Advice on writing your thesis

Your thesis is likely to be the largest document you ever write, and it is a major challenge for all students. Deakin provides a considerable amount of support and advice to help you with the writing up of your thesis. There is also a wealth of information available from the internet and other avenues of support.

• Study Support provides graduate research students with practical writing resources through the Writing for Research site and targeted individual support.
• Shut up and Write! sessions are informal and begin with a brief conversation to share our goals, followed by dedicated writing blocks, which are punctuated by short breaks to rest and connect with other participants. These occur on a weekly basis.
• The Researcher Development Academy runs Academic Writing Month (AcWriMo) once per year where researchers from across the university to focus on topics relevant to academic writing and to get writing done.
• The Deakin Library has offerings focussing on literature searching, systematic reviews, publishing, AI use, copyright and research data management.

For additional workshops provided by the Researcher Development Academy, please check out our offerings on the workshops and webinars page.

Other avenues of support

The Thesis Whisperer is a newspaper style blog dedicated to the topic of doing a thesis. It has contributors from around the world and covers various subjects ranging from getting things done, how to write faster, a section on presenting, your career, useful resources for students and supervisors and many other interesting and helpful topics.

Editing of theses

Guidelines for editing research theses can be found on:

• The Council of Deans and Directors of Graduate Research website.
• FAQs for research students (PDF, 159KB).
• FAQs for professional editors (PDF, 154KB).
• The Institute of Professional Editors website.