Graduate School

Guidance and regulations

This section provides you with information about what you need to know as a PGRD student. You can download the handbook for postgraduate research degree students, learn about the rules, regulations and policies that are relevant to your studies. We also tell you about how you can feedback to the University about your experiences.

• Regulations
• Policies and procedures
• Feedback procedures
• Final Thesis word length

For further information about professional doctorates please refer to the appropriate course website.

Regulations

What are the University regulations and why are they important?

University regulations serve two important functions. Firstly, they set out what you can expect from the University. Secondly, they set out what the University expects of you. It is therefore important that you are familiar with them. In general, the regulations contain useful information about supervision, the major review, the thesis and the viva. 

Where can I find the University regulations?

The University Research Degree Regulations pages contain the most up-to-date information and forms for PGRD students. It is important that, should you need to complete any of these forms or refer to current University regulations, you refer to these pages (or those on the Academic Registry’s webpages) and not to any saved versions you may have.

Policies and procedures

University Policies and Procedures

In addition to the University regulations there are other policies and procedures which may also affect you as a PGRD student or professional doctorate student. The University has a set of research policies relating to the conduct of research at the University including the quality assurance of research and the ethics policy. You should also be aware of the health and safety policy.

Departmental Policies and Procedures

There may also be particular health and safety and research ethics procedures in place in your department. You should speak to your First Supervisor to ensure that you are aware of these.

Feedback procedures

The University is committed to providing quality postgraduate teaching and support. Should you experience any problems or difficulties there are several mechanisms for you to feed back to the University. These are:

• Your First Supervisor
• Faculty Research Degrees Committee representative or Postgraduate tutor for your department
• The Chair of your Faculty Research Degrees Committee 
• Director of the Graduate School
• Your student representative: All departments have a student representative to whom you can feed back issues or concerns. The student representative attends both departmental and faculty research degrees committees where they can feedback any issues you raise.

Final Thesis word length

It is expected that the maximum length of the thesis should not exceed the following guidelines, excluding ancillary data such as footnotes, bibliographies, diagrams and references. Please note that unless specified there is no minimum word limit.

• PhD 80,000 words
• MPhil 40,000 words
• MD 40,000 words
• Professional Doctorates 50,000 words

Faculty Research Degree Committees may prescribe alternative maximum word lengths for particular subject areas and the following lower limits have been agreed:

• MPhil Biology, Pharmacy and Biomedical Science, Mathematics: 20,000 words
• PhD Biology, Pharmacy and Biomedical Science, Mathematics: 40,000 words

Where the thesis is accompanied by material that is not in written form, e.g. film, video tapes, etc, the written thesis should normally be within the range:

• For PhD 30,000–40,000 words
• For MPhil 15,000–20,000 words

For further information regarding the submission of the final bound thesis please consult the Postgraduate Research Student Handbook 2012/2013