PhD in Anthropology

Essential information about the PhD in Anthropology program.

Program information

PhD thesis (THD9999)

A doctoral thesis must make a significant contribution to knowledge in a field of study, embody the results of original investigation and analysis, and be of such quality as to merit publication. The doctoral thesis is usually about 250–300 pages. Students are usually expected to complete their programs within four years.  The writing of the thesis must conform to the rules of methodology established by the academic unit.  If the thesis consists of a series of published articles, it must conform to university and academic unit guidelines for such theses.  It is important that the manuscript be of good quality in order to permit its reproduction.

Thesis by articles

Students have the option of submitting a traditional thesis or a thesis by articles. The conditions for theses by articles are:

  1. The plan to write a thesis by articles must be approved by the supervisor and by the Program Coordinator.  The request must be submitted in writing no less than six months prior to the final submission of the thesis.
  2. The articles replace the chapters of a traditional thesis.  The thesis by articles must include all of the information normally found in a traditional thesis, namely a unifying sociological problem or question, a detailed presentation of methods, discussion and analysis of findings, a general conclusion that articulates the sociological impact of the whole thesis.
  3. The articles must have been written for publication in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.  At a minimum, the articles must have been submitted to eligible journals at the moment of submission.
  4. To be included in the thesis, articles must represent original work, have been written in the course of the student’s doctoral programme, and not have been accepted for publication prior to approval of the research proposal (SOC9930).
  5. The thesis must comprise of at least 3 articles.
  6. Of these, the student must be the sole author of at least two articles, and the first author of each article written collaboratively.
  7. The articles in the thesis are to be evaluated by the Thesis Committee in the same manner as other parts of the thesis, regardless of their publication status.  The Committee may require modification even if the articles have been accepted or already appear in print.

Thesis

Before beginning your thesis, please read all instructions on the Submission and Evaluation site, taking into account the important academic dates and deadlines. Prior to submitting the thesis, students must have completed all of the program’s requirements and have submitted the list of examiners.

Thesis proposal

ANT9102 - Thesis proposal

Preparation, overseen by thesis supervisor, which must be approved by thesis advisory committee. Grade S (Satisfactory) or NS (unsatisfactory).

The preparation of the thesis proposal is supervised by the thesis director.  A defense in front of the thesis committee takes place.  The members of the committee are typically members of the School of Sociological and Anthropological Studies.  It is possible that one of the members is from outside the SSAS if this is deemed relevant.

It is not possible do submit the thesis proposal before having completed the courses and the synthesis exercise.  For the thesis proposal, the students will formulate a research problem, define a theoretical question and an ethnographic dimension linked with their research question which will prepare towards fieldwork (30 pages double spaced).  Once the document is complete, the student submits the project to the thesis committee.  Once the thesis committee is done reading the document, a defense in front of the thesis committee takes place.  The supervisor and the two members of the thesis committee participate to the thesis proposal defense.  During the project defense, the students will answer the questions asked by the members of the committee to evaluate if the learning objectives have been reached and to evaluate the quality of the thesis proposal.  The project is evaluated on a scale of pass or fail.  The failed project needs to be revised to be reevaluated by the committee, and it needs to pass a second oral defense.  The thesis proposal needs to be approved before the end of the Spring/Summer semester of the second year.

A student who fails the project proposal needs to meet with the supervisor and the director of graduate studies to rework the thesis proposal in the delays fixed and to organize a new defense.  A first failure is recorded.  If a student fails a second time, they will be withdrawn from the program. 

Thesis completed with ethnographic visuals

Students may, if they so choose, make use of film, photography or new media as ethnographic data and/or the medium of presentation for their thesis. In this case, the  thesis will conform to the following format:  introduction, methodology, theoretical framework, ethnographic data, analysis, discussion and conclusion.

The thesis committee will ensure that students possess (or will be able to acquire via courses offered in ethnography of new media or visual anthropology) the necessary skills required to complete a high-quality multimedia document.  These criteria must therefore be explicitly included in the thesis proposal for the latter to be approved.