Master and Bachelor Thesis

DLWIS now supervises more than a dozen bachelor and master theses. We currently do not have the capacity to supervise more students and therefore can't provide new topics. Please do not ask us for a final thesis, we are full. 

Applying for a Subject:

If you are interested write an e-mail to Ingrid Fehrer. List the courses taken at the chair in your e-mail and include your CV, a transcript from HISQIS showing that you have gained the necessary ECTS credits for starting a thesis and write a motivation letter using our template. Afterwards you will get an appointment with the person(s) responsible for the topic. A topic can be accepted directly in the meeting or by writing an e-mail afterwards. Please note that we distribute topics on a first come first serve basis, i.e. topics can be offered to multiple candidates and assigned to the first candidate who accepts it.

The Thesis' Process at our Chair

Pursuing a thesis at our Chair is organised in two following phases:

1. Preparation Phase (0 - 2 Months): After you have decided to work on a topic, you will be given 1 - 2 month time to prepare your work in detail. That means you have to specify the research questions to be answered in detail, analyse literature and plan all steps necessary to answer your research questions. The result is a written in an expose for bachelor students and a presentation given in the "Oberseminar" for master students. Only after a successful presentation  and an accepted expose we will allow to register the thesis with the student secretary.
2. Implementation Phase (6 Months): After registering your thesis you have 6 months to complete it and hand it in to the Student's Secretary. You have to agree with your advisor on a schedule for meetings and other working modalities. We also expect you to be proactive, i.e. if there are problems it is your responsibility to engage with the supervisor. We provide a LaTeX template for bachelor/master thesis.
3. Final presentation at the Oberseminar.

Requirements for the Written Thesis:

• Thesis can be written in English or German.
• The structure should follow scientific rules. See our guide therefore.
• A master thesis should be around 60 pages (excluding appendix, toc, and lists of figures/tables, references) depending on the complexity of the subject.
• A bachelor thesis should range between 30 and 40 pages (excluding appendix, toc, and lists of figures/tables, references) depending on the complexity of the subject.
• Master thesis must include a 5-6 page executive summary, that is structured like a research paper. The summary will be published at the homepage of the chair or at arxiv.org in case there are no sensitive materials contained in the thesis. Selected master thesis will be made completely available via the OPUS 4 server of the university.

There is also a (still uncomplete) guide on how to conduct thesis at our chair. The guide should give you an idea what it is expected from your side and how to decompose the goal of getting your grade into smaller sub-units.