Writing the actual thesis – meetings, expected workload, timelines, deliverables

Once enrolled as a Master thesis candidate with us, you will have several meetings with us. Please plan for a total of about five individual supervisory meetings during your time with us (independent of which track you follow, science or practice). We will discuss a useful distribution of these meetings over the course of your writing the thesis when we first meet. When you want to schedule meetings, please contact us about two weeks in advance via email.

We expect you to allocate (the equivalent of) six months full time to your thesis. Workloads are assembled accordingly from our end.

There is no official time frame within which you must finish your thesis. It is not uncommon for students to spread their time working on the thesis over 9 to 12 calendar months. That being said, please note that we do retain the right to revoke our confirmation of supervision once we feel that the work is dragging on for too long and starts to hinder other commitments from our end, or when the subject itself starts to lose relevance due to excessive time taken by the candidate. This is why we recommend (see 'general information') that you do not start the application process for thesis supervision unless you know that you can dedicate six months of your undivided attention to it over the course of the coming 12 calendar months.

While working with us, there will be several deliverables: we will ask you to protocol meetings, and we may ask you to send in interim findings. You will be required to give a presentation towards the end of your actual investigations and prior to writing up the thesis. You will need to hand in a thesis following our formal and substantial guidelines . Students have to attend a Master thesis seminar (“Konversatorium”), and they will have to defend their thesis in an Oral Exam.