• The PhD in French is awarded on the basis of a thesis, a substantial piece of writing which reports original research into a closely defined area of enquiry. The completion of the PhD thesis is generally expected to take three years, and most funding is based on this assumption.
  • The important notion of "original" can be defined in a number of ways, but basically the thesis should represent a significant contribution to learning, through the discovery of new knowledge, or through the connection of previously unrelated facts, or the development of new theory, or the revision of older views, or some combination of these different criteria.