Direction of Doctoral Thesis

Direction of the Doctoral Thesis

As established in RD 99/2011 of 28 January, which regulates this PhD programme, all PhD students have to be assigned a director for their doctoral thesis in a period of six months after their registration at most. This thesis director will be assigned by the academic commission of the PhD programme, and he/she has to be a Spanish or foreign doctor, with accredited experience and regardless of the university or centre where they develop their services.

Obviously, the thesis director could be the same tutor previously assigned to the PhD student after being admitted to the PhD programme. The direction of the doctoral thesis and at first the research project lies on the tutor assigned first and mainly on the director. The direction of the thesis basically consists in supervising the PhD student’s research plan, research activities carried out, quality of their scientific production during the PhD period, and development and completion of the doctoral thesis. To this end, the tutor or director of the thesis will have regular meetings with the PhD student –at first every fortnight, although frequency of meetings will be flexible depending on the research phase– as established in the good practice documents. The thesis director, and previously the tutor, will be the link between the PhD student and the academic commission of the PhD programme.