PostGraduate Research

Information for PhD Students

The most important part of your work is the research that you do, together with your supervisor, and the dissertation that you write.

The Department, School and the University provide additional training, development and progress monitoring, which are designed to assist you with your main research. This page gives you information about what you are required to do in order to complete the training/progress components of your research degree.

The training and development, as well as your PhD research help develop your transferable skills such as communication and interpersonal skills, problem solving, initiative and self motivation, working under pressure and to deadlines, organisational skills, team working, ability to learn and adapt, numeracy, etc. These are skills important to employers alongside your research, technical and subject knowledge and are sometimes termed employability skills. You will need to develop these during your PhD to plan your project, be able to present and communicate your work, deal with unforeseen events, cope with competing deadlines etc.

• Contacts and Information
• Annual Progression Requirements
  (used to be known as Personal Development Record (PDR))
• Attending Seminars and Postgraduate Workshop
• Year 1
• Year 2
• Year 3
• Year 4
• Part-time students and students who do not start at the beginning of the academic year
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Resources available to PGR students

A full-time PhD student must submit the dissertation within a minimum of two years and a maximum of four years from the date of first registration. Longer periods are available for part-time students. See the University PGR website.

Recent PhD theses are available from the University repository. A list of older PhD theses is available from the University library catalogue.

Information for Part-Time Students

Please check the end-date of your PhD via Liverpool Life. The Head of the Liverpool Doctoral College has confirmed that part-time students must complete an End of Year Progress report/interview every calendar year. Please follow the guidelines for full-time year one for the first two part-time years, the full-time year two guidance for year three and four part-time and full-time year three guidance for any remaining years part-time.

Information for MPhil Students

First-year MPhil students participate in the same training/progress monitoring activities as PhD students. See these pages.

• Personal Development Record (PDR)
• Attending Seminars and Postgraduate Workshop
• Year 1

There are no formal training requirements after the first year of an MPhil degree. After the first year, MPhil students focus exclusively on finishing research and writing the dissertation. However MPhil students should continue to complete Annual Progression Requirements and to attend relevant research seminars.

A full-time MPhil student (starting from April 2015 onwards) must submit the dissertation within a minimum of one year and a maximum of two years from the date of first registration. See the relevant ordinance for part-time students.