Master's thesis

Requirements per track

Submitting your thesis

Handing in your thesis

Once you have completed your thesis, you must submit it in Osiris (and not via an email to your supervisor). Osiris provides you with an evaluation progress as well as your final grade. 

If your supervisor has indicated that your final paper is ready for assessment, proceed as follows:

• You can upload your thesis in Osiris via Cases > My Cases.
• Consult with your supervisor how the plagiarism check is carried out (e.g. by uploading your thesis in Blackboard or otherwise)

Did you get a pass?

If you have received a satisfactory grade, you will need to upload your thesis' final version in Utrecht University's thesis archive. This is mandatory.

• Go to Osiris Student > Cases
• Choose Archive & publish thesis - Follow-up Case
• Archive your thesis and, if so desired, you can publish it 

Your thesis is the last course in your Master’s programme in which you apply the skills, knowledge and insights that you have acquired during the year of study. You do independent research and write an academic or practice based thesis (for example after completion of a research internship) based on the gathered information. It is the academic proof of competence and knowledge in the field(s) studied within the Literature Today Master’s programme. In it, you demonstrate that you are able to conduct independent research in the field(s) of study and are able to analyse and critically evaluate a phenomenon or question pertaining to the relevant scholarly debates.

Written exposition

The final product is a written exposition of said research, which has to fulfil the scholarly and formal requirements for advanced MA-research. The final product has to be clearly structured, present the discussion of a central research question and provide an answer to it. The thesis should be around 10.000 words in length. The thesis is 20 EC for students who started in 2022-2023 and 15 EC for students starting in 2023-2024 or 2024-2025. 

Forms and procedures master's thesis

Your Master's thesis will be assessed following specific evaluation procedures. You can prepare for this by reading the following documents and explanations prior to starting your thesis.