Thesis

This repository contains a thesis template that passes the requirements of the Ecole Doctorale of Sciences Po. This repository also lets you know what are the administrative tasks you should do prior your thesis defense.

Why this repository?

Do you hate wasting time doing exactly the same thing that every other person in your office has to do? Me too! I wasted at least a solid week typesetting my thesis, despite the fact that every single PhD student has had to do the same thing. Least. Efficient. Thing. Ever. To try to break this endless cycle, I've put together a simple template that typesets your thesis for you!

Here are some of my favorite features:

• Edit individual files for each chapter instead of one monster file.
• Build with a single command... so easy!
• Maintain one bibliography, because you cite the exact same people every time. Feel free to modify this as you wish, but hopefully you won't spend as much time as I did.

Installation

Over the years I did horrible things to my latex installation, so I found it easiest to re-install Texlive from scratch. Steps to do this are described here. It's not the clearest, but it's not that tough when you get there. If you do this you will not need to install any additional packages to compile the thesis... yay! If not, good luck.

I personally like working in a virtual environment, so if you do too you can use the user mode from tlmgr:

tlmgr init-usertree --usertree ~/test-tree^C
export TEXMFHOME=~/test-tree
tlmgr update --all

If you don't always want to export the user profile, add it to your .bashrc.

Use

You can compile the example by cd'ing into the directory and running ./build.sh. If this compiles correctly, great! If not, you'll need to debug to figure out what's wrong. Here are some points about how to use the template:

• The main file is thesis.tex, which defines all of the packages and user defined functions. If you use special packages, add them here.
• Modify the title pages.tex, sommaire.tex, acknowledgements.tex, and introduction.tex as you need to.
• Copy and paste the body of your papers into the chapter files (package includes should be placed in thesis.tex).
• Change all of your \cite calls to \citeIntro, \citeSomm, \citeOne, \citeTwo, \citeThree, or \citeIntroFr depending on what section they are in.
• Place all your bibliography entries in the mybib.bib file.

French summary

• If your thesis is in English, you need to put a 10-page summary in French at the end of the thesis:

  "Si la thèse est rédigée en langue étrangère, l'étudiant doit, en outre, intégrer au fichier pdf de sa thèse (à la fin de la thèse) : un grand résumé en français (10 pages) avec une page de titre comportant uniquement le titre de la thèse en français et la mention "Résumé" ; avant de remettre la version électronique de votre thèse, à l’Ecole doctorale," source: https://www.sciencespo.fr/ecole-doctorale/fr/content/soutenance-de-these.html

• see the file introductionFr.tex

Administrative duties

• Fill in the form "BORDEREAU DE SOUTENANCE DE THESE DE DOCTORAT" and send it to the Ecole Doctorale. You should do it at least 3 weeks before the thesis defense:

  "A FOURNIR OBLIGATOIREMENT EN 1 EXEMPLAIRE PAPIER ET EN VERSION ELECTRONIQUE WORD (.doc ou .rtf) TROIS SEMAINES AVANT LA SOUTENANCE"

Help wanted

Pull requests welcome! Do not hesitate to update the thesis template and the list of administrative duties as they become obsolete and new ones are added. Below is a list of people who contributed to this repository:

• Tyler Abbot: Creator of this repository and initial breaker of the wheel
• Julien Pascal: Updated the template to pass the 2020 requirements + started tracking the administrative requirements