MPhil Students
Thesis and Viva Information
At the start of your MPhil, you will receive a letter outlining when and how you should submit your thesis at the end of your course.
Important Deadlines
Your dissertation deadline is determined by the University term in which you were admitted:
Michaelmas term: submit by the following August 31st
Lent term: submit by the end of the following Michaelmas term
Easter term: submit by the end of the following Lent term
If, as your deadline approaches, you anticipate that you will be unable to submit on time due to exceptional circumstances, you must apply for an extension via your self-service account on CamSIS.
More information
Helpful information about putting together your thesis
Format
The word limit for the MPhil thesis is 20,000 words, exclusive of tables, footnotes, bibliography and appendices. More formatting information can be found here.
Self-Citation
Self-citing your papers is excellent, and you only need to edit published papers by yourself if they fit the format requirements of the thesis. Still, it should be cited at the start (e.g. "this thesis has been published [in part] as … [papers]", or "To date, the following publications have arisen in whole or in part from this thesis: [papers]").
You are required to include a declaration in the preface stating:
"This thesis is the result of my work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the foreword and specified in the text.
It is not substantially the same as any work that has already been submitted before for any degree or other qualification except as declared in the preface and specified in the text. "
Intention to Submit
Before you are due to submit your MPhil thesis for examination, you will need to submit an Intention to Submit form online.
This should be done at least two months before you intend to submit your thesis. This application will come directly to the Degree Committee office, which will request examiner nomination from the Department.
Intention to submit form
Electronic submission information
The examination process
MPhil by Research degrees is examined by thesis by two examiners, neither of whom is the Supervisor and one of whom, at least, is from outside the University and its approved non-University Institutions, plus an oral examination. You can access departmental VIVA TIPS here.
Relationship to the PhD
MPhil Research degrees accommodate the needs of students who, for various reasons, have only one year available to them or, alternatively, have only managed to obtain funding for one year. They are not intended to be a probationary year for a three-year PhD study.
However, during the year, circumstances can change. If, for instance, you secure funding for an additional two or three years and you wish to stay for a PhD degree, you can explore two possibilities:
Suppose you have time and funding for a further three years. In that case, you may submit a thesis for the MPhil Degree and apply to continue on to the PhD Degree for an additional three years; you would be formally examined for the MPhil and, if successful, obtain the degree and continue as a probationary PhD student.
Suppose you have time and funding for only two more years. In that case, you can apply through your CamSIS self-service for permission to change your Registration from the MPhil to the probationary PhD. If granted permission to change, you must undergo a formal assessment involving a 'first-year report' and an oral exam towards the end of your first year before being registered for the PhD. If you choose to do this, apply as early as possible before the stage where Examiners would generally be appointed for your MPhil submission.
Please note that continuing from the MPhil to the PhD or changing Registration is not automatic; all cases are judged on their own merits based on several factors, including evidence of your progress and research potential, a sound research proposal, the availability of a suitable supervisor and resources required for the research, and acceptance by the Head of your Department and the Degree Committee.
More advice
The Code of Practice sets out the University's expectations of research students and supervisors; you must familiarise yourself with it.
Further information is also available on the Postgraduate School of Life Sciences website.
Please email the education team if you want to see examples of MPhil theses from previous students.
PhD Students
PhD Proposal Report
The deadline to submit your PhD Proposal report is November 30th 2023.
The Postgraduate School of Life Sciences has introduced a new requirement for all 1st year PhD students to submit a Project Proposal Report for the entire period of study, which should outline the following:
- experimental plans
- timelines
- key questions
- expected challenges
The report should be between 800 – 1000 words in length.
The report will be reviewed by the Psychiatry Postgraduate Education Committee and assessed for the proposed project's feasibility, access to appropriate facilities and resources, and confirmation of a good supervisor/student relationship. The assessment provides a valuable framework for you and your advisory team to ensure you start on the right track and have a clear project overview.
We hope that this exercise will allow you to meet with your advisory team and allow us to confirm that all the necessary arrangements are in place and working well. The report should clearly state who your supervisor, advisor, and anyone else providing you with significant academic support is.
The report should be emailed to the Education Team at psych-education@medschl.cam.ac.uk
Psychiatry PhD student first-year report guidelines
A first-year report must be submitted around eight months after your start date, with a viva following soon after.
Please refer to this handy guide, which explains how to put the report together and how you will be assessed.
PhD student second-year report
At the end of the second year, a concise summary of the student's progress should be submitted. The report should include a summary of work completed to date and a timeline indicating how the student intends to structure the remainder of their time regarding research and the production of their thesis.
The second-year report should be at most 1000 words. The document must be seen and approved by the student's Supervisor, who should also sign the corresponding declaration form to confirm that they have seen and approved their student's report.
The submission deadline is June 30th for those who started in the preceding October; for those who started in January or April, it is 8 months later. The report and signed form should be submitted to the Education Team (by email). They will be reviewed by the Departmental Postgraduate Education Committee.
You will also have the opportunity to present your work at our annual Postgraduate Symposium, which takes place each November.
Phd student's third-year and fourth-year
In year 3, you will once again present your findings at the Postgraduate Student Symposium. Most students are then ready to submit their dissertations. It would help if you informed the Department of your plans. When you consider submitting your dissertation, you should email the Education Team at psych-education@medschl.cam.ac.uk.
The Degree Committee has kindly included all the information about how to submit your thesis and the steps you need to take on this SharePoint site.
The Internal Examiner will contact you about the date, time, and place for the viva (which they have arranged). You should not be emailing your internal or external examiners directly before they contact you. It is the responsibility of your Supervisor to approach and appoint the examiners.
The Department of Psychiatry recommends that students use the APA style of referencing; however, you should discuss this with your Supervisor. For more details about APA style, please visit http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/index.aspx.
Style of the dissertation – please visit information issued by the Student Registry on the style and format of the dissertation: http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/students/studentregistry/exams/submission/
At the examination, you will be told about any necessary corrections; if minor, you may be issued a set of required corrections. Once you have done these, you must have them checked by the internal examiner. Suppose you still need to receive a list of corrections from the internal examiner at or after the viva. In that case, you must wait until after the Degree Committee has met to consider your reports. A copy of the reports and corrections will then be sent to you by the Student Registry. http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/students/studentregistry/exams/after/index.html
You must submit your dissertation for examination within the maximum study period. For full-time students, this is 48 months (4 years) from the initial registration date (considering any periods of authorised intermission). Students who do not submit by this date will be removed from the University's student register. Students who cannot meet their submission deadline must apply to extend their registration date. Suppose you cannot submit before your final' end of registration date' (as shown on CamSIS). In that case, you must talk to your supervisor to discuss whether there are grounds for applying for an extension or whether you should be temporarily withdrawn from the university until you are ready to submit. All such applications must be made before the end of your registration date. You must inform the Education Team in the first instance if you are unlikely to submit on time to ensure that you receive the appropriate advice and guidance.
For more details, please refer to these helpful links and websites:
We have been informed that more advice on how to set up a thesis in Word would be beneficial as your thesis may be too big to be one document. This website provides some solutions to the problem:
https://bitesizebio.com/21549/using-word-to-write-your-thesis-making-a-t...
https://bitesizebio.com/21534/using-word-to-write-your-thesis-creating-a...
https://bitesizebio.com/21732/using-word-to-write-your-thesis-creating-a...
https://bitesizebio.com/21742/using-word-to-write-your-thesis-miscellane...
Also, here are some articles on tips for writing a thesis which may be useful: https://bitesizebio.com/?s=using+word+to+write+your+thesis
Viva
Your viva will take place soon after your submission date, usually within 3 months. The Postgraduate Education Committee has created a document containing some valuable tips to help you prepare for the viva: VIVA TIPS.
How to Prepare for Your Viva tips have also been published by the Researcher Development Office – Preparing for your Viva | Researcher Development (cam.ac.UK)
You can view previous PhD Theses from the Department via the University's Apollo Repository.
Should you have any queries, please contact:
Education Team (Adisa Broadhurst and Autumn Stamford Psych-education@medschl.cam.ac.uk)
Director of Postgraduate Education (John Suckling js369@cam.ac.uk)
Postgraduate Seminars
The MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit and the Departments of Psychology and Psychiatry have jointly established a seminar programme for first-year postgraduate students.
This is a weekly series of theoretical seminars presented by senior researchers during Lent and Easter Terms. Please note all the seminars and training programmes you attend in your Researcher Development Logbook, which you will need to present during your first-year viva (PhD Students).
Necessary: Please discuss your education and training needs with your Supervisor and read the Postgraduate School of Life Sciences' guide about the Core Skills Training Programme.
Seminar Schedule 2023/24 (coming soon)
Lent Term 2022
Tuesday, January 25th at 3 – 4.30 pm
Peter Jones on Psychiatric Classification
Tuesday, February 1st at 3 – 4.30 pm
Louise Lafortune on Dementia from a public health perspective: Risk factors, interventions and policy
Tuesday, February 8th at 3 – 4.30 pm
Matt Lambon Ralph on Using a convergence of clinical and cognitive Neuroscience methods: The case Study of semantic cognition
Tuesday, February 22nd 3 – 4.30 pm
Tristan Bekinschtein on Consciousness
Tuesday, March 1st at 3 – 4.30 pm
Michael Anderson on Mechanisms of forgetting
Tuesday, May 17th 3 pm – 4.30 pm
Tim Dalgleish on A transdiagnostic, biopsychosocial approach to human mental health
Tuesday, May 10th 3 pm – 4.30 pm
John Duncan on Intelligence and the frontal lobes
Tuesday, May 24th at 3 – 4.30 pm
Deborah Talmi on The psychology and neuroscience of emotion
GB Square Placeholder
More support can be found through the Researcher Development Programme
The Researcher Development Programme (RDP) provides a suite of training courses, workshops, and events to support research students from all disciplines across the University of Cambridge. This provision is intended to complement that of the Schools and Departments so that research students can develop the skills they need to be successful in their research in the short term and in whatever career they progress on to afterwards.
Find out more
Need help with your stats? Then, book a visit to our stats clinic.
Dr Simon White is available to department members to discuss, support, and collaborate on statistical issues/analyses. This has two strands: directly supporting postgraduate students and potential statistical collaborators with all research groups.
This separation is designed so that support and advice can be targeted at postgraduate students. This statistical support will be available to all students across all sites and at all study points (i.e., any year).
Expectations
Support will take the form of guidance and advice to help the student direct statistical aspects of their research project, including identifying additional training needs (computational and statistical). Students can discuss high-level questions on research strategy, potential study design issues, and analysis plans.
This support is not used regularly for incremental analysis steps nor as surrogate supervision meetings.
There will be no expectation to develop new statistical methodologies or approaches, nor will any analysis be run for the student. As such, there is no expectation for formal recognition in the thesis/dissertation; however, an acknowledgement would be welcome. Any resulting publications should acknowledge the support (Dr White and this support are funded by the NIHR BRC Mental Health Theme).
Moving beyond the scope of this support
Suppose the scope moves beyond high-level advice or requires substantial/regular meetings. In that case, a discussion with the supervisory team (and potentially the Postgraduate Education Committee) will be necessary to establish the statistical needs and resources required by the student and their project.
Moving beyond this support strand may involve formal recognition within the thesis/dissertation team, a formal collaboration (to fund time attributed to the project), and authorship of research outputs.
Bookable slots
Dr White has reserved one hour weekly for this support (plus preparation time). Meetings will be 30 or 60 minutes, depending on complexity, and will (typically) be at the Herchel Smith Building or Institute of Public Health on Wednesday or Friday afternoons or by Zoom. Supervisors are welcome to attend, or the meeting can be one-on-one (with the student responsible for reporting back to their supervisory team).
Supervisors or Students may arrange an appointment by emailing Dr White directly (sw539@cam.ac.uk).
Preparation
To ensure the meeting is productive, this Booking Form must be completed and submitted at least one week before the meeting. The form will provide background to the research project and current research issues. It may also be beneficial to attach a brief report (max 3 pages). However, pages of unannotated analysis output are not helpful—nor will they be read.
Suppose the meeting is to discuss a specific analysis. In that case, the student should bring the relevant analysis output to the meeting. There will be little time to run analyses on data during the conference.
Other practical talks and lectures
As you will soon realise or may have already realised, Cambridge has a never-ending supply of lectures, seminars, workshops and training sessions. You can participate in pretty much everything that the University offers, which can be a blessing and a hindrance at the same time. Here, we have tried to select the most appropriate opportunities for you. Please keep us posted with details of anything helpful so we can add this to the calendar and open the possibilities up to other students. Students should always consult with their supervisor if unsure which courses/talks may be best to attend.
Departmental Lunchtime Lectures (Psychiatry)
Dates: Every Thursday in Term
Time: 12:30– 1.30 pm
Venue: Herchel Smith Seminar Room or via ZOOM
Here, you can access some recordings of previous speaker interviews.
Video & Audio: "Department of Psychiatry" (cam.ac.UK)
Website: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/56022
Department of Psychiatry Talks Stream – Talks.Cam
This is a list of talks that interest the Department of Psychiatry. It includes talks by department members as well as talks taking place in other Departments that students might find useful.
Zangwill Club
Dates: Every Friday during Full Term
Time: 4.30 pm – 5.30 pm
Venue: Department of Psychology Lecture Theatre
Website: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/6342
The Department also hosts Behavioural Neuroscience Seminars and Social and Developmental Psychology Seminars. The MRC-Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit holds weekly seminars, the Chaucer Club, at the MRC-CBU on Chaucer Road on Thursdays throughout the year. International and national speakers present current research on a wide range of topics related to brain and cognition at these colloquia. Students may attend these seminars to supplement their postgraduate education in discussion with their supervisors.
Chaucer Club
Dates: Every Thursday during Full Term
Website: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/show/index/6772
Chaucer Club talks are currently taking place online on Thursdays at 2 pm. Attendance at live talks is restricted to MRC CBU staff, students, and the University of Cambridge academic community, including alums. Users must use a Zoom account registered to a *cam.ac.uk or *cantab.net email address.
Social and Developmental Psychology Seminars
Dates: Fortnightly on Tuesdays during Full Term
Time: 1 pm – 2 pm
Website: http://talks.cam.ac.uk/sh
Other Training Opportunities within the University
Statistical Methods for Cognitive Psychologists
Level: This course is planned with the needs of a graduate student starting as a PhD student at the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences in mind.
Style: The presentation will be fairly formal lectures, each aiming to outline a particular class of methods, give examples of how they are applied to realistic situations, and indicate how to implement them using software available at CBU. Lectures will be given by Peter Watson and take place on Thursdays from 11:00 to 12:00 in the West Wing Lecture Theatre.
Principles of Epidemiology module
The Department of Public Health and Primary Care would normally consider enquiries from students on an individual basis.
Students are advised to make contact on an individual basis – PHPC Graduate Admissions phpcgradadmin@medschl.cam.ac.uk
Bioinformatics Courses
Several statistics courses are provided that will be of use to postgraduates.
Core Statistics *** strongly recommended
Graduate Class in Methods ***strongly recommended
Statistics
The Social Sciences Research Methods Centre
MRC Biostatistics Unit
Bioinformatics training courses offered by the School of Biological Sciences
SELF-TAUGHT – Statistics for the Terrified
Programming Courses
MATLAB (Dr Dénes Szűcs)
Dr Dénes Szűcs runs an 8-hour intensive course entitled 'Practical introduction to MATLAB Programming'. The course focuses on practical hands-on variable handling and programming implementation rather than on theory. It is intended for those who have never programmed before, including those who only call/run Matlab scripts but are not familiar with how code works and how matrices are handled in Matlab. (Note that calling a couple of scripts is not 'real' programming.)
Lecture slides about language fundamentals will be uploaded to Moodle before the sessions for study before sessions. During the live sessions, we will reinforce and extend the material in the lecture slides and resolve questions.
You must download and install the latest version of Matlab on your own laptop before the sessions (see www.mathworks.com). Cambridge students can download and install Matlab from mathworks.com for free with their CRSid. Select and install all packages available to you. If you have pre-installed Matlab, you can immediately try to write 'live' program code. The best way to learn Matlab is to write and run code.
It would help if you skimmed through the excellent free resource Getting Started and Language Fundamentals.
DETAILS TO BE UPDATED SHORTLY.
Introduction to Scientific Computing and Matlab
The CBU will be running a weekly Matlab course, which will be extremely helpful to anyone planning to program their experiments and analyse data in Matlab.
These sessions will combine theory, demos, and hands-on practice and are aimed at researchers with no or little prior experience in scientific computing and programming.
Workshops will take place in the WWSR on Wednesday at 14:30 for approximately 1.5 hours. Attendance does not require Registration; everyone is welcome.