Prepare a detailed work plan for your research in consultation with your supervisor.
• Build some flexibility into your plan. It is difficult to give general advice about the allocation of time on theory‑oriented projects, because the nature of these is so variable. In the case of experiment‑based research projects, you should normally allow up to six months to write a DPhil thesis, or three to four months for a corresponding MSc by Research thesis.
• Consider attending available skills training courses, for example  Thesis and Report Writing .

It is not advisable to leave all the writing to the end, for several reasons:

• You will need practice at writing over a period of time in order to develop a good style.
• There will inevitably be hold‑ups in experimental work and it is better to use that time to work on part of your thesis, rather than to waste it. If you do some writing earlier the final completion of your thesis will not seem such a daunting task.
• Approaching your submission date will become more stressful than necessary.

About your thesis

The best way to find out what is required for a successful thesis in your subject area is to look at some written in recent years. You should obviously look particularly closely at theses written by previous members of your own research group, which are available in the University library.

The formal requirements for obtaining your degree are set out in detail in the ‘ Examination Regulations ’. The standard required for success in the DPhil examination is defined as follows: that the student present a significant and substantial piece of research, of a kind which might reasonably be expected of a capable and diligent student after three or at most four years of full‑time study in the case of a full-time student, or eight years in the case of a part-time student. For the MSc by Research the standard required is that the candidate should have made a worthwhile contribution to knowledge or understanding of the relevant field of learning after a minimum of one year or two years of full-time study.

Thesis structure - Integrated Thesis

Students applying for confirmation of status in the following departments; Biology (nee Plant Sciences and Zoology) Chemical Biology, Earth Sciences, Engineering Science, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physical & Theoretical Chemistry and Statistics can now apply to submit their thesis in an alternative format, as an integrated thesis, including  those registered on the following Doctoral Training programmes: Future Propulsion and Power  CDT, Inorganic Chemistry for Future Manufacturing  CDT, Synthesis for Biology and Medicine  CDT, Theory and Modelling in Chemical Sciences CDT, Wind and Marine Energy Systems and Structures  CDT.  MSc by Research students in these departments may also apply to do this, and should submit a request direct to the Director of Graduate Studies.

An integrated thesis may either be a hybrid of conventional chapters and high-quality scientific papers, or be fully paper-based. Regardless of the format, the content of the thesis should reflect the amount, originality and level of work expected for a conventional thesis. It should not be assumed that the act of publication (in whatever form) means the work is of suitable academic quality and content for inclusion in a thesis, and students should discuss all papers in detail with their supervisor before including. It would be anticipated that the candidate would be a lead contributor, rather than a minor author, on at least some of the papers in order to consider this format. There is no minimum, or maximum, number of papers a candidate is expected/allowed to include as part of such a thesis and it will remain a matter for the examiners to conclude whether the contributions are equivalent to that which would be expected of a standard DPhil.

Any papers utilised must concern a common subject, constitute a continuous theme and conform to the following guidelines:

 (i) If a candidate for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy wishes to be examined through an integrated thesis (in the departments listed above), they should apply for permission to be examined in this way when they apply for confirmation of status, as detailed in the relevant departmental handbook. A candidate for the Degree of Master of Science by Research should normally apply to the DGS for permission to be examined in this way six months before submitting their papers for examination. To revert to being examined by a conventional thesis rather than an integrated thesis, the candidate must inform their department of the change as detailed in the relevant departmental handbook.

(ii) Work can be included regardless of its acceptance status for publication but candidates may be questioned on the publication status of their work by the examiners.

(iii) Any submitted/published papers should relate directly to the candidate’s approved field of study, and should have been written whilst holding the status of PRS or a student for the MSc (by Research), or DPhil.

(iv) The collection of papers must include a separate introduction, a full literature review, discussion and a conclusion, so that the integrated thesis can be read as a single, coherent document.

(v) The candidate must ensure all matters of copyright are addressed before a paper’s inclusion. A pre-print version of any published papers should be included as standard.

(vi) Joint/multi-authored papers are common in science based subjects and thus acceptable if the candidate can both defend the paper in full and provide a written statement of authorship, agreed by all authors, that certifies the extent of the candidate’s own contribution. A standard template is available for this purpose.

• Download the Statement of Authorship template as a Word document
• View the Statement of Authorship template as a webpage  

The length and scope of theses, including word limits for each subject area in the Division are set out in Departmental guidelines.

In all departments, if some part of the thesis is not solely your work or has been carried out in collaboration with one or more persons, you should also submit a clear statement of the extent of your contribution.

• Download the guidance for submitting an Integrated Thesis as a Word document
• View the guidance for submitting an Integrated Thesis as a webpage

Thesis page and word limits

Several departments place a word limit or page limit on theses. Details can be found in the  Examination Regulations  or  GSO.20a Notes of Guidance for Research Examinations .

Permission to exceed the page and word limits

Should you need to exceed your word/page limit you must seek approval from the Director of Graduate Studies in your department. You and your supervisor must submit a letter/email requesting approval, giving reasons why it is necessary to exceed the limit. This must be sent to the MPLS Graduate Office ( [email protected] ).

Proof-reading

It is your responsibility to ensure your thesis has been adequately proof-read before it is submitted.  Your supervisor may alert you if they feel further proof-reading is needed, but it is not their job to do the proof-reading for you.  You should proof-read your own work, as this is an essential skill in the academic writing process. However, for longer pieces of work it is considered acceptable for students to seek the help of a third party for proof-reading. Such third parties can be professional proof-readers, fellow students, friends or family members (students should bear in mind the terms of any agreements with an outside body or sponsor governing supply of confidential material or the disclosure of research results described in the thesis).   Proof-reading assistance may also be provided as a reasonable adjustment for disability.    Your thesis may be rejected by the examiners if it has not been adequately proof-read.  

See the University’s Policy on the Use of Third Party Proof-readers . The MPLS Division offers training in proof-reading as part of its Scientific Writing training programmes.

Examiners and Submission Dates

You are strongly advised to apply for the appointment of examiners at least four to six weeks before you submit your thesis.

Appointing examiners for your thesis

Approval of the proposed names of examiners rests with the Director of Graduate Studies. Two examiners are normally appointed. It is usual for one of the examiners to be a senior member of Oxford University (the ‘internal examiner’) and the other to be from another research organisation (the ‘external examiner’). The divisional board will not normally appoint as examiners individuals previously closely associated with the candidate or their work, representatives of any organisation sponsoring the candidate’s research, or former colleagues of a candidate. Your supervisor will make suggestions regarding the names of possible examiners. Before doing so, your supervisor must consult with you, in order to find out if you have any special views on the appointment of particular examiners. Your supervisor is also allowed to consult informally with the potential examiners before making formal suggestions. Such informal consultation is usually desirable, and is intended to determine whether the people concerned are willing in principle to act, and if so, whether they could carry out the examination within a reasonable period of time. (For example, there may be constraints if you have to return to your home country, or take up employment on a specific date).

See information on examiner conflicts of interest , under section 7.3.3 Examiners.

What forms do I need to complete?

You will need to complete the online  GSO.3 form. Supervisors complete the section indicating names of the proposed examiners, and they should provide alternatives in case the preferred examiners decline to act.

Timing for appointment of examiners

You are advised to submit your appointment of examiners form in advance of submitting your thesis to avoid delays with your examination process. Ideally you should apply for the appointment of examiners at least 4-6 weeks before you expect to submit your thesis for examination.

There are currently no University regulations requiring examination to take place within a certain time limit after thesis submission. However, your examiners would normally be expected to hold your viva within 3 months. If you need to have your examination sooner than this, you may apply for an early viva , by completing the 'Application for a time specific examination' section on the appointment of examiners form, this section must be endorsed by your supervisor and DGS in addition to their approval in the main body of the form. The request must be made at the time of completing and submitting the appointment of examiners form, it cannot be done after this.

Please bear in mind that the examination date requested must not be earlier than one calendar month after the date on which the thesis has been received by the Research Degrees Team or after the date on which the examiners have formally agreed to act, whichever is the latest. The actual date of the examination will depend primarily on the availability of both examiners. In the Long Vacation, a longer time is normally required. It is therefore essential that you leave sufficient time for your forms to be formally approved, and for your examiners to be formally invited.  If sufficient time has not be given this could impact on your early examination request .

If, for any reason, examiners wish to hold a viva within four weeks of receiving their copy of the thesis, permission must be sought from the Director of Graduate Studies. The internal examiner will need to give details of the proposed arrangement and the reasons for the request. Under no circumstances will a viva be permitted to take place within 14 days of receipt of the thesis by the examiners.

Special considerations

Your supervisor is permitted to indicate to the Director of Graduate Studies if there are any special factors which should be taken into account in the conduct of your examination. For example, a scientific paper may have been produced by another researcher which affects the content of your thesis, but which was published too late for you to take into account. The Director of Graduate Studies will also need to be told of any special circumstances you may require or need to inform your examiners of which may affect your performance in an oral examination, or if any part of your work must be regarded as confidential. The Director of Graduate Studies will then forward (via the Graduate Office), any appropriate information that they think should be provided to the examiners. The Graduate Office will also seek approval from the Proctors Office if required.

Change of thesis title

If during your studies you want to change the title or subject of your thesis, you must obtain the approval of the Director of Graduate Studies using the online form GSO.6 . If you are requesting the change at the time of submitting your thesis, you may do this on the application for appointment of examiners form. A change of title is quite straightforward; it is common for students to begin with a very general title, and then to replace it with a more specific one shortly before submitting their thesis. Providing your supervisor certifies that the new title lies within the original topic, approval will be automatic. A change of the subject of your research requires more detailed consideration, because there may be doubt as to whether you can complete the new project within the original time‑scale.

If following your examination your examiners recommend that your thesis title be changed, you will need to complete a change of thesis title form to ensure that your record is updated accordingly.

From MT19 y ou must submit your digital examiners’ copy of your thesis online, via the Research Thesis Digital Submission (RTDS) portal, no later than the last day of the vacation immediately following the term in which your application for the appointment of examiners was made.   If you fail to submit by this date your application will be cancelled and you will have to reapply for appointment of examiners when you are ready to submit. Y our thesis should not be submitted until your application for confirmation of status has been approved (this applies to DPhil students only) . For MSc by Research students you should ensure that your transfer of status has been completed .

If you are funded on a research council studentship, you will have a recommended end-date before which your thesis must be submitted. If you do not know this date, please consult your supervisor.

Please note that you must not submit copies of your thesis directly to your examiners as this could result in your examinations being declared void and you could be referred to the University Proctors.

On this page

• COVID-19 MPLS PGR Communications
• Introduction
• Fees and Charges
• Supervision and Termly Reporting
• Your rights, responsibilities and policies
• Progression and Key Milestones
• Extensions and Suspensions
• Lapsing and Reinstatement
• Examination and Graduation
• Student Welfare and Support Services
• Academic Services
• Clubs and Societies
• Student representation: Postgraduates
• UKRI Funded Students

ORA Oxford Thesis Collection

All theses written in fulfilment of a University of Oxford post-graduate research degree are eligible for deposit to ORA, and it has been mandated as part of the requirements surrounding a research degree for students who commenced their study from 1st October 2007 to deposit a complete copy to ORA.

For every thesis deposited, an ORA record page is created, and this content is openly shared via the ORA API, including to specific services such as the British Library's EThOS service. The ORA Oxford Thesis Collection presents the theses available within ORA. For many of these works ORA is the only space in which the content is made available, making it a valuable resource for accessing the research being undertaken by the University of Oxford students and early career researchers.

If you undertook your research degree at Oxford and would like to make your thesis available via ORA, please see the ORA theses LibGuide for further information or contact the ORA team.

Featured Work

• On the processing of vowels in the mammalian auditory system
• Advances in kernel methods: towards general-purpose and scalable models

Wild animal suffering and human responsibility: Essays on the ethics of beneficent intervention in nature

O'Brien, GD

Latest research from across the University

Medical sciences.

• Mechanisms of transcription regulation by full-length CREB
• Selective pressure on the HIF pathway in renal cancer
• A quantitative analysis of the contribution of costimulation to T cell activation by the T cell r...
• Frameworks for generalisation of flexible behaviour: insights from mouse behaviour and neural com...

Search Medical Sciences

Maths, physical & life sciences.

• Engineering the ceramic-polymer interface for advanced ballistic protection
• Stellar populations in the SAMI Galaxy Survey
• Antibody structure prediction using deep learning
• Electromechanical resonators for thermodynamics at the nanoscale

Search MPLS

Social sciences.

• Toxic justice: An ethnography of industrial pollution, environmental advocacy, and suspended dama...
• Narratives of violence and resistance in Waziristan: examining the Mahsud-State engagement in pos...
• An analysis of post conflict economic & private sector performance
• Beyond the binary of the gender game: exploring experiences of genderqueer+ youth in the Czech Re...
• A quantitative study of the relationships between second language (L2) learners’ characteristics ...

Search Social Sciences

• Wild animal suffering and human responsibility: Essays on the ethics of beneficent intervention i...
• Libertas regimine crescit – developing a working theory of improvising in the course of composing...
• Gardners' lives in the long C19th
• Foregrounding the background in Italian Renaissance painting of the fifteenth and early sixteenth...
• Le seuil du language: translation, multilingualism, and multimodality in the work of Julien Green...

Search Humanities

• Bodleian Libraries
• Oxford LibGuides
• Politics and International Relations
• Theses and Dissertations

Politics and International Relations: Theses and Dissertations

• Digital Archives
• News and Analysis

Introduction

Theses and dissertations are documents that present an author's research findings, which are submitted to the University in support of their academic degree. They are very useful to consult when carrying out your own research because they:

• provide a springboard to scope existing literature
• provide inspiration for the finished product
• show you the evolution of an author's ideas over time
• provide relevant and up-to-date research (for recent theses and dissertations)

On this page you will find guidance on how to search for and access theses and dissertations in the Bodleian Libraries and beyond.

Theses and dissertations

• Reading theses and dissertations in the Bodleian Libraries
• Theses and dissertations in the Social Science Library

The Bodleian Libraries collection holds DPhil, MLitt and MPhil theses deposited at the University of Oxford. You can also search for theses and dissertations associated with other universities online, or request them via inter-library loan.

Help with theses and dissertations

To find out more about how to find and access theses and dissertations in the Bodleian Libraries and beyond, we recommend the following:

• Bodleian Libraries theses and dissertations Links to information on accessing the Bodleian Libraries collections of Oxford, UK, US and other international theses.
• Oxford University Research Archive [ORA] guide For searching, depositing and disseminating Oxford University research publications.
• Submitting your thesis to ORA Information on copyright, how to deposit your thesis in ORA and other important matters
• Guide to copyright The Bodleian Libraries' Quick guide to copyright and digital sources.

The Social Science Library holds hard copies of dissertations (usually MPhil and MSc) that departments have sent in according to their own selection criteria.

The library holds dissertations from the following departments: Criminology, Economics, Geography and the Environment, International Development, Politics and International Relations (note that MPhil Politics and International Relations dissertations are held in the Bodleian Library), Socio-Legal Studies and Social Policy and Intervention.

These dissertations are on the shelves opposite the Print and Copy Room, arranged by department, course and year. They are all indexed on SOLO, and they are for consultation in the library only. They cannot be borrowed.

Depositing your thesis

It is mandatory for students completing a research degree at the University of Oxford (registered to a programme of study on or after 1st October 2007) to deposit an electronic copy of their theses with the Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) in order to meet the requirements of their award. To find out more, visit the Oxford University Research Archive guide.

• Oxford University Research Archive guide

Definitions

Terms you may encounter in your research.

Thesis: In the UK, a thesis is normally a document that presents an author's research findings as part of a doctoral or research programme.

Dissertation: In the UK, a dissertation is normally a document that presents an author's research findings as part of an undergraduate or master's programme.

DPhil: An abbreviation for Doctor of Philosophy, which is an advanced research qualification. You may also see it referred to as PhD.

ORA: The Oxford University Research Archive , an institutional repository for the University of Oxford's research output including digital theses.

• << Previous: News and Analysis
• Last Updated: Feb 21, 2024 10:17 AM
• URL: https://libguides.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/politics

Website feedback

Accessibility Statement - https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/accessibility

Google Analytics - Bodleian Libraries use Google Analytics cookies on this web site. Google Analytics anonymously tracks individual visitor behaviour on this web site so that we can see how LibGuides is being used. We only use this information for monitoring and improving our websites and content for the benefit of our users (you). You can opt out of Google Analytics cookies completely (from all websites) by visiting https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

© Bodleian Libraries 2021. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

Search form

• Travel & Maps
• Our Building
• Supporting Mathematics
• Art and Oxford Mathematics
• Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
• Undergraduate Study
• Postgraduate Study
• Current Students
• Research Groups
• Case Studies
• Faculty Books
• Oxford Mathematics Alphabet
• Oxford Online Maths Club
• Oxford Maths Festival 2023
• It All Adds Up
• Problem Solving Matters
• PROMYS Europe
• Oxfordshire Maths Masterclasses
• Maths Week England
• Outreach Information
• Mailing List
• Key Contacts
• People List
• A Global Department
• Research Fellowship Programmes
• Professional Services Teams
• Conference Facilities
• Public Lectures & Events
• Departmental Seminars & Events
• Special Lectures
• Conferences
• Summer Schools
• Past Events
• Alumni Newsletters
• Info for Event Organisers & Attendees

MSc Mathematical & Computational Finance: sample dissertations

Below are some examples of MSc dissertations from previous years, which received high marks:

• Optimal Strategies from forward versus classical utilities
• Robust Pricing of Derivatives on Realised Variance
• Log Mean-Variance Portfolio Theory and Time Inconsistency
• Multilayer network valuation under bail-in
• Topological Persistence in Market Micro Structure
• Volatility is Rough
• Deep learning approach to hedging (2019 prize for best Master’s Thesis in Quantitative Finance by Natixis Foundation for Research & Innovation.)
• Risk Management with Generative Adversarial Networks.pdf  (Won award for best Masters Thesis in Quantitative Finance in Europe in 2020)
• Hawkes Process-Driven Models for Limit Order Book Dynamics.pdf   (Won award for best Masters Thesis in Quantitative Finance in Europe in 2021)
• Evaluating Credit Portfolios under IFRS 9 in the UK Economy

• Contact & FAQ

The Research Thesis Digital Submission Quick Reference Guide for Examiners explains how to examine a digital copy of a student’s thesis and additional materials using RTDS

Contact & Help

In case of any problems or inquiries contact:

Submissions and Research Degrees Team Examination Schools 75-81 High Street Oxford OX1 4BG UAS Research Degrees Office: [email protected] Research examinations information page Tel: 01865 286384 / 286382 08:30-17:00, Monday to Friday

Frequently Asked Questions

I can’t open the files. What should I do?

First please ensure you have the programs or apps capable of opening Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files and ZIP files, if you are unsure about this please talk to your IT Support team. If it appears that the files are corrupt then please contact the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page) who can arrange for the files to be uploaded again.

I can’t download the files using the provided link. What should I do?

a.  Ensure that the files haven’t already been downloaded to the location of the Downloads specified by your browser.

b.  Contact your local IT Support.

c.  If still unable to download then contact the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page).

I haven’t received an email for the thesis I am examining. What should I do?

Please contact the Research Degrees Team. It is most likely that either the student has not yet submitted or that your fellow examiner has not yet accepted the formal invitation.

I have lost the email containing the thesis file links. What should I do?

Contact the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page) who will be able to send you a new link.

I have changed my email address. Who do I need to contact?

Contact the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page) with your new details.

What happens if the title of a thesis has been changed, but the original title is showing on the upload screen?

This could be because either the candidate hasn’t informed their GSA and Submissions and Research Degrees Team of the new title or there is a delay in processing the title change.

What happens if I realise that the student has not submitted an accompanying document which is referred to in the main thesis document?

You should contact the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page), who will arrange for the files to be made available.

Is it safe to download files using the provided links?

Yes, the files have been checked for viruses and are safe to download.

I received an email not meant for me. What should I do?

Forward the email to the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page) stating why you shouldn’t have received the email.

What are the additional files for?

The additional files are any document(s) that are part of the thesis but either too large to be included with it or of a different media type to the main body of the thesis. This could include sound recordings, photographs, programming, video, etc.

What happens if an examiner has downloaded the thesis, which the student has now realised is the ‘wrong’ file?

The student will need to contact the Research Degrees Team in the first instance.

How do I zip or/and unzip files and what can I include in my ZIP files?

You need to use a program or app to create or open a ZIP file, if unsure please talk to your local IT support team.

I have reached the maximum number of downloads. What should I do?

Please contact the Submissions and Research Degrees Team (contact details on the left-hand side of this web page). They will be able to reset the number of downloads permitted.

The student has sent me their thesis copy by email. Why do I need this version?

The RTDS version is the offical submission. Please do not accept any other version from the student. This could lead to the examination being deemed void.

Oxford Echoes   adventures of a physician-engineer

• About / Contact
• Presentations

Oxford Thesis Template   138 comments

LaTeX and similar tools follow a “what you see is what you mean” model, unlike Microsoft Word, which is “what you see is what you get”. When you’re starting a new section in a LaTeX document, you don’t click bold and increase the font size. Instead, you type \section , and the engine automatically assigns a section number and format, updates the table of contents, and even adds within-document links. This all sounds complicated, but if you’ve written HTML, you know the idea. (Word power-users will reply that Word has similar tricks up its sleeve. This is true, but LaTeX explicitly separates text from layout, preventing a lot of the “gremlins” that creep into Word documents.)

Of course, this paradigm creates a significant disconnect between the text you type and the beautiful PDF document that results. This is where a good template comes in. It defines everything from how the title page is laid out to what the page header looks like in the bibliography. For a LaTeX user (and anyone writing a document as long as a thesis should be), a good template is everything. I was lucky enough to find a template that Sam Evans adapted for social sciences use based on the original maths template by Keith Gillow . I wound up making my own modifications, and re-packaged the template for posterity.

Download the Oxford thesis template here .

If you prefer, you can also view on GitHub .

Some of the features of this template are:

Fantastic chapter pages. The template retains Sam Evans’s use of the quotchap and minitoc packages to (optionally) include an epigraph and brief table of contents at the beginning of each chapter. I found this a great way to inject a bit of personality into the thesis (via the epigraph) and ensure that my reader wasn’t getting lost (table of contents). My modifications cleaned up some of the spacing, ensuring single-spaced tables and slightly more compact chapter headings.

Table of Contents refinements. Careful attention was paid to spacing and page headings in the table of contents as well as other heading sections. This can get tricky in documents using lots of packages. This template also inserts an “Appendices” page (and ToC entry) between chapters and appendices.

Table of abbreviations. Many science and engineering theses use lots of abbreviations. Humanities and social sciences theses often need glossaries. While there are some dedicated LaTeX classes that meet these needs in complex cases, I decided to create a simple list environment to handle the routine cases.

Highlighted corrections. Most Oxford theses go through a round of corrections, as time-honored a tradition as the viva itself. Minor corrections generally just involve sending a PDF of your revised thesis to your internal examiner. (Major corrections often require a more exacting process.) This class allows you to designate text (or figures, etc) as a correction. You can then toggle between generating a document in which these corrections are highlighted in blue (ideal for sending to your examiner for a quick read-through) and just printing them without any adornment (for generating your final copy).

Page layout, draft, and spacing options. In a few keystrokes, you can switch between a double-spaced, single-sided, binding-margin document (ideal for submission), a 1.5-spaced, double-sided document (for your parents’ copy), or a version with equal left and right margins (for submitting as a PDF). An optional draft notice (with date) can be included in the footer — just remember to turn it off before submitting!

Master’s thesis title page. Some masters’ degrees require title pages with a candidate number and word count rather than a name and college, to ensure anonymity for the examinees. They also require a statement of authenticity / originality on the title page. This template has a quick option to switch to this master’s submission format. And, just as importantly, it can be turned off when you want to print a version for yourself.

Posted 12 Jul 2015 by John McManigle in Technical

138 responses to Oxford Thesis Template

Subscribe to comments with RSS .

Thanks very much to you and Sam Evans for developing this! I’m hoping to use it (or a slightly modified version) for my MSc thesis this year.

Fantastic! I wonder if it would be worth putting this on GitHub or similar, so that as people make/suggest modifications, others can make use of it… Out of curiosity, what did you decide to modify?

Did this ever go on github or no?

After much delay, it has been uploaded to GitHub at mcmanigle/OxThesis .

Thanks very much for this. it’s amazing. I am trying to change the titles of the chapters though to align left rather than right..how do I do that? I have been trying all day!

Hi Anne, So unfortunately left-aligning chapter titles isn’t an option that the quotchap package (which my class uses to format chapter titles) contains by default. Which doesn’t mean what you’re asking for is impossible, just that it’s a little clumsy.

Probably the easiest way is to insert the following block of code in Oxford_Thesis.tex just above the line that says %%%%% THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie on line 97).

This should redefine the chapter-heading command to move both the grey number and the chapter title to the left side of the page. Hope it helps!

Thanks very much for this. With a bit of a clumsier tweak from me the script did exactly what I wanted as I also needed the “Chapter” word before the number.

Pingback: Structure your thesis – thesismathblog

It is the most beautiful template which I have referred. But I would like to use “Chapter 1” instead of only number. HOW can I do, please? I am the beginner in Latex

Hi Le, Probably the easiest way is to insert the following block of code in Oxford_Thesis.tex just above the line that says %%%%% THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie on line 97).

Hi John, great code! I’m having difficulty changing the position of the page numbers. I would like for the number to always be at the bottom centre of the page… Thanks in advance!

Hi Sandra, So sorry for the delay in responding! Add the following lines to Oxford_Thesis.tex just before THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie line 97):

Hi John, thanks a lot! Well, the only problem for me is that my computer doesn’t seem to be able to find the figures/beltcrest.pdf file, so it’s always an empty square where the logo is supposed to be inserted..

Interesting… Is the figures/beltcrest.pdf file in the directory with the rest of your thesis? If you just download the thesis file, unzip it, and compile it, does the logo appear? I’m afraid this is one of those problems that’s probably specific to how the files are laid out on your computer, so you might be better off bribing a technically-minded friend to figure it out. I can’t debug it well without being at your computer…

Hi John, thank you for sharing this brilliant template, I’ll be using it for my MSc dissertation. I have removed the quote and want the Section header i.e ‘Chapter 1’ to start where the quote started instead of mid page, can you assist ?

Hi William, Apologies for the late reply! There are no doubt more “correct” answers to this question in terms of modifying the chapter headings entirely, but the simplest answer to your question is to insert the following line:

into Oxford_Thesis.tex just above the line that reads THE ACTUAL DOCUMENT STARTS HERE (ie on line 97 in the template version). You can adjust the “-80pt” to your heart’s content. For your reference, setting it to (+) 40pt will match how the template already is. Setting it to 0 will leave a generous top margin that you might find looks appropriate even without a quote. But do play with it!

Hello John, thanks for the template. How do I add my bibtex database i.e the reference list to my document?

I’m afraid there are so many different ways to configure BibTeX and other reference managers for LaTeX that I’m not able to provide help on any in particular. It also tends to involve pretty individual help depending on your setup. This template should work with whatever your preferred LaTeX referencing setup is, so I suggest getting in-person help from someone at your uni who has done it before.

I was wondering how I could decrease the upper margin of the title page so that there is more space for additional subtitles below. Thank you for the amazing template!

Apologies for the late reply! Assuming you are writing a DPhil thesis, add a line to ociamthesis.cls after line 217 ( \begin{center} ) that adds a negative vertical space. Try: \vspace*{-3cm} . That section of the file would then look like:

If you are writing a master’s thesis, you should instead change line 201 ( \vspace*{-3ex} ) to have a larger space. Try -3cm .

Thank you; and how do I then add a subtitle in a smaller font?

There are “better” ways to do this in order to actually modify the template to expect a subtitle, but for quick results you can modify the line where the title goes (line 76 in Oxford_Thesis.tex) to instead be two lines:

Hi, thanks so much for publishing this!

I can’t figure some things out, though: 1. I was wondering is there a way for the examples not to start from 1 with the beginning of every chapter? This seems to be happening because of the chapters being in their separate .tex files. 2. There seems to be something weird happening with some of the formatting when I have a figure, a table or a big example. The text gets spread out. The LaTeX community online suggests adding \raggedbottom to the preamble but it does not seem to work. Any suggestions?

1. I didn’t use Examples myself; can you show me what your command is to start an example? That will help me answer this question.

2. Yes, raggedbottom will fix this, at the expense of not having the bottoms of your pages line up neatly. Instead of adding it to the preamble, change line 193 of Oxford_Thesis.tex (just before chapters are included) from \flushbottom to \raggedbottom .

Dear John, thanks so much for your answer.

It’s a linguistics thesis so I’m using \ex. and \exg.

Hi, thanks for the template. I am using the original maths template.

Can you please help me to figure out to add a Glossary and a List of Publications in the preamble before ending the Roman pages?

Thanks, Rahman

Hi Rahman, I’m afraid that providing individual help for someone working with a different template is something the hospital keeps me too busy to do. I would suggest that looking at the relevant code in my template (specifically the text/abbreviations.tex file and lines 354 to 368 of ociamthesis.cls ), which will hopefully set you on the right track!

Hello there, Just wanted to know what the font style was called for your thesis?

The template uses the Computer Modern font , which is the default in LaTeX and is widely used in technical publishing (partially for this reason).

GRACIAS TIBI VALDE

Thank you for the great template. I guess the font size that is used is 12. How can I change it? I tried to pass the parameter to \documentclass as follows: \documentclass[a4paper,twoside,12pt]{ociamthesis} but it does not seem to be working.

Hi Salah, You’ll need to change that on line 13 of ociamthesis.cls

Hope it helps!

I am a bit confused as google returned to me another file with the same name first. https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/members/it/faqs/latex/thesis-class

Why is the same material distributed at different places, with different versions and a clear copyright and license note? As there is no copyright and license, people in most jurisdictions are not allowed to make any changes to ociamthesis.cls.

Hi Johannes,

You are of course absolutely right; without a clear license it is very difficult to confidently make and distribute changes. I have had personal communication with Keith Gillow (author of the original maths template) who said “From my perspective you are very welcome to use and adjust this as the others have done before you, and also feel free to put it on github etc.” and Sam Evans (who modified it for social sciences use) who said “I’m also totally fine for this code to be as open as possible and live freely on the net.”

With that permission, Diego Vitali has adapted the same to suit the Roehampton University standard, which he published under a GNU license. Danny Price has developed a LyX version which is on Github with a statement stating “use responsibly” without specifying a license.

Given Keith Gillow and Sam Evans’ statements, I feel comfortable releasing this under an MIT license, and will update the files accordingly. Will also take this opportunity to upload to Github so that people can suggest updates and pull requests more easily.

Running BibTex, i consistently get an error: “I found no \bibstyle command—while reading Oxford_Thesis.aux”

Any advice?

There are a couple of different processing programs that “do” bibliographies in LaTeX. Some of the more popular are with bibtex and biber. Some of the differences are described here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/25701/bibtex-vs-biber-and-biblatex-vs-natbib

This template is currently designed to use biber, since it is growing in popularity and is easier to make custom changes to without learning a whole new language. Most LaTeX packages should have an option to run biber, but more technical advice can be found here: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/26516/how-to-use-biber

Of course, if you prefer natbib (the older / more traditional way of doing things) feel free to modify the template as necessary, particularly around lines 47-57.

Hello, I have an issue, I am not able to find how to display the bibliography in this oxford template, how can I display it? Besides, I have citation but it is just like “nih_ct_2017” how can I add the [].

Hi John! Thank you very much for opening up this template for others but I seem to have an error from it when trying to compile the bibtex as it is from the download, that says

– no \citation commands – no \bibdata commands – no \bibstyle commands

These usually come up if end \end{document} was too early, but I can see that is not the case. I just wondered if this problem had come up for anyone else and whether you might know what has gone wrong / what I am doing wrong? I am running it from texmaker.

Further to my last message, I discovered that it’s a problem with the preset compile commands I was using in TexMaker. Thanks!

Hi John, I’m having the same issue. What did you change?

Hi, this is a great template! My only question is how do I adjust the font to Times New Roman and the line spacing of all text to 1.5x line spacing? Also, is there a way to include the Supervisor Name on the Title Page?

Thank you in advance,

I have stumbled across this having already written my masters dissertation. I would like to make my title page the same as the one in yours, but I have not managed to figure out how to do so. Any help would be appreciated! :)

Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this template with the wider community. I’ve used a modified version of yours and I’ll be submitting my thesis next week.

I hope this message isn’t considered as spam.

Really! Thanks a lot! Much appreciated. Keep up the good work.

Cheers, Deyan

Hi John, thank you so much for this brilliant template which is making my PhD life much easier! I’m stuck with trying to compile individual chapters (e.g. for submitting a chapter to a supervisor etc). I’m trying \includeonly{chaptername} after the documentclass but for some reason that is giving me only the bibliography! I’ve also tried commenting out the \include commands for individual chapters but that would typeset, e.g., chapter 5 as chapter 1. Can you assist?

Hi John, I managed to solve the problem in my last post – please ignore! I was wondering, however, how one could add in a `part’ structure above the chapter structure (i.e. Part 1 / chapter 1, 2, 3, Part 2 / chapter 4 5 6 or similar) – assistance would be greatly appreciated!

Hi, Thank you so much for this template. May I ask how to change the option of double space and 1.5 space please? Thanks

Hi John, Many thanks for this! I’m having trouble with the Bibtex as John Ylang had written previously. However, I’ve checked my preset compilers and all seems to be correct, yet I’m still getting error messages with bibtex: – no \citation commands – no \bibdata commands – no \bibstyle commands

Many, many thanks for this template, it is so helpful. I am submitting my thesis in the form of journal articles for the different chapters. I was wondering if you could advise how I can create a small reference list per chapter (including only those references cited in that chapter)? Is it possible to also change the sub-section numbering within different chapters?

Thank you so very much, Isabel

Hi John, is the template still working? I installed TexWorks today and most of the template works apart from the bibliography/references – this is when trying to compile leaving everything unchanged from when it was unzipped.

The log shows: I found no \citation commands—while reading file Oxford_Thesis.aux I found no \bibdata command—while reading file Oxford_Thesis.aux I found no \bibstyle command—while reading file Oxford_Thesis.aux

…and all the citations are undefined. Not sure what’s going on here.

Update: I fixed the referencing problem using the following. You need to select Biber instead of Bibtex. From stackexchange:

“I’m a TeXstudio user and whenever I receive this error message, it’s because I’ve changed the default bibliography tool from biber to bibtex.

To change it back, I have to do Options > Configure TeXstudio > Build > Default Bibliography Tool and the process works again.

Even if this answer never helps anyone else ever, it’ll at least be good for me to have this here as a aide memoire next times this happens!”

Thanks so much for making this available, I really like it! I’m new to latex and am trying to work out the best way of adding a list of equations. This seems like the kind of thing people would do all the time but I can’t seem to get anything to work. Any suggestions?

Cheers, Suzanne

Thank you for the template, great job! However, as many complained about it, the refences page is missing. Is there anyone who can display the references page? I have experience with Latex, I worked on it a lot but still no results.

Hi and thank you very much for this template.

I wonder how I could fit in a subheading below the title on the front page, in a slightly smaller fonts size?

The template is great, but I can’t seem to change the font size to 14, where do I control this?

On line 19 of ociamthesis.cls, change “12pt” to “14pt”.

Thanks for this amazing template!

However what can I do to remove the empty page that occurs before each new chapter?

Masters are page count constrained so everyone counts!

I believe the “empty page that occurs before each new chapter” is added automatically to make sure each new chapter starts on the right-hand page in double-sided page layouts. So it will only be added if the new chapter would otherwise start on a left-facing page. In Oxford_Thesis.tex, look at lines 25-30. Specifically, you should probably add a percent sign at the beginning of line 26 and remove the one at the beginning of line 28 to change to one-sided binding, like so:

If you do want two-sided binding, but with chapters allowed to start on either side, change line 26 to:

Again, thank you for your continued help.

I am mostly using \parencite and \textcite for my citations. I am wondering when using multiple citations within the same parentheses, can I tell latex to order them? I would want them to be ordered, starting with the oldest publication.

Thank you, JOD

Hi, sorting of citations, and especially sorting them differently in the bibliography vs the in-text citations, is a big rabbit hole that you can dive down here if your resolve is firm.

Probably / hopefully the easiest solution (if you are using biblatex/biber for your bibliography, which is currently the default in the template) is:

• look at whichever of line 55 or 59 in Oxford_Thesis.tex, beginning with \usepackage[style= , that does not have a % starting it
• find the list of arguments between square brackets
• you’ll notice either sorting=none or sorting=nyt or some other option controls how the bibliography is sorted. (‘nyt’ means first by author Name, then by Year, then by Title. ‘none’ means in order of appearance in your text.)
• add the option (with a comma between options) sortcites=false . This will continue sorting the bibliography as described above, but will order the in-text multiple citation groups in whatever order you type them in the latex file.

The advantage of this solution is that it’s simple enough to type out here. The disadvantage is that it doesn’t really sort your in-text citations by year, it just doesn’t sort them, so whatever order you type is what you get.

first of all thanks a lot for this amazing template. I’m using it currently for my master thesis in physics.

I have tinkered around and modified some things to my needs, but I am struggeling with one modification: I want a “List of Symbols” in my thesis. You already provided a list of abbrevations with two rows. For my List of Symbols I want an additional row, i.e. Symbol, Description, Unit. It should look like this:

h . . . . . Hight of tower [m]

Is there a way to modify the existing mclistof environment to achieve that, i.e. just add a row to the right?

Best regards, Tom

I make no promises, but try adding to ociamthesis.cls (I suggest around line 375, after the mclistof environment):

Then, you should be able to make the kind of list you’re asking for with a block like this in one of your text files:

Let me know how it goes!

Thanks a lot for your quick response. The proposed code works just as I wanted it to work. Thanks a lot for your help.

I am currently trying to cut words in my thesis; is it possible to change the references to

example: (Weber, 2010:5) ?

That would save me two words for each citation.

Thank you and best regards.

Also, currently my compiler (Overleaf) recognises this

urldate = {2019-05-01}

as citing it as (visited on 05/01/2019), while I want it to be

(visited on 01/05/2019)

Can I change that?

Yes, that is possible, but I don’t have any special knowledge on it. Assuming you are using biblatex (the default bibliography formatter used in the template), there are examples of many pre-defined styles here .

Basic ideas about customizing styles in more detail (which can get pretty complicated) are here , with one example here . If you decide to go this route, this cheatsheet might help.

Good luck! John

Hello, Thanks so much for the amazing template. I’m currently struggling with recurrent Overfull \hbox errors in my section and subsection headers. If I insert a hypen or line break then this looks odd in my mini-toc. Is there a away to get round this? Perhaps by reducing the size of the section and subsection font?

Many thanks! Cat

So I can get an idea of what kind of errors you’re seeing, would you give an example or two of section or subsection headers you are using? (I’m trying to figure out if they are just long phrases, or very long single words, or what?)

Hi John, thank you so much for the template! Just prepping for hard copy bod submission and wondering how to remove page numbers from the blank pages between chapters? Thanks in advance!

The blank pages between chapters are there to make sure that chapters open on right-hand facing pages when printing a two-sided thesis. If you want to remove them entirely, you can change “openright” on line 19 of ociamthesis.cls to “openany” (best if you are doing two-sided printing but want to be able to start a chapter on either side of the book), or switch to one of the one-sided binding options around line 25-30 of Oxford_Thesis.tex.

If you want the blank pages to be there, but want them to be truly blank, insert the following code to Oxford_Thesis.tex. I suggest adding it right after \begin{document} (around line 106):

For more details, look here and here .

Brilliant, that’s worked, thank you John! Really appreciate your help :-)

Hi John – thank you for the template! I have an issue with some very long captions which run off the bottom boundary of the page. I would like to split them onto the next page (ideally on the page facing the figure, but overleaf would be fine too). I have tried putting the caption in a separate float but this doesn’t always appear immediately after the figure and it disrupts the figure numbering. Any suggestions would be great – thanks in advance!

There are a few different types of solution to this problem; I assume you’ve done a bit of googling already. The two I would suggest trying are:

Option 1, adapted from here , is to forego the float environment entirely and just do everything inline. The caption package (which Oxford_Thesis already includes) provides the \captionof command to facilitate this. The disadvantage is that without a float environment, you’ll have to put the figure exactly where you want it in text, so if you change the text around the figure, or change page layout or line spacing, you may have to move the picture manually to put it in the correct place on the page. Code to insert a figure would look like this:

Option 2, adapted from here , is to split the image/caption across two floats like you’ve been trying to do. I think that by using the [h] , [t] , and/or [b] options to the float environment judiciously you would be able to get good luck at where things appear. Try this to place your image:

If you want to be super fancy, you can throw this into Oxford_Thesis.tex , ideally just before \begin{document} :

Hi John – this is great. Thank you very much! Option 2 worked for me with some careful placement parameters. I really appreciate it :)

Is there any experience using the glossaries or acronym package together with this template?

Adding to oriamthesis.cls:

\usepackage[acronym,]{glossaries}

and to Oxford_Thesis.tex:

\makeglossaries \loadglsentries{text/frontmatter/glossary}

, then implementing glossary items in the chapters seems to break the PDFLateX compilation process. It gives a ” File ended while scanning use of \field.” error.

I don’t personally have any experience using these packages, but usually that error means that either you are missing a closing brace } somewhere, or that you have a percent sign % in your text, possibly hiding in a bibliography file. Remember that in LaTeX, a percent sign begins a comment, so if you have a line like:

\newglossaryentry{spec}{name={specificity},description={a measure of false positive rate, expressed in %}}

The % sign will prevent LaTeX from seeing the closing braces (as they will be a comment). You need to “escape” the percent sign by using \% instead.

Hi again, John.

I am trying to remove hyphenation from my section and sub-section titles. Nearly all the titles longer than one line are hyphenated, often very awkwardly.

I tried adding \usepackage[raggedright]{titlesec} to the preamble. This works but it breaks the chapter pages: instead of the nice grey number, it outputs eg., “Chapter 1”. I guess this is something to do with quotchap.

Is there a way to make section and subsection left flush (or at least change the tolerance) without affecting the chapter pages?

Thanks very much!

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but after trying for a few minutes, I can’t figure out a chapter title that will made my version hyphenate. Would you tell me an example chapter title and page size so I can start testing? I think there should be a reasonably straightforward solution.

Thanks very much indeed. I haven’t changed any of the page size or font settings from your template.

For example, \sec{Homeobox genes and miRNAs: key regulators in MLLr leukemia} %hyphenates ‘regula- tors’

\subsec{MLL-rearranged leukemia is associated with poor treatment outcomes} %hyphenates ‘treat- ment’

Thanks; sorry I misread your original post and thought it was chapter titles, rather than section titles, that were being hyphenated.

You’re right both in that \usepackage[raggedright]{titlesec} fixes the problem, and breaks the quotchap package. The easiest solution is to add this not in the preamble, but to ociamthesis.cls at line 403 (immediately before \usepackage[grey,utopia]{quotchap} ). That way quotchap will override titlesec for chapters only.

It seems to work for me in brief testing; let me know if you encounter any issues!

Fantastic – thanks, John. This seems to work perfectly!

For some reason, my minitoc is double-spaced, and I’m not quite sure why this is happening. I tried forcing it with single-spacing which seems okay. But in either case the minitoc spans across two pages when really it seems in your version the chapter title page is quite compact with even text beginning directly after. Any help would be so greatly appreciated.

Interesting. The version of this template that I modified had the minitoc double spaced, and one of my changes was to single space it. My biggest suggestion is that maybe your first paragraph just after the minitoc is a length that the system thinks would look bad without that extra spacing.

LaTeX does this weird thing where it judges the “badness” of different layouts — leaving one line of a paragraph dangling on a page, vs increasing line spacing in other places, vs overflowing a line beyond the margin, etc. If your (single spaced) minitoc would end in a place where the next paragraph would fall in a very odd place (ie with only one line on the page, or one line dangling off the next), LaTeX might have decided that it “knows best” and to fix the “issue” instead increased spacing on your minitoc.

One way to test this is to add \raggedbottom before that chapter, and see if that changes anything. Another way would be to compile the thesis with the example text that came with the template and see if that is single or double spaced.

If all of this doesn’t seem like the problem, feel free to email me your thesis and I’ll take a look.

Hi John, thanks very much for your input. I am very sorry, but it doesn’t seem to work. I toyed around with the following in the cls file

\renewcommand{\chapterheadstartvskip}{\vspace*{-30pt}} \renewcommand{\chapterheadendvskip}{\vspace{30pt}}

which seems to pull the chapter title pages up, so that the text starts immediately after the minitoc (which I ended up having to force into single with \setstretch) but what I didn’t realize was that changing this messed with the toc, list of figures, and list of tables. Basically all of these start way at the top of the page (including one of the chapters).

I think the easiest thing might be to make a copy of your whole thesis directory, remove all but one chapter and all figures, compile it to make sure it still has the problem, and then and email the directory to me ([email protected]) as a zip file. I’m happy to take a look. Unfortunately trying to debug something like this that depends on changes to multiple files is too hard to do on this kind of forum.

Hopefully a quick question for you here – I’m trying to change the section level numbering in the minitocs to reflect what it is in the main toc. The maintoc section level is set in the main text fairly straightforwardly but i’m finding it hard to figure out what to amend to make the minitoc depth match it? Main TOC successfully shows numbers to subsubsection but minitoc stops at subsection. Thanks very much in advance!

Try \mtcsetdepth{minitoc}{3} in Oxford_Thesis.tex just before \begin{document} (around line 104). Let me know if it doesn’t work. For excruciating detail on minitocs, see here .

This worked a treat! Thanks so much John :)

Is there any way the font can be changed with the current TeX?

Thank you so much for this, been a massive help!

This is surprisingly a more complicated question than it should be. For a first try, add to Oxford_Thesis.tex just before \begin{document} (around line 104) the command \renewcommand{\rmdefault}{phv} where “phv” is replaced by the code for the font you want. A list of codes is here , but a short list is: ptm for Times, ppl for Palatino, pbk for Bookman, phv for Helvetica, pcr for Courier.

If that doesn’t work for whatever font you’d like, my next step would be to add, just before that line, a \usepackage{helvet} to make sure the font is loaded. The list of font packages (in the same order as above) is mathptmx, palatino, bookman, helvet, courier.

Hope this helps!

Thank you for the excellent template. I could not figure out how to change the colour of the chapter number headings to black instead of grey, and how to make chapter title to bold. Hope to hear from you soon. Thanks in advance.

Replace line 404 (the one that mentions quotchap) of ociamthesis.cls with these two lines:

You will get a few errors on compiling about “Undefined color ‘chaptergrey'” but that is expected and it should still compile fine.

Thanks John. This seems to work. But instead of using nogrey I redefined chaptergrey with a new color with a new command.

Hi John, To create a glossary the template uses \item to produce a list. Most of my terms are very long. It is possible to make the item automatically set a new line in their own space for glossary in the mclistof environment?

My little glossary area was designed to be a relatively quick-and-easy template for my minimal glossary. For a more “full-featured” glossary, look into the official glossary package in LaTeX. I’ll also take a look at how to modify my template to do what you’re asking, but it might take me a couple of days. What exactly do you mean by “make the item automatically set a new line in their own space”? Have the term on one line and the definition below?

I looked at most of the glossary style, there are mainly two ways to do for the long terms. First, the terms are combined with the definition lines but separated with a spacing ( https://www.dickimaw-books.com/gallery/index.php?label=long-descriptions ). The other one is like you said, term on one line and definition below. I am happy with either one. But I think I prefer the first one with an adjustment which is when a term longer than a certain length the definition start a new line below.

Hi John, my thesis involves Chinese and I was thus hoping to use XeLaTeX to compile it; however, this breaks the savequotes (perhaps due to ‘incorrectly’ nested braces and begin/ends in the definition). Do you know how I might be able to resolve this issue?

Hi Al, I’m not sure exactly what is causing this issue, but I’ve verified that if you delete lines 384 – 394 (the part renewing the savequote environment) in ociamthesis.cls, it will compile under XeLaTeX. My only modifications (if I remember correctly) to the original quotchap package was to make the spacing for multi-line quotes a little more pleasant, so you might find you don’t notice a difference. If you decide to make further modifications yourself, it might help to refer to the source code for quotchap .

Hi John, it is possible to put the footnote at the bottom of the page? I want to put a footnote for the chapter heading. I tried to used direct \footnote{} but a lot of errors appeared. Do you have any idea?

For vaguely annoying reasons having to do with the internal ways LaTeX moves text around to the Table of Contents, if you are putting a \footnote{} inside a chapter or section title, you need to “protect” it with \protect . So your line would look like:

Notice that, in addition to the \protect\footnote{} and the \label{} tags, there is also an optional argument [Introduction] at the beginning of the chapter definition. This is the title as it will appear in the Table of Contents. You can leave that part out if you want, but then the footnote mark will appear in the ToC.

Hi John, thanks for your help earlier with XeLaTeX. Do you know how I might be able to use bold face small caps in my document? Thanks!

Hi John, I will remove the red boxes (lines around the links) on the tableofcontents. I tried use the ‚hyperref‘, but I am wounder why there is no effect? How can I adjust the look and feel of the links behavior?

Hi Hermann, I apologize for the late reply! You will have to add your hyperref options to the oicamthesis.cls file on line 173. Any changes you make there should carry over to your complied thesis. Let me know if you need any help!

Hi John, Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful template! I just wanted to check one thing with you. For some reason my chapter titles have changed font from the Computer Modern font they were before. Is a way to bring them back to match the rest of the text. Many thanks, Claire

Hi Claire, Glad it’s working for you! In order to answer your question, I would have to know exactly how you set your font to something different in the first place. A good thing to try first is to add the following lines to your Oxford_Thesis.tex file, just before \begin{document} , e.g. at line 102:

Replace \bfseries with whatever font command you are using; it will be used in the chapter titles.

Hi John, Thank you so much! This has fixed it and brought it back to the default (which I think is computer modern). Sadly I have no idea how I managed to change it from the default in the first place. Very much still learning with regards to Latex but your template has made it so much easier. Really appreciate you sharing it and for your help on this issue. All the best, Claire

Thank you for producing such a brilliant template. I was wondering whether it’s possible to change the font size of just the bibliography, i.e., have chapters in 12pt and bibliography in 10pt? This would help with my page limit massively, while still being within the rules

Glad the template is helping! Believe it or not, the bibliography font size is already a little smaller in the default template. But you can fiddle with it more. Look at Oxford_Thesis.tex line 63:

You can replace \small with any of the standard LaTeX font size commands, which from largest to smallest are: \Huge, \huge, \LARGE, \Large, \large, \normalsize (same as thesis text), \small, \footnotesize, \scriptsize, and \tiny. You could theoretically do something fancier (like the last thing described here ) to get an exact font size if you needed it, but you can probably get satisfactory results sticking with those pre-made options.

Thanks a lot, the template has been extremely useful! All the best, Benoit

Thanks for the great template! I would like to remove the big chapter numbering, but unfortunately I cannot find the code for it. Can you help me?

Hi Virginia,

The same package, quotchap , does both the big chapter numbering and the quotes (epigraphs) at the beginning of each chapter. To turn this package off, open ociamthesis.cls and comment out (by putting a percent sign % at the beginning of each line): 1. Line 375 – which loads the quotchap package, 2. Lines 385-394 – which clean up chapter epigraph formatting, and 3. Lines 442-443 – which adjusts chapter heading spacing.

After that, you’ll just have to go through all of your chapter files, and the bibliography area of the main Oxford_Thesis.tex , and remove all savequote blocks. This will return you to the default LaTeX chapter headers. If you miss any of the above, don’t worry: you’ll get compile errors that point you at which line(s) you missed.

This template is one of the most incredible things out there. Thanks for sharing it with the world! I’m using it for my dissertation with a few alterations here and there.

Question: in the list of abbreviations with

“\begin{mclistof}{List of Acronyms}{3.2cm}”

is there a way to turn off the dot leaders between the abbreviation and word? My graduate school says they want them removed (tbh I think they’re great though).

thanks for any help,

– [also] John

Oh wait! I realized I just need to comment out

\mkern\@dotsep mu$}\hfill}

in the ociamthesis.cls

thanks still all the same. The template our university provides isn’t nearly as nice as yours.

Glad the template was helpful and that you figured out the abbreviation list kerning. Best of luck finishing up!

hello John,

Thank you for your template.

Can we insert figures with eps not only png?

If you want to insert EPS figures, add the line: \usepackage{epstopdf}

You can add it to Oxford_Thesis.tex anywhere before the \begin{document} , which is line 104. (The easiest would be to add it directly before that line.)

When you include images, do not include the .eps extension in the tex file; just use something like: \includegraphics{path/to/file_name_without_extension}

For a little more information, see this StackExchange question .

Pingback: Change the color of the chapter number (Oxford Thesis Template) ~ TeX - LaTeX ~ InsideDarkWeb.com

Hello John,

Thank you vert much for the great template. I’m wondering how I can reduce the spacing at the beginning of every chapter (so that the chapter title moves closer to the top of the page)?

Try changing the “40pt” at the end of line 442 of ociamthesis.cls, which reads in full:

Dear John, Many thanks for this template, it is very helpful! I have three unrelated chapters, at the end of which I would like to add separate references. At the moment I can only add references at the very end of the document. Do you know how to specify to add bibliography per chapter? Best wishes, Sam

Try adding refsection=chapter to line 55 of Oxford_Thesis.tex , which loads the biblatex package. The line should now look like:

You would then need to use \printbibliography at the end of each chapter file. There is a lot more you can customize about how exactly this behaves, which is explained in gritty detail in the biblatex documentation .

Hello John, I would love to use your template. but I am having trouble getting it to work. I am not yet a pro at using LateX…. I saved the folder on my PC and just hit “Build an view” to see what happens. However, I get the message “Unfortunately, the package cbfonts-fd could not be installed.” and more errors are spit out. ( line 104 This NFSS system isn’t set up properly. \begin{document}). I would be happy if you could help me with this!

Hi Frances, What application are you using to compile the template? It seems like this error sometimes comes up when the program (based on a google search, maybe TexStudio and MiKTeX more than others) can’t find the LaTeX package repository to get all of the fonts installed. I wonder if the guidance at this Q&A page would help? If not, let me know what program you’re using and I’ll try to think of other answers. Thanks, John

thank you for your reply! I am using TexStudio and, unfortunately, i could not find the answer on the Q&A page :/

kind regards Frances

Thanks for making this template available! It’s been super useful to write up my thesis.

Just a quick question for you. I want to display a minitoc, minilof and minilot for each appendix. The mini table of contents works fine, but the mini list of figures/tables appears in the wrong appendix (i.e. the ones from appendix B are listed in appendix A, and so on). Any idea what might the problem?

Best wishes,

Thank you so much for your beautiful template, I just started working with it and it’s super easy to work with and adapt to ones own needs!

I had one question which I wasn’t able to find anywhere – I would need to insert a “Contribution” page in the roman pages, however I don’t know where I need to define a new environment (similar to acknowledgements), in order to do so?

Hi John, Thank you so much for your nice template. But I have faced some issues. Can you help me to resolve these? I couldn’t call the references in the introduction section. How I should manage the bibliography? Please give a response.

Pingback: Hiatus | Oxford Echoes

Hi! Thanks for the template!

How should I acknowledge using this template in my thesis?

The template is freely released, and may be used without any acknowledgement. If you are feeling particularly generous, you could put a sentence in your thesis Acknowledgement section that says something like “I would like to thank John McManigle, Sam Evans, and Keith Gillow for developing the template used to format this thesis.”

John, thanks so much for a magnificent template. I am trying to update the beltcrest to the newer logo but struggling to figure out a way to acheive this so that it retains the same size. I tried to screenshot the new logo, save as jpg and convert to pdf as the same name, but the pdf is now considered an entire A4 page so it looks terrible. Any advice on this? Do you perhaps have access to a similarly-formatted beltcrest that is the newer version?

Hi Markos, I reached out by email to ask for a copy of the new crest to test, but haven’t heard back from you yet. Let me know when you have a minute to play with it!

Hi John, Apologies I missed your email. Have now replied. Best Markos

I’ve added a PDF version of the logo to the GitHub repository. If you copy that to your /figures/ directory, then add the following line to Oxford_Thesis.tex just before \maketitle (around line 150):

I’ve also added this as a (commented-out by default) option on the version of the template currently on GitHub .

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Recent Posts

• Mountain Weekend
• Fireworks from Above
• Bahamas Adventure
• Charleston Thanksgiving 2020
• Wedding and Cape Cod Honeymoon
• Blue Ridge Parkway
• London and Budapest
• iOS ARKit Face Tracking Vertices
• Iceland and England 2019
• Greece Adventure 2019: Athens
• Greece Adventure 2019: Milos
• Greece Adventure 2019: Santorini
• Operation Airdrop: Hurricane Florence
• Key West and Miami

Theme: Andrea by Lucian E. Marin .

Writing a Thesis or Dissertation

A course for students who are either writing, or preparing to write, a dissertation or thesis for their degree course at oxford, intensive course timetable: hilary term 2024.

Enrolment closes at 12 noon on Thursday 7 March 2024.

Course Timetable: Trinity Term 2024

Enrolment will close at 12 noon on Wednesday of Week 1 of term (24 January 2024).

To ensure that we have time to set you up with access to our Virtual Learning Environment (Canvas), please make sure you have enrolled and paid no later than five working days before your course starts. 

MT = Michaelmas Term (October - December); HT = Hilary Term (January - March); TT = Trinity Term (April-June)

Course overview

This course is designed for students who are either writing, or preparing to write, a dissertation or thesis for their degree course at Oxford. Each lesson focuses on a different part of the thesis/dissertation/articles (Introductions, Literature Reviews, Discussions etc.), as well as the expected structure and linguistic conventions. Building upon the foundational understanding provided by our other Academic English courses (particularly Introduction to Academic Writing and Grammar, and Key Issues), this course prepares students for the challenges of organising, writing and revising a thesis or dissertation.

Learning outcomes

• Gain an understanding of the different organisational structures used within Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences dissertations and theses
• Consider works of previous Oxford students in order to understand the common structural, linguistic and stylistic issues that arise when drafting a research project
• Increase competence in incorporating citations into texts, including choosing appropriate tenses and reporting verbs   
• Learn how to structure the various parts of a dissertation or thesis (Introduction, Literature Review, Discussion, Conclusion and Abstract)

Enrolment information

For Learners with an Oxford University SSO (Single Sign-On) simply click on the enrol button next to the class that you wish to join. 

For Learners without an Oxford University SSO, or who are not members of the University, once enrolment opens , please email  [email protected]  with the following details:

• Email address and phone number
• The name of the course you wish to study
• The start date and time of the course
• Your connection to Oxford University, if any (to determine course fee)

We will then provisionally enrol you onto the course and send you a link to the Oxford University Online Store for payment. Once payment is received we will confirm your place on the course. Please note that we will be unable to assist you until enrolment has opened, so please do not send us your enrolment details in advance.

Course structure

• Taught in Weeks 2-8 of term
• Seminars per week: 1
• Length of seminar: 2 hours
• Academic English tutor will provide all materials

Intensive course structure

• One week intensive course
• Taught in week 9 of term (Monday - Friday)
• Number of classes throughout the week: 5
• Length of class: 2-3 hours
• Total hours of tuition over the week: 14

Course fees

VIEW THE COURSE FEES

Join our mailing lists

ACADEMIC ENGLISH

MODERN LANGUAGES

Other Term-time Courses

MSc in Sociology

• Knowledge of the key theoretical approaches that are relevant to empirical investigations
• An understanding of their application to substantive problems
• Skills in the use of major research techniques

Hear from some of our faculty and students:

The MSc in Sociology is offered on both a full-time (one-year) and part-time (two-year) basis. The degree and expectations for both modes of study are equally rigorous: part-time students take their classes with the full-time students, but spread their study over two years to accommodate work and personal circumstances.

In the first two terms, full-time students take two compulsory Core Papers and two Optional Papers. After the second term, students will work on research for their MSc Thesis, before sitting exams during the third term.

The Core Papers are:

• Sociological Analysis , which develops intellectual skills in explaining social phenomena: identifying puzzles, developing theoretical explanations, and evaluating empirical evidence
• Methods of Social Research , which introduces students to qualitative methods, statistical methods, and the research design process

By choosing two Optional Papers and a related thesis topic, students can create their own specialised pathway and focus on a particular topic of study during their degree, support by expert supervision and teaching.

Example topics of focus and potential supervisors within the Department:

The MSc Thesis consists of a 10,000-word sociological analysis which students carry out under the guidance of their supervisor, and is submitted on or before 1 September.

Part-time students will write their dissertations in the third term of their second year and submit by 1 September of that second year, but will be encouraged to start planning their thesis from their first year.

Got a question? Email us

Professor Christiaan Monden Director of Graduate Studies

Meet Our Students

Msc in sociology handbook 2023-24, p/t msc in sociology handbook 2023-24.

Meet some of our students

• Our research
• Our research groups
• Our research in action
• Research funding support
• Summer internships for undergraduates
• Undergraduates
• Postgraduates
• For business
• For schools
• For the public

Ion trap quantum computing

Research group

Research theme

• Quantum information and computation

Sub department

• Atomic and Laser Physics

Related research groups

• Atom-photon connection
• NMR quantum computing
• Ultracold quantum matter

Doctoral Theses

High-fidelity, near-field microwave gates in a cryogenic surface trap marius weber 2022.

Implementation of Mølmer-Sørensen two-qubit gates on 43 Ca + hyperfine clock qubits in a cryogenic (≈25K) surface trap, driven by near-field microwaves. We achieve gate durations of 154µs (with 1.0(2)% error) and 331µs (0.5(1)% error), which approaches the performance of typical laser-driven gates. In the 331µs gate, we demonstrate a new Walsh-modulated dynamical decoupling scheme which suppresses errors due to fluctuations in the qubit frequency as well as imperfections in the decoupling drive itself. Development of an ion transport toolbox, with demonstrations of splitting and merging operations in two different traps.

Device-independent key distribution between trapped-ion quantum network nodes David Nadlinger, 2022

Implementation of a complete protocol for device-independent quantum key distribution over a quantum network link, resulting in the generation of a 95884-bit shared private key, after 8.5 hours of run time. This is enabled by the high-rate (100s -1 ), high-fidelity [96.0(1)%] generation of Bell states between remote trapped-ion qubits, yielding a detection-loophole-free CHSH inequality violation of 2.677(6) and quantum bit error rate of 1.44(2)%, both of which are stable during the generation of millions of Bell pairs. We also introduce a versatile method for micromotion compensation using time-stamped photon detection; we achieve a sensitivity to stray electric fields of 0.1 Vm -1 /\(\sqrt{\rm Hz}\).  [ORA copy not yet available]

An elementary quantum network of entangled optical atomic clocks Bethan Nichol, 2022

Demonstration of entanglement-enhanced frequency comparison of two optical atomic clocks based on the 674nm quadrupole transition of 88 Sr + ions, which are linked by a quantum-optical fibre link (\(\approx 2\)m long). We show that the use of an entangled state reduces the measurement uncertainty by nearly \(\sqrt{2}\), the value expected for the Heisenberg Limit. Today's optical clocks are typically limited by dephasing of the probe laser; in this regime, we find that entanglement yields a factor 2 reduction in the measurement uncertainty compared to conventional correlation spectroscopy techniques. We demonstrate this enhancement for the measurement of a frequency shift applied to one of the clocks. [ORA copy not yet available]

A cryogenic trap for microwave-driven quantum logic using 43 Ca + ions Clemens L ö schnauer, 2021

Development of single and two-qubit operations for a new hyperfine atomic clock qubit, operating at 28.8mT in 43 Ca + , in a cryogenic surface-electrode trap. A single ion is laser-cooled to 0.5mK, close to the Doppler limit, by exploiting two-photon dark resonances that form between fine-structure levels. Resolved-sideband cooling on a Raman transition is used to cool the two-ion radial motional mode to an average occupation number \(\bar{n}=0.08\) . Spin-motion entanglement driven by near-field microwaves is used to diagnose the Mølmer–Sørensen interaction. Initial two-qubit gate attempts give a fidelity 0.77(2).

Benchmarking memory and logic gates for trapped-ion quantum computing Amy Hughes, 2021

Characterisation of the memory performance of a 43 Ca + clock qubit: randomised benchmarking is used to directly measure errors as small as 1.2(7) × 10 −6 after a storage time of 1 ms. The memory error remains < 10 −4 for up to 50 ms with no additional dynamical decoupling, or < 10 −3 for up to 2 seconds with a simple CPMG sequence. Comparison of different implementations of mixed-element two-qubit gates on a  43 Ca + - 88 Sr + crystal: a light-shift gate with a fidelity of 99.8(1)% or 99.7(1)%, measured using partial state tomography or interleaved randomised benchmarking respectively, and several varieties of Mølmer–Sørensen gates with measured fidelities of up to 99.6(2)%.

High-fidelity mixed species entanglement of trapped ions Keshav Thirumalai, 2019

High-fidelity mixed-species quantum logic gates between 43 Ca + and 88 Sr + ground-level qubits. Demonstration of a Ca-Sr logic gate, using a single 402nm laser system tuned midway between S-P dipole transitions of these two species, and characterization of the gate by several methods (Bell state tomography, process tomography and randomized benchmarking). An entangled state fidelity of up to 99.8% is achieved, comparable to that of the best same-species gates. A same-species Sr-Sr gate is also demonstrated, using the 674nm S-D quadrupole transition, with fidelity 96%.

Cryogenic, near-field quantum logic chips with passive field nulling on 43 Ca + Jochen Wolf, 2019

Design and characterization of our first cryogenic ion trap apparatus. Design of UHV system for both room temperature and cryogenic (LHe) operation using a flow cryostat. Description of new chip trap design for microwave-driven high-fidelity entangling gates, using a novel electrode layout for passive field nulling. Development of a wafer-scale chip fabrication process and eutectic chip bonding technique. Preliminary study of ion loading rates. Initial characterization of microwave field distribution above the chip using a single calcium-43 ion.

Entanglement between nodes of a quantum network Laurent Stephenson, 2019

Construction of our first quantum networking experiment. Demonstration of high-rate, high-fidelity remote entanglement of two 88 Sr + ions, trapped in two separate vacuum systems "Alice" and "Bob", connected by a 4m-long quantum-optical fibre link (qubit separation ~2m as the crow flies). Achievement of heralded entanglement with fidelity 94% at an average rate of 182 Bell pairs per second (success probability 0.022%). Generation of single-ion/single-photon entanglement with fidelity 97.9% at a rate of 5700 events per second.

Fast gates and mixed-species entanglement with trapped ions Vera Schäfer, 2018

Fast entangling gates using amplitude-shaped pulses on 43 Ca + , reaching a fidelity of 99.8% in 1.6µs and 60% in 480ns. Bell test experiment on 43 Ca + - 40 Ca + mixed-species crystal and demonstration of mixed species entangling gate on 88 Sr + - 43 Ca + .

Probing qubit memory errors at the 10 −5 level James Tarlton, 2018

Direct measurement of qubit memory errors in a calcium-43 "atomic clock" qubit. Randomized memory benchmarking is used to measure the memory error of a single qubit down to the few 10 -6 level. The error is found to remain below the 10 -3 level for up to 400ms. Surface trap designs for near-field microwave-driven two-qubit gates are explored.

A high-fidelity microwave driven two-qubit quantum logic gate in 43 Ca + Martin Sepiol, 2016

Experimental implementation of a microwave-driven two-qubit quantum logic gate in a room-temperature microfabricated surface ion trap. The gate scheme involves dynamical decoupling methods, which stabilise the qubits against fluctuations of the motional mode frequency and fluctuating energy shifts, and avoid the need to null the microwave field. The gate is applied directly to hyperfine "atomic clock" qubits in 43 Ca + using the near-field microwave magnetic field gradient produced by an integrated trap electrode. The achieved gate fidelity is 99.7(1)%, after accounting for state preparation and measurement errors.

Near-field microwave addressing of trapped-ion qubits for scalable quantum computation Diana Prado Lopes Aude Craik, 2016

Demonstration of high-fidelity spatial and polarization addressing of trapped-ion "atomic clock" memory qubits using near-field microwaves. Addressing is performed by interfering fields from integrated microwave electrodes to address a chosen trap zone whilst nulling crosstalk fields in the neighbour zone. Design of a next-generation ion trap which can perform near-field microwave addressing in a quantum CCD architecture without the need for nulling fields. Demonstration of a prototype micro-fabricated loop antenna for microwave characterization of chip ion traps.

Optical Bloch equations for simulating trapped-ion qubits Hugo Janacek, 2015

Modelling temperature and fluorescence of a trapped ion using the optical Bloch equations. Development of efficient simulations that solve the time-dependent and time-independent problems for systems with large numbers of states. Introduction of a routine designed to model the approach to the steady state. Analysis of Doppler cooling incorporating motion of a trapped ion and the effects of repumping from a D state. Development of cooling schemes for 43 Ca + at 146G and comparison with experiment. Demonstration of Doppler cooling below the Doppler limit for this isotope. Analysis of resonant effects in systems with more than three levels and comparison with experiment.

Linear Paul trap design for high-fidelity, scalable quantum information processing Sarah Woodrow (M.Sc. Thesis), 2015

Design of a new linear 'blade' trap, with improved optical access. Review of linear Paul trap theory. Discussion of axial micromotion and its use for ion addressing. Numerical simulations of trap fields. Technical drawings of trap components.

High-fidelity quantum logic in Ca + Christopher Ballance, 2014

High-fidelity single- and two-qubit laser-driven logic gates in 43 Ca + hyperfine qubits. Theoretical and experimental study of speed/fidelity trade-off for two-qubit gates. Achievement of single-qubit gate fidelities above 99.99%, and two-qubit gate fidelities ranging between 97.1(2)% (for a gate time of 3.8µs) and 99.9(1)% (at 100µs), after accounting for single-qubit operation and readout errors (each at the 0.1% level). Demonstration of a mixed-species ( 43 Ca + and 40 Ca + ) entangling gate with a fidelity of 99.8(5)%.

High-fidelity microwave-driven quantum logic in intermediate-field 43 Ca + Thomas Harty, 2013

Development of an intermediate magnetic field "atomic clock" qubit in 43 Ca + at 146G and high-fidelity techniques to manipulate this qubit using microwaves and lasers in a microfabricated surface-electrode ion trap. Randomized benchmarking of a single qubit. Work towards microwave-driven two-qubit gates including a theoretical analysis of likely sources of experimental error.

Background-free detection and mixed-species crystals in micro- and macroscopic ion-traps for scalable QIP Norbert Linke, 2012

Assembly and testing of a microstructured 3D ion trap. Background-free detection and read-out of trapped ions. Raman laser system consisting of two injection-locked frequency-doubled lasers. Ground-state cooling and coherent manipulation of a mixed-species crystal in a macroscopic ion trap.

Surface-electrode ion traps for scalable quantum computing David Allcock, 2011

Design, fabrication and testing of microfabricated surface-electrode ion traps. Pulsed laser cleaning of ion traps to reduce anomalous heating. An intermediate-field hyperfine "atomic clock" qubit in 43 Ca + . Design, construction and testing of an ion trap incorporating microwave resonators for microwave-driven quantum logic gates.

High fidelity readout of trapped ion qubits Alice Burrell, 2010

High-fidelity readout of trapped ion qubits. Demonstration of time-arrival resolved discrimination of ion states (TARDIS) with a photomultiplier detector to perform single-shot readout of a single 40 Ca + optical qubit with 99.991(1)% fidelity. Replacing the photomultipler by an electron-multiplying CCD camera, the TARDIS method allows discrimination in both spatial and temporal dimensions, enabling achievement of the same 99.99% readout fidelity for a 4-ion "qunybble", despite 4% optical cross-talk between neighbouring ions.

Measurement-selected ensembles in trapped-ion qubits Michael Curtis, 2010

Segmented ion trap modelling; measurement-selected ensembles (weak measurement); operation of planar and 7-electrode traps; implementation of a qubit in D5/2 state of 40Ca; partial collapse and `uncollapse' experiments.

High fidelity readout and protection of a 43 Ca + trapped ion qubit David Szwer, 2009

Rate equations programs for simulation of 43 Ca + ; comparison with experiment and Bloch equations. Simulation and optimisation of a robust, high-fidelity readout method from 43Ca+; experimental implementation. Attempted two-qubit gate with 40 Ca + and 43 Ca + mixed crystal; problems with crystallisation; electrode noise; measurement of heating rate, motional decoherence and "Schrodinger Cat" states. Derivation of Uhrig Dynamical Decoupling (UDD); review of the literature; experimental implementation of UDD and CPMG on 43 Ca + hyperfine ground-state qubits.

Implementing segmented ion trap designs for quantum computing Gergely Imreh, 2008

Numerical modelling of multiple-electrode traps. Ion shuttling and loading theory. Set-up of apparatus (including vacuum system, lasers and optics and control electronics) for trapping and experimenting with microfabricated "Sandia trap". Detailed evaluation of "Sandia trap": loading and micro-motion compensation; measurement of ion lifetime, motional frequency and heating rate; demonstration of ion shuttling.

A quantum memory qubit in calcium-43 Benjamin Keitch, 2007

Design and construction of various experimental apparatus: Laser Control Unit for precise pulse timing; master-slave 398nm laser system for Raman transitions in the hyperfine ground states of 43 Ca + ; KILL-110 system for PDH locking of lasers to optical cavities. Investigation of magnetic field fluctuations, using microwaves and 43 Ca + hyperfine states; Spicer SC20 field cancelling system tested. Demonstration of long T2 coherence time of 43 Ca + hyperfine clock state qubit.

Entanglement of two trapped-ion spin qubits Jonathan Home, 2006

Careful study of sideband cooling and temperature diagnostics for one and two ions. Motional coherence measurements. Coherent manipulation of two ions. Spin state tomography for two ions. Quantum logic gate by oscillating force; deterministic entanglement. For electrode configurations for trap arrays, see Home and Steane paper, 2006.

Raman sideband cooling and coherent manipulation of trapped ions Simon Webster, 2005

Photoionisation, Rabi/Ramsay experiments on single spin qubits by magnetic resonance and stimulated Raman transitions, continuous Raman sideband cooling using bright/dark resonance, pulsed Raman sideband cooling to the motional ground state, temperature diagnostics for 1 and 2 ions, rate equations for Ca-43.

Two-photon readout methods for an ion trap quantum information processor Matthew McDonnell, 2003

MOPA 397 laser system, servo theory, Pound-Drever-Hall (and other) locking, optical Bloch equations, dark resonance fits, dark resonance cooling/heating, spin state readout: various methods, EIT method proposed and implemented.

Stabilization and control in a linear ion trap John-Patrick Stacey, 2003

Reference cavities, improved photon counting, photon arrival time correlation method for micromotion compensation, new 850 laser, AOM optics, r.f. study towards helical resonator, magnetic field coils, dark resonances, isotope-selective photoionisation in detail.

Marek Š a š ura, 2002

Survey of ion/laser coupling theory, theoretical study of "pushing" gate method.

Development of an ion trap quantum information processor Charles Donald, 2000

Some space charge ideas, general apparatus development, imaging, spectroscopy of blue laser diodes, field compensation drift, precise D 5/2 lifetime measurement, upper bound on 2- and 3-ion quantum jump correlations and statistical analysis.

The quantum manipulation of ions David Stevens, 1999

Construction from scratch of our first ion trap, some Mathieu equation and Doppler cooling theory, optogalvanic spectroscopy, frequency doubling, observations of crystals and quantum jumps, first look at D 5/2 lifetime measurement.

• News & Comment
• Our facilities & services
• Current students
• Staff intranet

Writing your research proposal

The purpose of the research proposal is to demonstrate that the research you wish to undertake is significant, necessary and feasible, that you will be able to make an original contribution to the field, and that the project can be completed within the normal time period. Some general guidelines and advice on structuring your proposal are provided below. Research proposals should be between 1,000 and 3,000 words depending on the programme (excluding the reference list/bibliography).

Title sheet

Topic statement, research aims, review of the literature, study design / theoretical orientation, research methods, tentative chapter outline, references/bibliography.

Applying for a research degree