During the Covid-19 pandemic, majority of highethe r education programs were delivered online and programs involving practical sessions were unable to deliver these activities on campus. This study explores the perspectives of students and staff from the sport department at a United Kingdom (UK) university.The findings contribute to our understanding of research genres and have implications for Dissertation Writing Services UK how we teach thesis and dissertation writing in different areas of study as well as what we advise students are appropriate choices to make as they are writing their theses and dissertations. The study is also of relevance to people working in the area of higher education more broadly, and especially those with an interest in doctoral writing.
Doctoral degrees have been offered for over 200 years in Western universities and, in English medium universities, since the 1860s. The first PhD in the world was awarded at the University of Berlin (now Humboldt University) in 1810. In the same year, PhDs were awarded at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in France. The Netherlands introduced the PhD in 1810 and the University of Zurich awarded its first PhD in 1833 (Bogle, 2017). PhDs in the English-speaking world were first awarded in the late 19th century, initially in the US and then in the UK, Canada, and Australia at Yale University, the University of Oxford, the University of Toronto, and the University of Melbourne respectively and, for this reason, they are the focus of our study in which we examine the emergence of the doctoral thesis/dissertation as a research genre and trace its development over time.
We do this by examining the first doctorates that were awarded in four English-medium universities and then by comparing these theses and dissertations with doctorates that have been awarded more recently at the same universities in parallel areas of study. Our aim in doing this is to see to what extent doctoral theses have changed over this time period and in what ways (or if) they have remained constant. We are doing this not just to understand where the doctoral thesis has come from but also in what ways it has evolved
