Before writing a dissertation many supervisors require an exposé from their students. The exposé represents a kind of rough working plan and timetable and serves both the supervisor and the doctoral candidate as an initial guideline. Unlike a bachelor’s or master’s thesis, a presentation is also often required to raise scholarships for a thesis or to convince the desired supervisor representative to agree to academically supervise the doctorate.
Usually an exposé includes two to six pages and contains a content part, as well as a first timetable for progress. Additionally, the most important literature is listed here and provides an overview of the present data or literature situation and roughly outlines the research project.
A dissertation’s exposé is divided into four parts
- An introduction to the topic and the research question
- A preliminary outline of work
- A preliminary list of literature on the already researched literature
- A preliminary working plan and timetable
The detailed content and structural requirements should definitely be discussed with the supervisor. In general, the exposé is a trenchant summary of the objectives of your work. Therefore, the starting position of the work must be more closely indicated (including the relevance of the theme for a particular area) and the objective of their work must be clearly identified. The focus remains on the development of its own question with respect to the selected topic. In addition, the procedure (provisional classification) must be explained and the outlook will be provided of the expected results. The relevant literature on the subject should also be named and listed.
The challenge of writing a synopsis is that it is still usually at the beginning of the work and concrete ideas about the process have not been developed. After all, this is only a very limited scope to outline initial ideas. It is also expected that you have already mastered the subject so well that it can fit into a larger research context and has taken into account the relevant research literature. We can help you when writing an exposé or create this text for you.