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UCL dissertations and theses

The Library holds a copy of most research degree theses completed by students registered at UCL. Print copies of research theses are catalogued by author in  Explore ; electronic versions are in many cases available on open access in  UCL Discovery .

The Library does not normally have copies of UCL:

• MA, MSc, MRes, LLM theses
• Diploma theses
• Undergraduate dissertations

However the following libraries have small local theses collections covering their own subject areas, please contact the relevant library directly for more information:

• Bartlett Library : select exemplars of Masters dissertations are available through UCL's Open Educational Repository .
• Ophthalmology Library  has a very small collection of PhD, MD and MSc dissertations.
• Institute of Orthopaedics Library  has BSc and MSc theses.
• School of Pharmacy Library  has a small collection of MRes theses which date from 2011 – 2014  for reference use in the library. 
• UCL Institute of Education Library  has selected masters dissertations, which are findable in  Explore . Those published after 2000 are openly accessible in the library. All others must be requested in advance. 
• Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health Library has examples of past MSc and MRes dissertations.
• The UCL Institute of Archaeology make some available on the dissertation module page in their Moodle.

Some departments may also maintain their own collections. For further details, please contact your departmental administrators. 

• Theses Further Information on repositories and databases for accessing theses held by other institutions.
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• Last Updated: Sep 11, 2024 9:00 AM
• URL: https://library-guides.ucl.ac.uk/dissertations

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a PhD student in the UCL Knowledge Lab?

Mphil to phd upgrade.

From my perspective, it has been business as usual. I have been preparing for upgrade wholeheartedly for no less than six months. Now that I am approaching my twelfth month, an having completed three years of required training last month (in one year no less!), I am fully devoting my energies to all things upgrade.

In actuality, this is not completely true. For the past two weeks, I’ve also been knee-deep in starting my  research from a data collection via multiple online focus groups, transcriptions and starting to tag text within my qualitative software application for analysis. Oh yes, literature searching continues unabated as well.

However, for the purposes of this blog post…I shall pretend that I have only those concerns relating to casting of the MPhil shackles and becoming a full-fledged PhD…all made possible by  The Upgrade .

And what of these shackles, anyway? Depending upon whom you speak with, the MPhil process is shroud in much mystique and sine qua non. There are others, considerably more experienced than I who will tell you that “the Upgrade is nothing but a  formality , a bunch of tick-boxes put in place to prevent the University and student from failing one another”.

Wait a minute… failure?!?!

“Not to worry!” my informant suggests. “It merely ensures essentials such as your ability to speak English, write appropriately, ascribe to a timetable, and produce research that is not underwhelming in scope or unimaginably impossible to complete. You’ll have no problem…I wouldn’t worry.”

Which, of course, sets worry in to motion.

Being the A+ type multiplied by infinity personality-type that I am (e.g. aggressive, ambitious, controlling, highly competitive, preoccupied with success, workaholic and lack of patience), I begin to sweat even more of the details of something that I have been preparing for…seemingly for…for… forever!.

And yet, I am already aware that there is a good portion of my Upgrade Report (that will appear within said presentation) that will now likely never become actionable.

Owing to COVID-19, those myriad face-to-face focus groups, surveys, questionnaires and trials of pilot technologies requiring in-person activities must now all be (and some already have been) migrated online. In fact, the overall tenor of the proposed research has taken on less of a prototyping, engineering vantage point. These modifications have occurred in favour of those that are considerably more scientific and proof of concept/research.

In modulating the original plan, the idea now is that a post-doc may result in a more engineering-funded objective leading to prototype development. All of this hinges upon a PhD with substantial research that is compelling  to attract funding and sponsorship. And the road to PhD, at least today, travels through…you guessed it:

The Upgrade!

At least this is what my esteemed supervisors are suggesting. And that which I am completely trusting in as the end-game result. So with keyboard in hand, I await my monthly supervisory meeting taking place in less than one week. I’m hopeful that my Upgrade Report meets with approval, that my presentation may reflect that which is within the report, and that my Upgrade Panel, Upgrade Appointment and all associated departmental paperwork is “in the works”.

Fingers crossed. We shall see within a week’s time.

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Centre for Doctoral Education

Upgrade from MPhil to PhD at the IOE

All doctoral students are required to upgrade as a normal marker of progress during their studies. The IOE follows UCL’s regulations and its guidelines for upgrade .

The process followed at IOE differs from practice elsewhere at UCL in the following respects:

• The upgrade panel consists of two independent academics , rather than one independent academic and the subsidiary supervisor. The panel shall agree between them which is to act as chair.
• In place of the written report from the principal supervisor, both independent academics produce short written reports in advance of the upgrade panel meeting.
• The responsibility for appointment of panel members is delegated to the supervisors ; Departmental Graduate Tutors retain oversight of the process. The DGT and the departmental PGR administrator should be advised of the proposed panel before arrangements are confirmed.
• The material submitted for upgrade should not exceed 10,000 words , which should include a plan (with timeline) for completion of the thesis.
• The panel will also need to confirm that the appropriate sections of the Research Student Log have been completed; a screen capture of the relevant sections provided by the candidate or supervisor will suffice.
• Where a student needs to resubmit for an upgrade, full-time students will normally be expected to r esubmit within three months and part time students within five .

We expect full-time students to submit for upgrade after 12 months, and part-time students after 18 months .

The Principal Supervisor may be present as an observer at the viva meeting, provided the student agrees, but should withdraw while the Panel makes its decision. The Subsidiary supervisor should not be present.

The form used by the panel to report on the outcome of the upgrade meeting can be downloaded from the UCL website (bottom of this page) .

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Information and Literature Searching for MPhil/PhD Students - full

This course focuses on the centrality of the literature review in the dissertation/thesis and aims to develop the information and digital literacy skills of students. The full collection of materials is found here: https://open-education-repository.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/464/. The IOE LibGuide is found at: https://libguides.ioe.ac.uk/onlineinfolit.

Advice for reuse

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International. Recommended citation (Harvard): Bhimani, N. (2019). ‘Information and Literature Searching for MPhil/PhD Students’. [OER] University College London, OER repository. London. URI: https://open-education-repository.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/464.

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MPhil Thesis UCL First Pages

Table of Contents and Introduction of my MPhil Stud Thesis at UCL.

Related Papers

M. D. Boeri, Y. Y. Kanayama y J. Mittelmann (eds.), Soul and Mind in Greek Thought. Psychological Issues in Plato and Aristotle, Berlin, Springer, 2018

Ivana Costa

The allegory of the cave ends with a distinction, at Republic 518d-e, between moral and intellectual virtues; Socrates states that the virtue of wisdom (ἡ ἀρετή τοῦ φρονῆσαι) belongs to something more divine which never loses its power. However, it is not always or even necessarily aimed at what is good, but it can be directed to evil, as the so called bad-σοφοί do. I will argue that Plato is willing to grant that the training of the rational part by itself cannot be able to bring together philosophy and good political leadership (that is why he highlights the importance of having the spirited and the appetitive parts of the soul rightly educated). From this point of view, the picture of the soul that is drawn from the allegory of the cave should not be considered fully intellectualistic. After analyzing the allegory in search of traces of the tripartite psychic model, I will connect the allegory with Lesser Hippias 366a-b and Laws III 689a-b, where Plato tries to distinguish between intellectual ability and practical wisdom. The discussion of this distinction, I shall suggest, can be seen as the background to some remarks made by Aristotle in his own discussion of ἀκρασία in Nicomachean Ethics VII.

Jorge Mittelmann

This book offers new insights into the workings of the human soul and the philosophical conception of the mind in Ancient Greece. It collects essays that deal with different but interconnected aspects of that unified picture of our mental life shared by all Ancient philosophers who thought of the soul as an immaterial substance. The papers present theoretical discussions on moral and psychological issues ranging from Socrates to Aristotle, and beyond, in connection with modern psychology. Coverage includes moral learning and the fruitfulness of punishment, human motivation, emotions as psychic phenomena, and more. Some of these topics directly stemmed from the Socratic dialectical experience and its tragic outcome, whereas others found their way through a complex history of refinements, disputes, and internal critique. The contributors present the gradual unfolding of these central themes through a close inspection of the relevant Ancient texts. They deliver a wide-ranging survey of...

Journal of Ancient Philosophy

Daniel R . N . Lopes

This essay intends to argue for the affinity between the Gorgias and the Republic concerning issues of moral psychology. To this end I will divide my argument into two halves. The first half will show how the Calliclean moral psychology outlined at 491e-492a implies the possibility of conflict within the soul, especially regarding the relationship between epithumiai and shame. It will then argue that Socrates recognizes the appetitive element of the soul in his reply to Callicles but does not explore its consequences in any depth. The second half will contend that thumos-in the form of shame-is represented dramatically, and to some extent theoretically by Plato as one source of human motivation independent from reason, and recognized as such by the Calliclean position. My ultimate goal is to show how Plato raises questions in the Gorgias that hint at the theory of the tripartite soul expounded in book IV of the Republic, even though the answers here remain insufficient. The Gorgias therefore invites its readers to reflect critically on so-called Socratic intellectualism pointing to a more complex conception of human motivation that will be developed in the Republic.

G. Boys-Stones, D. El Murr, C. Gill (eds.) The Platonic Art of Philosophy. Studies in Honour of Christopher Rowe (Cambridge)

David N Sedley

Plato Journal

Justin Keena

The divinity of the soul in Plato is analyzed into three aspects, one metaphysical, one epistemological, and one ethical, namely: (1) its immortality and kinship to the Forms, (2) its ability to know them, and (3) its ability to live by them, respectively. I argue that these aspects in combination naturally suggest a process of Platonic divinization or "becoming like god" according to which the person being divinized would be expected to gain (3) increasing moral virtue, which depends on (2) an increasing knowledge of the Forms, which in turn prepares the soul for reunification with (1) its metaphysical kin, the Forms. This interpretation of divinization is confirmed by successively comparing Plato's discussion of "becoming like god" in the Phaedo, Republic, Symposium, Phaedrus, and Timaeus. Since divinization on this understanding requires moral virtue and attentive engagement with the sensible world, other interpretations that take it to be an exclusively intellectual endeavor or a dismissive flight from the sensible world are mistaken.

Rachana Kamtekar

Ancient Philosophy

Nicholas D Smith

Lloyd Gerson

Immortality in Ancient Philosophy

Suzanne Obdrzalek

In dialogues ranging from the Symposium to the Timaeus, Plato appears to propose that the philosopher’s grasp of the forms may confer immortality upon him. Whatever can Plato mean in making such a claim? What does he take immortality to consist in, such that it could constitute a reward for philosophical enlightenment? And how is this proposal compatible with Plato’s insistence throughout his corpus that all soul, not just philosophical soul, is immortal? In this chapter, I pursue these questions by applying the distinction between general and earned immortality to the Phaedo and the Symposium. I argue that, while Plato attributes general immortality to all soul in the Phaedo, in the Affinity Argument, he proposes that the philosopher’s soul can achieve earned immortality through contemplating forms. It is this form of immortality that Plato claims is unavailable to humankind in the flux passage of the Symposium. At the same time, in the ascent passage, he holds out the possibility – albeit with significant reservations – that the philosopher’s soul may transcend its humanity and achieve earned immortality through its communion with the form.

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10 September 2024

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