SUBMISSION OF A DRAFT
You submit a draft version of your dissertation to your supervisor(s), who will read it and suggest revisions.
(takes at least 1 month for your supervisor(s) to review the text)
SUBMISSION FOR PRE-DEFENSE
You submit to your supervisors and the Director of the Doctoral Programme a revised, improved version of your dissertation for a pre-defense (munkahelyi vita= workplace discussion⁓ viva voce), an oral examination where you present your dissertation and are asked questions about it by an exam committee made up of your two “opponents”. NOTE that the pre-defense version of your dissertation should comply with the dissertation’s formal requirements (i.e., its length should not be less than the minimal requirement of 300.000 characters, nor exceed the maximum limit of 500.000 characters including spaces and footnotes but excluding the dissertation’s reference list). The Director of the Doctoral Programme will forward your dissertation to your two opponents (an internal evaluator from the University of Szeged and an external second reader from another university) invited to read your work and provide a brief written evaluation of it.
(takes 1-2 months for the opponents to evaluate your work)
PRE-DEFENSE
A pre-defense takes place: the PhD candidate and the committee discuss the main research questions, arguments, evidence, structure, and organization of the dissertation. Opponents advise students about revisions that need to be accomplished before submitting the dissertation for the final defense.
The scenario of the pre-defense:
1. The doctoral candidate presents a brief outline of the dissertations’s main research questions, methodology, arguments, structure, results.
2. The opponents present their evaluations of the dissertation.
3. The PhD candidate respond to the opponents’ evaluations.
4. An open discussion takes place with the participation of academic staff and fellow PhD Students present.
5. The academic staff (PhD holders) present at the pre-defense cast their votes on the evaluation of the dissertation.
6. Announcement of results which may be as follows:
- The dissertation can be submitted for the final defense without any modifications.
- The dissertation needs minor amendments and corrections.
- The dissertation needs major revisions.
- The draft version submitted for the pre-defense cannot be accepted as the basis for a finalised dissertation.
SUBMISSION FOR FINAL DEFENSE
You work more on your dissertation, and submit a fine-tuned, revised, finalised version to the administrator of doctoral affairs (see the steps of the submission above) (provided you have fulfilled all the criteria mentioned above)
(cc.2 month for revisions after pre-defense before submitting final version)
Additional material to be submitted electronically: Thesis Résumé Booklets, List of Publications (as registered in MTMT), Foreign Language Certificates, and a 1 page long CV in third person narrative form.
FINAL DEFENSE
Opponents (usually the same professors who evaluated your work for the pre-defense) are appointed by the Doctoral Programme and approved by the Doctoral School and the Doctoral Council of the Faculty of Arts to read your work.
(Officially they have 2 months to prepare their reviews. The summer period (July and August) does not count.)
You receive the opponents’ written evaluations from the administrator of Doctoral Affairs and send a brief written response to their evaluations (in a single document) to the administrator of Doctoral Affairs copied the Director of the Programme and the Supervisor(s). The administrator of Doctoral Affairs forwards the responses to both readers.
For Hungarian citizens the language of the defense is in Hungarian (if requested: can be in English), for foreign students it is in English.
The procedure of the final defense:
- Doctoral Candidate’s CV is read out by a member of the defense committee
- Doctoral Candidate presents brief overview of dissertation’s main research questions, arguments, methodology, structure (15 min)
- Opponents present their evaluations of the dissertation
- Doctoral Candidate presents response to the Opponents
- Discussions (questions and remarks from committee members and audience)
- Votes by members of the Committee
- Announcement of results
DOCTORAL DEGREE AWARD CEREMONY
After various administrative bodies (IDI, TDT, EDT) approve the results of the defense, successful candidates receive their PhD degree in an award ceremony at the end of the semester. Award ceremonies take place in June and January.
IMPORTANT CAVEAT
Please note that the timeline delineated above is an ideal case scenario. You should be aware that the the median time humanities Ph.D. recipients spent in their doctoral programmes (i.e. the time spent since the start of the programme till the time their doctorate is awarded) ranges between 7.3 to 6.9 years on average.