ph d dissertation university of california berkeley

Dissertation Writing and Filing

The following guidelines are only for doctoral students. If you are pursuing a master’s degree, please see the Thesis Filing Guide .

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Research Protocols

Eligibility, fall and spring semesters, summer filing, formatting your manuscript, special page formats, organizing your manuscript, procedure for filing your dissertation, permission to include your own previously published or co-authored material, inclusion of your own publishable papers or article-length essays, copyright & your dissertation, copyright ownership and registration issues, inclusion of third-party content in your dissertation; copyright & fair use issues, publishing your dissertation; embargoes, publication requirement, embargo extensions, changes to a dissertation after filing, diploma, transcript, and certificate of completion, certificate of completion, appendix a: common mistakes, appendix b: mixed media guidelines, definitions and standards, electronic formats and risk categories, appendix c: frequently asked questions.

Filing your doctoral dissertation at the Graduate Division is one of the final steps leading to the award of your graduate degree. Your manuscript is a scholarly presentation of the results of the research you conducted. UC Berkeley upholds the tradition that you have an obligation to make your research available to other scholars. This is done when you submit your dissertation for publishing through the ProQuest online administration system and the Graduate Division forwards your manuscript to the University Library. Your dissertation is subsequently published online in the UC system’s scholarship repository ( eScholarship ) and made available within ProQuest/UMI after your doctoral degree is officially conferred by the Academic Senate.

Your faculty committee supervises the intellectual content of your manuscript and your committee chair will guide you on the arrangement within the text and reference sections of your manuscript. Consult with your committee chair early in the preparation of your manuscript.

The specifications in the following pages were developed in consultation with University Library. These standards assure uniformity in the degree candidates’ manuscripts to be archived in the University Library, and ensure as well the widest possible dissemination of student-authored knowledge.

If your research activities involve human or animal subjects, you must follow the guidelines and obtain an approved protocol  before you begin your research.  Visit our web page for more information  or contact the Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects ( http://cphs.berkeley.edu/  or 642-7461) or the Animal Care and Use Committee ( http://www.acuc.berkeley.edu/  or 642-8855).

In addition to the considerations explained below, your Expected Graduation Term (EGT) must match the term for which you intend to file. EGT can be updated at any time using an eForm available in CalCentral.

To be eligible to file for your degree, you must be registered or on approved Filing Fee status for the semester in which you file. We encourage you to file your dissertation as early in the semester as you can and to come in person to our office to submit your supporting documents. If you cannot come to our office, it is helpful if you have a friend bring your documents. The deadline to file your dissertation in its final form is the last day of the semester for your degree to be awarded as of that semester.

Filing during the summer has a slightly different set of eligibility requirements. If you were fully registered during the immediately preceding Spring semester, and have not used Filing Fee already, you may file your dissertation during the summer with no additional cost or application required. Summer is defined as the period from the day after the Spring semester ends (mid-May) until the last day of the Summer Sessions (mid-August).

International students completing a degree in the Summer should consult Berkeley International Office before finalizing plans, as in some cases lack of Summer enrollment could impact visa status or post-completion employment.

If you have already used Filing Fee previously, or were not registered the preceding Spring semester, you will need to register in at least 1.0 unit in Summer Sessions in order to file.

Dissertations filed during the summer will result in a summer degree conferral.

You must be advanced to candidacy, and in good standing (not lapsed), in order to file.

All manuscripts must be submitted electronically in a traditional PDF format.

• Page Size : The standard for a document’s page size is 8.5 x 11 inches. If compelling reasons exist to use a larger page size, you must contact the Graduate Division for prior approval.
• Basic manuscript text must be a non-italic type font and at a size of 12-point or larger. Whatever typeface and size you choose for the basic text, use it consistently throughout your entire manuscript. For footnotes, figures, captions, tables, charts, and graphs, a font size of 8-point or larger is to be used.
• You may include color in your dissertation, but your basic manuscript text must be black.
• For quotations, words in a foreign language, occasional emphasis, book titles, captions, and footnotes, you may use italics. A font different from that used for your basic manuscript may be used for appendices, charts, drawings, graphs, and tables.
• Pagination:  Your manuscript is composed of preliminary pages and the main body of text and references. Page numbers must be positioned either in the upper right corner, lower right corner, or the bottom center and must be at least ¾ of an inch from the edges. The placement of the page numbers in your document must be consistent throughout.

Be Careful!  If you have any pages that are rotated to a landscape orientation, the page numbers still need to be in a consistent position throughout the document (as if it were printed and bound single-sided).

Do not count or number the title page or the copyright page. All other pages must have numbers. DO NOT SKIP PAGE ” 1 “. The remaining preliminary pages may include a table of contents, a dedication, a list of figures, tables, symbols, illustrations, or photographs, a preface, your introduction, acknowledgments, and curriculum vitae. You must number these preliminary pages using  lower case Roman numerals  beginning with the number “i” and continue in sequence to the end of the preliminary pages (i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.). Your abstract must have  Arabic numeral  page numbers. Start numbering your abstract with the number “1” and continue in sequence (1, 2, 3, etc.) The main body of your text and your references also use Arabic numerals. Start the numbering of the main body with the number “1” and continue in sequence (1, 2, 3, etc.), numbering consecutively throughout the rest of the text, including illustrative materials, bibliography, and appendices.

Yes! The first page of your abstract and the first page of your main text both start with ‘1’

• Margins:  For the manuscript material, including headers, footers, tables, illustrations, and photographs, all margins must be at least 1 inch from the edges of the paper. Page numbers must be ¾ of an inch from the edge.
• Spacing:  Your manuscript must be single-spaced throughout, including the abstract, dedication, acknowledgments, and introduction.
• Tables, charts, and graphs  may be presented horizontally or vertically and must fit within the required margins. Labels or symbols are preferred rather than colors for identifying lines on a graph.

You may choose to reduce the size of a page to fit within the required margins, but be sure that the resulting page is clear and legible.

• Guidelines for Mixed Media:  please see Appendix B for details.

Certain pages need to be formatted in a very specific way. Links are included here for examples of these pages.

Do not deviate from the wording and spacing in the examples, except for details applicable to you (e.g. name, major, committee, etc.)

• As noted in the above section on pagination, the abstract must be numbered  separately with Arabic numerals starting with ‘1’
• If you have a Designated Emphasis, it must be listed on your abstract.
• IMPORTANT: A physical signature page should no longer be included with your dissertation. Approvals by your committee members will be provided electronically using an eForm.
• The title page does not contain page numbers.
• Do not bold any text on your title page.
• The term and year listed on the title page must be the term of your degree. If you filed during the summer, write  Summer .
• The yellow bubbles in the sample are included for explanatory purposes only. Do not include them in your submission.
• If you have a Designated Emphasis, it must be listed on your title page ( DE Title Page Sample )
• If you are receiving a joint degree, it must be listed on your title page ( Joint Title Page Sample )

The proper organization and page order for your manuscript is as follows:

• Copyright page or a blank page
• Dedication page
• Table of contents
• List of figures, list of tables, list of symbols
• Preface or introduction
• Acknowledgments
• Curriculum Vitae
• Bibliography

Please do not include an approval/signature page.

After you have written your dissertation, formatted it correctly, assembled the pages into the correct organization, and obtained verbal approval from your committee, you are ready to file it with UC Berkeley’s Graduate Division.

• Step 0: Confirm your eligibility to file. Your Expected Graduation Term (EGT) must be current term (i.e. the term in which you expect to file your dissertation). If you need to update your EGT you can use the eForm available in CalCentral. Once your EGT is correct, you will see a number of checklist items (“Tasks”) created for you in CalCentral. You use these checklist items to proceed with filing.
• Step 1: Convert your dissertation into a standard PDF file.
• Step 2:  Upload your PDF to ProQuest/UMI ( http://www.etdadmin.com ) Follow the instructions on the site. NOTE: DO NOT UPLOAD A DRAFT.  Once your dissertation has been submitted, you will not be allowed to make changes. Be sure that it is in its final form!
• Step 3:  When you have successfully submitted the document, a message will be sent to the Graduate Degrees Office to review it on-line.  After Degrees staff has reviewed it you will either receive a message that the manuscript has been accepted or that you need to make further changes. If you need to make more changes, you will need to edit your manuscript, create a new PDF, and resubmit it to ProQuest.  Degrees staff will then need to review it again. An email approval will be sent to you once the manuscript is accepted.
• Step 4: There are two surveys to be completed:the Survey of Earned Doctorates and the Berkeley Doctoral Exit Survey. You will find these surveys as “Tasks”in your CalCentral dashboard (as long as you have a current-term EGT). Follow the instructions to complete the surveys and enter the verification codes. You should see the checklist items complete automatically.
• Review the your committee and email addresses listed — the form will route to each of your committee members for approval.
• If you chose to embargo your dissertation, you will not receive any copies you order from ProQuest until the embargo is lifted.
• Once the form has been filed, you may not make any changes to your embargo selections
• Attach a copy of the approval letter for your study protocol from the Committee for Protection of Human Subjects, or the Animal Care and Use Committee if your research involved human or animal subjects.

A Note on Deadlines

You must upload your electronic dissertation AND submit your final signature eform before 5 p.m. on the last day of the term. Both of these steps must be done before the deadline, regardless of whether your submission has been reviewed and approved. We can not provide a receipt of filing until your dissertation has been reviewed and accepted (which can take up to 4 business days), but you will get credit for the date of first submission.

If you plan use of your own previously published and/or co-authored material in your manuscript, your committee chair must attest that the resulting dissertation represents an original contribution of ideas to the field, even if previously published co – authored articles are included, and that major contributors of those articles have been informed.

Previously published material must be incorporated into a larger argument that binds together the whole dissertation. The common thread linking various parts of the research, represented by individual papers incorporated in the dissertation, must be made explicit, and you must join the papers into a coherent unit. You are required to prepare introductory, transitional, and concluding sections. Previously published material must be acknowledged appropriately, as established for your discipline or as requested in the original publication agreement (e.g. through a note in acknowledgments, a footnote, or the like).

If co-authored material is to be incorporated (whether published or unpublished), all major contributors should be informed of the inclusion in addition to being appropriately credited in the dissertation according to the norms of the field.

If you are incorporating co-authored material in your dissertation, it is your responsibility to inform major contributors. This documentation need not be submitted to the Graduate Division. The eform used by your committee chair to sign off on your dissertation will automatically include text indicating that by signing off they attest to the appropriateness and approval for inclusion of previously published and/or co-authored materials. No addition information or text needs to be added.

Publishable papers and article-length essays arising from your research project are acceptable only if you incorporate that text into a larger argument that binds together the whole dissertation or thesis. Include introductory, transitional, and concluding sections with the papers or essays.

You own copyright in your dissertation. Copyright is automatically created once your work is fixed in a tangible medium (such as saved on your computer hard drive or in cloud storage). Thus, you do not need to register copyright in your dissertation in order to be the copyright holder.

However, registering copyright in your dissertation has certain advantages: First, if your work is registered, you have evidence that you are indeed the author and owner. Second, registration allows greater enforcement of your copyright against an infringer or plagiarist, making available statutory damages set out in Title 17, Section 504 of the U.S. Code, which range from $750 – $150,000 plus attorney fees per copyright infraction. Accordingly, UC Berkeley recommends that you register copyright for your dissertation. You can register copyright through the Copyright Office’s website, www.copyright.gov , for a fee of $35, or through the ProQuest ETDAdmin system when you submit your PDF; doing so through ProQuest costs $55.

You continue to own copyright in your dissertation unless and until you transfer your copyright to another party. By complying with the UC Berkeley Graduate Division’s publishing policies, you are permitting the university to make available a copy of your dissertation online in eScholarship, but you are not transferring your copyright. You grant a similar permission to ProQuest/UMI, the exact terms of which are governed by the agreement with ProQuest you sign in the online submission process. You may request delays (i.e. embargoes) in the release of your dissertation both on eScholarship and in ProQuest. Please see “Publishing Your Dissertation; Embargoes”.

If you are including content in your dissertation not authored or created by you, be sure to consider copyright issues. The University Library can help guide you as you consider these questions. For more detail, please consult the Library’s helpful online guide, entitled Copyright and Publishing Your Dissertation .

To briefly summarize:

• If the content is in the public domain, then you need not get any permission to use the material. For questions about the public domain, see http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/use/public-domain.html.
• If the content you wish to use is subject to a Creative Commons license of some form, you need simply abide by the term of that license. For instance, a CC-BY license means you can use the work without seeking the author’s permission, but must attribute the work to the author. For more on Creative Commons licenses, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.
• If the content you wish to use is protected by copyright and no Creative Commons license governs its use, then you must consider whether your use constitutes Fair Use under 17 USC § 107. If your use of the content is a fair use within copyright law, then you need not seek the author’s permission before using it. See http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/use/fair-use.html.
• If your use of the content would exceed fair use under the Copyright Act, then you will need to seek the copyright holder’s permission in order to use the material. Be sure to request the copyright owner’s permission in writing so that you can keep track of permissions granted. Your letter to the copyright holder should make clear that you seek permission to preserve and publish the content in your dissertation through UC Berkeley’s institutional repository, eScholarship, and ProQuest/UMI. For help seeking permission, see http://copyright.universityofcalifornia.edu/use/obtaining-permission.html.

If you have additional questions about copyright and third party content in your dissertation, please contact the University Library .

UC Berkeley’s Graduate Council regulations stipulate that you have an obligation to make your research available to other scholars as part of the degree requirement.  This obligation is consistent with the long-standing principle that doctoral students share their significant scholarly contributions to advance knowledge. This requirement is fulfilled when you submit your dissertation for publishing through the ProQuest online administration system and the Graduate Division forwards your manuscript to the University Library. Your dissertation is subsequently published online in the UC system’s scholarship repository ( eScholarship ) and made available within ProQuest/UMI after your doctoral degree is officially conferred by the Academic Senate.

Making your work available to be read online immediately in eScholarship or ProQuest has many advantages. First, it clearly establishes when your work was created and published, which are powerful resources in preventing or combatting plagiarism. Others will be able to discover your prior publication. Second, it can help support your scholarly profile because people can read and begin citing your work. Citation of your dissertation by others can be offered as evidence of research significance in employment reviews. Further, research available through searches on the Internet can promote contacts that are international in scope and interdisciplinary in reach.

Occasionally, there are circumstances in which you prefer that your dissertation not be published immediately. Such circumstances may include the disclosure of patentable rights in the work before a patent can be granted, similar disclosures detrimental to the rights of the author, or disclosures of facts about persons, institutions, or locations before professional ethics would permit.

The Dean of the Graduate Division may permit the dissertation to be withheld from full-text publication in eScholarship for a specified and limited period of time. An embargo of up to 2 years can be selected on the Final Signature eForm. Once you make a selection regarding an embargo, it may not be changed. Discuss the pros and cons of withholding your dissertation with your faculty committee and departmental advisors. For more information, see the memo Advising doctoral candidates on dissertation embargoes and eScholarship repository  (PDF).

Embargoes beyond the initial 2-year option must be requested pursuant to a petition process using the E mbargo Extension Petition Form . Extensions are granted at the discretion of the Graduate Division, and are based on substantiated circumstances of the kind indicated above and with the endorsement of and an explanatory letter from the chair of the dissertation committee (or, if the dissertation chair is unavailable, the current department chair). Be sure to submit the petition form with sufficient time (at least three months) prior to the expiration of your original embargo to ensure adequate processing time prior to your dissertation’s scheduled release. If a renewal request is submitted less than three months from when the original embargo is set to expire, the Graduate Division cannot guarantee that the request will be processed and granted in time to preclude your dissertation from being made publicly available. Please note that it is your responsibility to request an extension beyond the two-year maximum from both the University and separately through ProQuest/UMI if you would like to extend your embargo both on eScholarship and on ProQuest/UMI.

Changes are normally not allowed after a manuscript has been filed.  In exceptional circumstances, changes may be requested by having the chair of your dissertation committee submit a memo to the Associate Dean and sent to Graduate Services: Degrees, 318 Sproul Hall.  The memo must describe in detail the specific changes requested and must justify the reason for the request. Such requests will not be approved for typographical errors, acknowledgments, or other minor revisions. It is your responsibility to ensure that your manuscript is in its final form before submitting it. If such a request is approved, the changes must be made prior to the official awarding of the degree. Once your degree has been awarded, you may not make changes to the manuscript.

After your dissertation is accepted by Graduate Services: Degrees, it is held here until the official awarding of the degree by the Academic Senate has occurred. This occurs approximately two months after the end of the term. After the degree has officially been awarded, the manuscripts transmitted to the University Library and to ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.

Posting the Degree to Your Transcript

Your degree will be posted to your transcript approximately 10 weeks after the conferral date of your degree. You can order a transcript from the Office of the Registrar (https://registrar.berkeley.edu/academic-records/transcripts-diplomas/).

Your diploma will be available from the Office of the Registrar approximately 4 months after the conferral date of your degree. For more information on obtaining your diploma, visit the Registrar’s website.  You can obtain your diploma in person at the Office of the Registrar, 120 Sproul Hall, or submit a form and pay the current mailing fees to have it mailed to you.

Unclaimed diplomas are retained for a period of five (5) years only, after which they are destroyed.

• The most common mistake is following a fellow (or previous) student’s example. Read the current guidelines carefully!
• An incorrect committee — the committee listed on your title page (and on the final signature eform you will submit) must match your currently approved committee. If you have made any changes to your committee since Advancement to Candidacy, you must request an official change from the Graduate Division. Consult your departmental adviser for details.
• Do not use a different name than that which appears in the system (i.e. the name on your transcript and Cal Central Profile ). Students are allowed to use a Lived Name, which can be updated by self-service in CalCentral.
• Page numbers — Read the section on pagination carefully. Many students do not paginate their document correctly.
• Page rotation — some pages may be rotated to a landscape orientation. However, page numbers must appear in the same place throughout the document (as if it were bound like a book).
• If you have an approved designated emphasis, it must be listed on your title page  and  your abstract.
• Do not include the signature/approval page in your dissertation. The abstract must be  unsigned .
• Do not include previous degrees on your title page.
• There should be no bold text on your title page.

In May 2005, the Graduate Council established new guidelines for the inclusion of mixed media content in dissertations. It was considered crucial that the guidelines allow dissertations to remain as accessible as possible and for the longest period possible while balancing the extraordinary academic potential of these new technologies.

The dissertation has three components: a core thesis, essential supporting material, and non-essential supplementary material.

Core Thesis.  The core thesis must be a self-contained, narrative description of the argument, methods, and evidence used in the dissertation project. Despite the ability to present evidence more directly and with greater sophistication using mixed media, the core thesis must provide an accessible textual description of the whole project.

The core thesis must stand alone and be printable on paper, meeting the formatting requirements described in this document. The electronic version of the thesis must be provided in the most stable and universal format available — currently Portable Document Format (PDF) for textual materials. These files may also include embedded visual images in TIFF (.tif) or JPEG (.jpg) format.

Essential Supporting Material.  Essential supporting material is defined as mixed media content that cannot be integrated into the core thesis, i.e., material that cannot be adequately expressed as text. Your faculty committee is responsible for deciding whether this material is essential to the thesis. Essential supporting material does  not include the actual project data. Supporting material is essential if it is necessary for the actual argument of the thesis, and cannot be integrated into a traditional textual narrative.

Essential supporting material  must  be submitted in the most stable and least risky format consistent with its representation (see below), so as to allow the widest accessibility and greatest chance of preservation into the future.

Non-essential Supplementary Material.  Supplementary material includes any supporting content that is useful for understanding the thesis, but is not essential to the argument. This might include, for example, electronic files of the works analyzed in the dissertation (films, musical works, etc.) or additional support for the argument (simulations, samples of experimental situations, etc.).

Supplementary material is to be submitted in the most stable and most accessible format, depending on the relative importance of the material (see below). Any supplemental material must be uploaded to the ProQuest website under the “Supplemental Files” section.

Note . ProQuest and the Library will require any necessary 3rd party software licenses and reprint permission letters for any copyrighted materials included in these electronic files.

The following is a list of file formats in descending order of stability and accessibility. This list is provisional, and will be updated as technologies change. Faculty and students should refer to the Graduate Division website for current information on formats and risk categories.

Category A:

• TIFF (.tif) image files
• WAV (.wav) audio files

Category B:

• JPEG, JPEG 2000 (.jpg) image files
• GIF (.gif) image files

Category C:

• device independent audio files (e.g., AIFF, MIDI, SND, MP3, WMA, QTA)
• note-based digital music composition files (e.g., XMA, SMF, RMID)

Category D:

• other device independent video formats (e.g., QuickTime, AVI, WMV)
• encoded animations (e.g., FLA or SWF Macromedia Flash, SVG)

For detailed guidelines on the use of these media, please refer to the Library of Congress website for digital formats at  http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/index.shtml .

Q1: Can I file my dissertation during the summer?

A1: Yes. There are 2 ways to file during the summer:

• Register for at least 1.0 unit through Berkeley Summer Sessions. With this option, you can file any time before the summer deadline .
• Register the preceding spring semester. As long as you were registered in the spring, and have not used filing fee before, you will be allowed to file during the summer without additional fees or applications.

Q2: If I chose that option, does it matter which session I register in during the summer session?

A2: No. You can register for any of the sessions (at least 1.0 unit). The deadline will always be the last day of the last session.

Q3: If I file during the summer, will I receive a summer degree?

A3: Yes. If you file before the end of the summer sessions, you will receive a summer degree. Remember to write “Summer” on your title page!

Q1: I’ve seen other dissertations from former students that were / that had  __________, should I follow that format?

A1: No. The formatting guidelines can be changed from time to time, so you should always consult the most current guidelines available on our website. This question is most frequently asked in regard to the issue of double vs. single spacing.

Q2: I want to make sure that my dissertation follows the formatting rules. What’s the best way to do this?

A2: If you’ve read and followed the current guidelines available on our website, there shouldn’t be any problems. You can upload your dissertation as soon as it is in its final form. If any changes are necessary, you will be given the opportunity to make them without penalties. If you’ve heard horror stories from other students about formatting changes in their manuscripts, you’ve likely been talking to past students who didn’t follow the directions and had to print out their dissertations on expensive, archival paper. Current students submit their dissertations electronically and, as such, it’s much easier and more painless to make changes!

You are also always welcome to bring sample pages into the Graduate Degrees Office at 318 Sproul Hall to have a staff member look over your manuscript.

Q3:  Does my signature page need to be printed on some special paper?

A3: Signatures are now an eForm process. A physical signature page is no longer required.

Q1: I’m away from Berkeley. Is there any way to file my dissertation remotely?

A1: Yes! The whole process is done remotely.

Q2: Can I have a friend bring my dissertation materials for me?

A2: Yes. Please see the answer above regarding filing remotely.

Q3: I read something about needing to allow 4 days to review my dissertation. So what is the actual deadline?

A3: Two things must happen before the end of the business day on the stated deadline: 1) you must have uploaded your dissertation to the ProQuest website and 2) you must have completed all the checklist items that appear in CalCentral (final signature eform and 2 surveys). Though it is not recommended, you can do both of these things on the very last day.

Q4: So what’s this thing about the 4 days?

A4: As you might expect, the Degrees Office receives hundreds of dissertations near the end of the term (in fact, half of all dissertations are submitted during the final week). This means that it may take several days for us to review your dissertation. Don’t worry. You’ll get credit for the date that you uploaded your dissertation. However, it may take up to 4 business days to review your submission and, if everything is acceptable, provide you a Receipt of Filing.

Q5: Can I do the Final Signature eForm before I upload my dissertation?

A5: Yes. We won’t be able to finalize your filing until everything has been reviewed and approved, but you are welcome to do those in any order.

Q6: What’s a Receipt of Filing? Do I need one?

A6: The Receipt of Filing is an official document that we produce that certifies that you have successfully filed your dissertation on the specified day and that, if all other requirements are met, the date of the degree conferral.

Some students may need the receipt in order to prove to an outside agency that they have officially filed their dissertation. Many students simply keep the receipt as a memento. Picking up your receipt is not required.

Q7: What’s the difference between a Receipt of Filing and a Certificate of Completion?

A7: A Receipt of Filing is automatically produced for all students upon successful filing of their dissertation. However, it only certifies that the dissertation has been accepted. The Certificate of Degree Completion  must be requested. It will state that all requirements  have  been met and notes the date that the degree will be conferred. This is a useful document for students who file early in the semester and need some verification of their degree in advance of its conferral (note: degrees are only conferred twice each year).

Q8: How do I know if I’m eligible for a Certificate of Completion?

A8: In order to be eligible to receive a Certificate of Completion, you must:

• Successfully file your dissertation (your online submission accepted as well as paperwork turned in)
• Have a fully satisfied Academic Progress Report (APR). The APR all the degree requirements as noted by your department. If there are requirements showing as “unmet” but you believe you have completed, please contact your GSAO.
• Pay all of your registration fees. While it may not necessarily hold up the production of your certificate, it is important that all fees are paid before the degree is conferred.

Q9: I’m supposed to bring in my approval letter for research with human subjects or vertebrate animals, but it turns out my research didn’t use this after all. What should I do?

A9: If your research protocol has changed since you advanced to candidacy for your degree, you’ll need to ask you dissertation chair to write a letter to the Graduate Division explaining the change. It would be best to submit this in advance of filing.

Q10: My dissertation uses copyrighted or previously published material. How do I get approval?

A10: The policy on this has recently changed. There is no need to for specific approval to be requested.

Q12: I uploaded my dissertation on the last day. What if I’m told I need to make changes?

A12: This won’t be a problem. If there are formatting issues that need to be resolved, you will be notified and be given the opportunity to make revisions – even if it is a few days after the deadline. As long as your dissertation was originally uploaded before the deadline. Obviously, we won’t be able to provide you a receipt (see Q above on Receipt of Filing) until everything has been finalized.

Q13: I found a typo in dissertation that has already been accepted! What do I do?

A13: Once a dissertation has been submitted and accepted, no further changes will be permitted. Proofread your document carefully. Do not upload a draft. In extreme circumstances, your dissertation chair may write a letter to the Graduate Division requesting additional changes to be made.

Q14: Oh no! A serious emergency has caused me to miss the filing deadline! What do I do? Are extensions ever granted?

A14: In general, no. In exceptional circumstances, the Head Graduate Advisor for your program may write to the Graduate Division requesting an extension. Requests of this type are considered on a case-by-case basis and, if granted, may allow you to file after the deadline. However, even if such an exception is granted you will receive the degree for the subsequent term. Your first step is to consult with your department if an emergency arises.

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Home » For Authors & Researchers » Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

1. Does UC require me to make my thesis/dissertation open access? 2. Can I delay open access to my thesis? 3. I’m working on my thesis/dissertation and I have copyright questions. Where can I find answers? 4. Where can I find UC Theses and Dissertations online?

1. Does UC require me to make my thesis/dissertation open access?

Several UC campuses have established policies requiring open access to the electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) written by their graduate students. As of March 25, 2020, there is now a systemwide Policy on Open Access for Theses and Dissertations , indicating that UC “requires theses or dissertations prepared at the University to be (1) deposited into an open access repository, and (2) freely and openly available to the public, subject to a requested delay of access (’embargo’) obtained by the student.”

In accordance with these policies, campuses must ensure that student ETDs are available open access via eScholarship (UC’s open access repository and publishing platform), at no cost to students. By contrast, ProQuest, the world’s largest commercial publisher of ETDs, charges a $95 fee to make an ETD open access. Institutions worldwide have moved toward open access ETD publication because it dramatically increases the visibility and reach of their graduate research.

Policies and procedures for ETD filing, including how to delay public release of an ETD and how long such a delay can last, vary by campus. Learn more :

• UC Berkeley: Dissertation Filing Guidelines (for Doctoral Students) and Thesis Filing Guidelines (for Master’s Students)
• UC Davis: Preparing and Filing Your Thesis or Dissertation
• UC Irvine: Thesis/Dissertation Electronic Submission
• UCLA: File Your Thesis or Dissertation
• UC Merced: Dissertation/Thesis Submission
• UC Riverside: Dissertation and Thesis Submission
• UC San Diego:  Preparing to Graduate
• UCSF: Dissertation and Thesis Guidelines
• UC Santa Barbara:  Filing Your Thesis, Dissertation, or DMA Supporting Document
• UC Santa Cruz: Dissertation and Thesis Guidelines (PDF) from the Graduate Division’s Accessing Forms Online page

2. Can I delay open access to my thesis/dissertation?

Some campuses allow students to elect an embargo period before the public release of their thesis/dissertation; others require approval from graduate advisors or administrators. Visit your local graduate division’s website (linked above) for more information.

In 2013, the American Historical Association released a statement calling for graduate programs to adopt policies for up to a six year embargo for history dissertations. Many scholars found this extreme, and a variety of commentators weighed in (see, e.g., discussions in The Atlantic , The Chronicle of Higher Education , and Inside Higher Ed ).  In addition, a memo from Rosemary Joyce, the Associate Dean of the Graduate Division of UC Berkeley, listed several advantages of releasing a dissertation immediately and added that “the potential disadvantages… remain anecdotal.” In the years since the flurry of writing responding to the AHA statement, the discussion of dissertation embargoes has continued, but the issues have remained largely the same. Thus, this memo from the UC Berkeley graduate dean (2013) remains an excellent summary.

3. I’m working on my thesis/dissertation and I have copyright questions. Where can I find answers?

Students writing theses/dissertations most commonly have questions about their own copyright ownership or the use of other people’s copyrighted materials in their own work.

You automatically own the copyright in your thesis/dissertation   as soon as you create it , regardless of whether you register it or include a copyright page or copyright notice. Most students choose not to register their copyrights, though some choose to do so because they value having their copyright ownership officially and publicly recorded. Getting a copyright registered is required before you can sue someone for infringement.

If you decide to register your copyright, you can do so

• directly, through the Copyright Office website , for $35
• by having ProQuest/UMI contact the Copyright Office on your behalf, for $65.

It is common to incorporate 1) writing you have done for journal articles as part of your dissertation, and 2) parts of your dissertation into articles or books . See, for example, these articles from Wiley and Taylor & Francis giving authors tips on how to successfully turn dissertations into articles, or these pages at Sage , Springer , and Elsevier listing reuse in a thesis or dissertation as a common right of authors. Because this is a well-known practice, and often explicitly allowed in publishers’ contracts with authors, it rarely raises copyright concerns. eScholarship , which hosts over 55,000 UC ETDs, has never received a takedown notice from a publisher based on a complaint that the author’s ETD was too similar to the author’s published work.

Incorporating the works of others in your thesis/dissertation – such as quotations or illustrative images – is often allowed by copyright law. This is the case when the original work isn’t protected by copyright, or if the way you’re using the work would be considered fair use. In some circumstances, however, you will need permission from the copyright holder.  For more information, please consult the Berkeley Library’s guide to Copyright and Publishing Your Dissertation .

For more in depth information about copyright generally, visit the UC Copyright site.

4. Where can I find UC Dissertations and Theses online?

All ten UC campuses make their electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) openly accessible to readers around the world. You can view over 55,000 UC ETDs in eScholarship , UC’s open access repository. View ETDs from each campus:

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Industrial engineering and operations research: dissertations & theses.

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Dissertations Online

UC Berkeley Dissertations 

For online access to dissertations published since 1997, see Proquest link above. To locate dissertations from a specific UC Berkeley department, search  UC Library Search  for the keywords berkeley dissertations <department name>.

Example: berkeley dissertations molecular and cell biology

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Research Help

How do i find a dissertation from uc berkeley.

The ProQuest  Dissertations and Theses  database indexes graduate dissertations from over a thousand graduate school and universities, and includes full-text access to dissertations published since 1997. The database also includes full-text dissertations from the University of California from:

• September 1962 - December 1970 and
• December 1975 - present

If you can't find a specific UC Berkeley dissertation on ProQuest, go to  UC Library Search  and use the Resource Type filter to limit your search to "Dissertations." 

If you're not on campus, and you are not a UC Berkeley student, faculty or staff member, you may be able to access UC Berkeley dissertations for a fee from ProQuest's  Dissertation Express  or, for items in our collection, using our  photoduplication services .

See also: all electronic  dissertation and thesis resources  at UC Berkeley.

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• Last Updated May 17, 2022
• Answered By Instruction Services Division

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The School of Information is UC Berkeley’s newest professional school. Located in the center of campus, the I School is a graduate research and education community committed to expanding access to information and to improving its usability, reliability, and credibility while preserving security and privacy.

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Completed Ph.D. Dissertations

Jeremy Gordon. Embodying the Future: Modeling Visually Guided Planning as Prospective Mental Simulation. Ph.D. dissertation. Advisors: John Chuang, Coye Cheshire, Steven Piantadosi, Giovanni Pezzulo. University of California, Berkeley. 2023.

Daniel Griffin.  Situating Web Searching in Data Engineering: Admissions, Extensions, Repairs, and Ownership . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisors: Deirdre K. Mulligan and Steven Weber. University of California, Berkeley. 2022.

Jonathan Gillick. Creating and Collecting Meaningful Musical Materials with Machine Learning . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: David Bamman. University of California, Berkeley. 2022.

Jonas, Anne. 2021. “Blank Slate: Freedom, Connection, and Accountability in U.S. Virtual Schools.” Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

Nitin Kohli.  Leveraging Differential Privacy While Attending to Social and Political Commitments . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: Deirdre Mulligan. University of California, Berkeley. 2021.

Doris Jung-Lin Lee. Designing Automated Assistants for Visual Data Exploration . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: Aditya G. Parameswaran. University of California, Berkeley. 2021.

Nick Doty. Enacting Privacy in Internet Standards . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: Deirdre K. Mulligan. University of California, Berkeley. 2020.

Max T. Curran.  Sensor-Mediated Empathy: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Social Biosensing . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: John Chuang. University of California, Berkeley. 2020.

Richmond Y. Wong.  Values by Design Imaginaries: Exploring Values Work in UX Practice . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: Deirdre Mulligan. University of California, Berkeley. 2020.

Howell, N. 2020. Emotional Meaning Making with Data. University of California, Berkeley.

Guanghua Chi. Migration and Social Networks: New Insights from Novel Data. Ph.D Dissertation. Advisor: Joshua E. Blumenstock. University of California, Berkeley. 2020.

Sarah Van Wart.  In search of a “fair explanation”: Helping young people to consider the possibilities, limitations, and risks of computer- and data-mediated systems . Ph.D. Dissertation. University of California, Berkeley. 2019.

Niall C. Keleher.  Economic Indicators and Social Networks: New approaches to measuring poverty, prices, and impacts of technology. Ph.D. Dissertation. Advisor: Joshua E. Blumenstock. University of California, Berkeley. 2019.

Sedenberg, Elaine. “Information-intensive innovation: the changing role of the private firm in the research ecosystem through the study of biosensed data.” PhD Diss. University of California, Berkeley, 2019.  https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1s60w39f#main

Nick Merrill.  Mind-Reading and Telepathy for Beginners and Intermediates: What People Think Machines Can Know About the Mind, and Why Their Beliefs Matter . Ph.D. Dissertation. Advisor: John Chuang. University of California, Berkeley. 2018.

Ishita Ghosh. Challenging the dominant narratives of a Digital Financial Inclusion. Ph.D Dissertation. Advisor: Jenna Burrell. University of California, Berkeley. 2018.

Khan, Muhammad Raza (2018). “Machine Learning for the Developing World using Mobile Communication Metadata” PhD dissertation., University of California, Berkeley

Jennifer King. Privacy, Disclosure, and Social Exchange Theory. Ph.D Dissertation. Advisor: Deirdre Mulligan. University of California, Berkeley. 2018.

Sebastian Benthall.  Context, Causality, and Information Flow: Implications for Privacy Engineering, Security, and Data Economics . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisors: John Chuang and Deirdre Mulligan. University of California, Berkeley. 2018.

Galen Thomas Panger.  Emotion in Social Media . Ph.D. dissertation. Advisor: Steven Weber. University of California, Berkeley. 2017.

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Ph.D. Dissertation

Once students advance to candidacy, they come under the jurisdiction of the Graduate Council , rather than that of the Jurisprudence and Social Policy Ph.D. program, and are governed by a variety of policies intended to ensure their completion of the doctoral degree.

JSP INFORMATION ON FILING YOUR DISSERTATION AND PREPARING FOR GRADUATION

Philosophy Ph.D. Program

Approved by Graduate Council and Graduate Division, Nov. 10, 2008. These requirements apply prospectively beginning with those admitted for Fall 2009. Students who entered the program under the old requirements may choose either to continue under that regime or to adopt the requirements below.

The Ph.D. program is designed to provide students with a broad knowledge of the field of philosophy, while giving them opportunities to work intensively on the issues that interest them the most. During the first stage of their graduate education, students meet the Department's course distribution requirements and prepare to take the qualifying examination. This examination assesses the student's strengths in areas chosen by the student in consultation with supervising faculty. After passing the exam, students advance to candidacy and begin writing the Ph.D. thesis. A detailed explanation of the requirements for the Ph.D. in Philosophy follows.

Before Advancing to Candidacy

During the first stage of the program, students are expected to acquire a broad background in philosophy and develop their philosophical abilities by fulfilling the following requirements:

First Year Seminar

A one-semester seminar for first-year graduate students only, conducted by two faculty members, on some central area of philosophy.

Logic Requirement

The Logic Requirement has two components:

• Completion of Philosophy 12A or its equivalent, with a grade of B+ or better.
• Completion of 140A or 140B with a grade of B+ or better. Courses with a comparable formal component including, in most cases, courses in the 140 series may satisfy this requirement, with the approval of the Graduate Advisor.

Both parts of the requirement may be fulfilled by successful completion of equivalent logic courses before arriving at Berkeley. Whether taken at Berkeley or elsewhere, courses taken in fulfillment of the logic requirement do not count towards the eight-course distribution requirement.

Course Distribution Requirement

Before taking the Qualifying Exam the student must complete eight courses at the 100- or 200-level completed with a grade of A- or higher. At least four of the eight courses must be graduate seminars. The eight courses must satisfy the following distribution requirements:

Two of the eight courses must be in the history of philosophy: one in ancient philosophy and one in modern philosophy. The courses may be on any individual philosopher or group of philosophers drawn from the following lists:

• Ancient: Plato, Aristotle
• Modern: Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel

Four of the eight courses must be in the following areas, with at least one course from each area:

• Area 1: Philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and philosophy of mathematics.
• Area 2: Metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of action
• Area 3: Ethics, political, social and legal philosophy, and aesthetics

A seventh course may be any Philosophy course in the 100 or 200 series except for 100, 195-199, 200, 250, 251 and 299.

An eighth course may be either any Philosophy course as specified above or a course from another Department which has been approved by the Graduate Advisor.

In exceptional cases, students may, at the discretion of the Graduate Advisor, meet one distribution requirement by presenting work done as a graduate student elsewhere: typically a graduate thesis or work done in a graduate-level course. Meeting a distribution requirement in this way will not count as meeting any part of the four-seminar requirement.

Language Requirement

Revised requirement approved April 4, 2022 by Graduate Council, for all graduate students who have not already passed the foreign language requirement.

Before taking the Qualifying Examination, the candidate must pass a departmental examination in a foreign language requiring the translation of 300 words in 90 minutes with the use of a dictionary. The language can be any foreign language containing a significant philosophical literature, provided that a faculty member qualified to administer the examination is available. An examination in an approved language may be waived upon approval of the Graduate Division if native ability in the language can be demonstrated through secondary school or university transcripts. A course sequence of four semesters (or six quarters), whether taken at UC or elsewhere, will be accepted in lieu of the language examination if the sequence was completed within four years of admission to Berkeley and the student earned an average grade of C or better.

The Qualifying Examination

Students should aim to take the qualifying examination by the end of the fifth enrolled semester and they must take it by the end of the sixth enrolled semester.

In order to take the examination the student must have fulfilled the department's course requirements and must have passed the language requirement.

The qualifying examination is administered by a committee of three faculty members from the department and one faculty member of another department. The members of this committee are nominated to the Graduate Division by the Graduate Advisor in consultation with the candidate.

Soon after assembling an examination committee, the candidate should, in consultation with this committee, write a 300-word description and compile a list of readings for each of three proposed topics for examination. Each topic should be centered on a major philosophical problem or question. Together the topics should reflect a balance of breadth and depth, and the Graduate Advisor must approve that they meet these criteria.

A week before the qualifying examination, the candidate should submit an overview essay of 1500-3000 words for each topic, which expands on the initial description. The essay should aim to lay out the central problem or question, to explain its importance, and to evaluate critically the attempts to resolve or answer it, with an eye to forming a view within, or about, the debate.

The qualifying examination itself will be a three-hour oral exam administered by the committee. The candidate's essays are meant to serve as a springboard for discussion in the exam. The purpose of the examination is to test the student's general mastery of philosophy. Students are expected to draw on the information, skills and understanding acquired in their graduate study and to demonstrate sufficient breadth and depth of philosophical comprehension and ability to provide a basis for proceeding toward a Ph.D.

If a student fails the qualifying examination, the examining committee may or may not recommend that a second examination be administered by the same committee. The second examination must be administered no sooner than three months and no later than six months following the first attempt. Failure on the second attempt will result in the student being automatically dismissed from the graduate program. (See Section F2.7 of the Guide to Graduate Policy .)

Students should advance to candidacy as soon as possible and they must do so no later than a year after passing the qualifying examination or the end of their sixth semester in the program, whichever comes first, to maintain satisfactory progress in the program. (An exception to the above policy will be made for those students who, having failed the qualifying exam in their sixth semester, may be granted the possibility to take it a second time in their seventh semester. In the case of a successful retake, the student must advance to candidacy by the end of the seventh semester.)

Before advancement to candidacy the student must constitute a dissertation committee consisting of two faculty members from the department and an outside faculty member from another department.

Prospectus Stage

In the semester after passing the qualifying examination the student must take two individual study courses of 4 units each with the two inside members of his or her dissertation committee for the purpose of preparing a dissertation prospectus.

The dissertation prospectus should be submitted both to the inside members of the committee and to the Graduate Advisor by the end of that semester. It should consist of about fifteen pages and outline plans for the dissertation. Alternatively, the prospectus may consist of parts of a possible chapter of the dissertation together with a short sketch of the dissertation project.

Following submission of the prospectus, the candidate will meet with the inside members of the committee for an informal discussion of the candidate's proposed research.

The Doctoral Completion Fellowship

The Doctoral Completion Fellowship (DCF) is a one-year fellowship available to graduate students who have advanced to candidacy and meet several additional conditions. Students are advised to review the eligibility requirements for the DCF .

Additional Requirements

Each student for the Ph.D. degree is expected to serve as a graduate student instructor for at least two semesters.

Dissertation seminar

Students in the first two years after declaring candidacy must register for the dissertation seminar (Philosophy 295) for at least one semester each year, during which they must present a piece of work in progress, and are expected to attend the seminar all year. (The seminar meets every other week.) All students working on dissertations are encouraged to attend the seminar.

Annual Meetings

At the end of each academic year, there will be a meeting of the student and both co-chairs of his or her dissertation committee to discuss the student’s progress over the year and his or her plans for the following year.

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Ph.D. in Economics

The Ph.D. program at Berkeley is designed for students interested in pursuing advanced study and conducting original research in Economics. The Ph.D. degree is awarded in recognition of the recipient's qualifications as a general economist and of the ability to make scholarly contributions in fields of specialization. Additionally, the Economics Ph.D. program is residential, there is no remote enrollment option. 

In advancing to the Ph.D. degree, students pass through two major stages:

• Preparation for candidacy typically takes two to three years. During the first two semesters, students take courses to achieve competence in econometric methods, methods of economic history and fundamentals of microeconomic and macroeconomic theory. During the next two years, students prepare for examination in two fields of specialization of their choosing, prepare a dissertation prospectus, and take an oral examination. When these steps are completed, students are advanced to candidacy.
• Completion of a dissertation after advancing to candidacy typically takes one to two years. The dissertation must be based on original research and represent a significant contribution to the body of Economic knowledge.

The entire process takes approximately five to six years, although some students are able to complete the program in less time. Below is an overview of the program requirements by year and other pertinent information.

The UC Berkeley College of Letters & Science   provides students helpful resources, links, and tools for successfully completing the Ph.D. in Economics.

ECONOMICS GRADUATE STUDENT SERVICES

The economics student services mission is to advise our students holistically by providing a high standard of service in a supportive and collaborative environment.  professional and peer advisors work as a team to provide accurate information in a timely manner.  we partner with faculty to assist students in engaging with the campus and the global economic community.  we value fairness, diversity, and the important roles our students, faculty, and staff in the department of economics play at the university of california, berkeley..

If you or someone you know is experiencing financial, food, housing or other basic needs challenges - you can find support and services at:  http://tinyurl.com/UCB-BNC-C19 .

Meet the members of the Economics Graduate Student Services advising team!

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Department of Film & Media UC Berkeley

Dissertations and career paths.

Eliot Bessette Dissertation: “Thinking Through Fear in Film and Haunts”

Alexandra Bush Dissertation: “Cold Storage: A Media History of the Glacier”

Jennifer Blaylock Research Associate in Cinema Studies, Bowdoin College Dissertation: “Media/Fetish: A Postcolonial Archaeology of New Media and Africa”

Dolores McElroy Lecturer, UC Berkeley Department of Film & Media Dissertation: “Passionate Failures: The Diva Onscreen”

Justin Vaccaro

Dissertation: “Human Sciences, Human Monsters: the SF-Horror Film from the 1930s to 1960s”

Fareed Ben-Youssef

Global Perspectives on Society Teaching Fellow, NYU-Shanghai Dissertation: “Visions of Power: Violence, the Law and the Post-9/11 Genre Film”

Patrick Ellis

Brittain Fellow, Georgia Tech University  Dissertation: “Aeroscopics: Spectacles of the Bird’s-Eye View”

Jennifer Pranolo

Center for Humanistic Inquiry Fellow, Amherst College  Dissertation: “Studio/World: Photography’s Other Nature”

Robert Alford

Assistant Director, Donor Relations at UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture  Dissertation:“’To Know the Words to the Music’: Spatial Circulation, Queer Discourse and the Musical”

Christopher Goetz

Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts, University of Iowa  Dissertation: “At Home Everywhere: Empowerment Fantasies in the Domestication of Videogames”

Kristen Loutensock

Dissertation: “Genre Disorder: Autism and Narrative in American Popular Culture”

Nicholas Baer

Assistant Professor of Film Studies, University of Groeningen Dissertation: “Absolute Relativity: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism”

Irene Chien

Assistant Professor of Media and Communication at Muhlenberg College  Dissertation: “Programmed Moves: Race and Embodiment in Fighting and Dancing Videogames”

Jonathan Haynes

Dissertation : “The Mid-Atlantic : Fantasmatic Genealogies of the French and American New Waves”

George Larkin

Chair of Filmmaking, Associate Professor, Woodbury University, Burbank, CA Dissertation: “Post-Production: The Invisible Revolution of Filmmaking”

Irina Leimbacher

Assistant Professor of Film Studies, Keene State College  Dissertation: “More Than Talking Heads: Nonfiction Testimony and Cinematic Form”

Erica Levin

Assistant Professor of History of Art, Ohio State University  Dissertation: “Social Media: The News in Experimental Film, Video Art, and Performance after 1960”

Kevin Wynter

Assistant Professor of Media Studies, Pomona College  Dissertation : “Feeling Absence: Horror in Cinema from Post War to Post-Wall”

Kris Fallon

Assistant Professor of Cinema and Digital Media, University of California, Davis  Dissertation: “Where Truth Lies: Political Documentary Film & Digital Media, 2000-2010”

Dissertation: “The Initimacy of Distance: South Korean Cinema and the Conditions of Capitalist Individuation”

Rielle Navitski

Assistant Professor of Theatre and Film Studies, University of Georgia  Dissertation: “Sensationalism, Cinema and the Popular Press in Mexico and Brazil, 1905-1930”

Damon Young

Assistant Professor of Film and Media and French, University of California, Berkeley  Dissertation: “Making Sex Public: Cinema and the Liberal Social Body”

Laura Horak

Associate Professor of Film Studies, Carleton University  Dissertation: “Girls Will Be Boys: Cross-Dressed Women and the Legitimation of American Silent Cinema”

Jennifer Malkowski

Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies, Smith College  Dissertation: “‘Dying in Full Detail’: Mortality and Duration in Digital Documentary”

Scott Ferguson

Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of South Florida  Research Scholar, Binzagr Institute for Sustainable Prosperity  Dissertation: “Recapitulation in close-up: Ontogeny, phylogeny, and the face of evolutionary time”

Meredith Hoy

Assistant Professor of Art History and Theory, Arizona State University  Dissertation: “From Point to Pixel: A Genealogy of Digital Aesthetics”

Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Cultural Studies, University of South Florida  Dissertation: “‘Passionate Detachment’: Technologies of Vision and Violence in American Cinema, 1967 – 1974”

Associate Professor, Media and Communications, Muhlenberg College  Dissertation: “Traveling spectators: Cinema, geography, and multiculturalism in late twentieth-century America”

Douglas Cunningham

Adjunct Professor, Professor of Humanities, BYU  Adjunct Professor of Film and Media, University of Utah  Dissertation: “Imagining Air Force identity: Masculinity, aeriality, and the films of the U.S. Army Air Forces First Motion Picture Unit”

Tung-hui Hu

Associate Professor of English, University of Michigan Postdoctoral Scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows, and Assistant Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Michigan, 2009-2012  Dissertation: “Seeing Emptiness: Berlin, Nevada, and the Space of New Media”

Anupama Kapse

Associate Professor of Film Studies, Loyola Marymount University  Film and Media Studies, Queens College, City University of New York  Dissertation: “The moving image: melodrama and early Indian cinema 1913-1939”

Associate Professor of Critical Studies, School of Cinema, San Francisco State University Dissertation: “Life and death in the cinema of Weimar Germany, 1919-1924”

Hoang Tan Nguyen

Associate Professor of Literature and Cultural Studies, UC San Diego  Dissertation: “A view from the bottom: Asian American masculinity and sexual representation”

Scott Combs

Associate Professor of English, St. John’s University in Queens, New York City  Dissertation: “Final touches: Registering death in American cinema”

Minette Hillyer

Lecturer, Department of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand  Dissertation : “Making home: Film and the modern American everyday”

Ara Osterweil

Assistant Professor, Department of English, McGill University  Dissertation: “Flesh cinema: The corporeal avant-garde 1959-1979”

Guo-Juin Hong

Associate Professor, Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies; Director, Program in the Arts of the Moving Image; Academic Director, Duke in LA Program; Duke University Dissertation: “Cinematograph of history: Post/colonial modernity in 1930s Shanghai and new Taiwanese cinema since 1982”

Maria St John

Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UC San Francisco; Chair, Feminist Psychology Program, New College Graduate Psychiatry Program  Dissertation: “The mammy fantasy: Psychoanalysis, race, and the ideology of absolute maternity”

Frank Wilderson

Professor, African-American Studies and Drama, UC Irvine  Dissertation: “Settler, ‘savage’, slave : cinema and the structure of U.S. antagonisms”

Dissertation: “Acoustic graffiti: The rock soundtrack in contemporary American cinema”

Domietta Torlasco

Associate Professor of Italian and Comparative Literature, Northwestern University  Dissertation: “Undoing the scene of the crime: Time and vision in Italian cinema”

Lecturer, Writing Program, University of California, Santa Barbara  Dissertation: “Beowulf in Hollywood: Popular Film as Folktale and Legend”

Catherine Zimmer

Associate Professor of English, Pace University  Dissertation : “Film on film: Self-reflexivity and moving image technology”

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

Designated Emphasis

Juan Ospina Leon (Spanish and Portuguese, 2015)

Asst. Professor of Hispanic Studies, Dept. of Modern Languages and Literatures, The Catholic University of America

Todd Barnes (Rhetoric, 2010)

Associate Professor of Literature, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Mona El-Sherif (Political Science, 2010)

Assistant Professor of Arabic, Colorado College

David Pettersen (French, 2008)

Associate Professor of Film Studies, and French Languages and Literatures, University of Pittsburgh

Elisabeth Anker (Political Science, 2007)

Associate Professor, American Studies, George Washington University

Zeynep Gürsel (Anthropology, 2007)

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Macalester College

June Hwang (German, 2007)

Associate Professor of German, University of Rochester

Rani Neutill (Ethnic Studies, 2007)

Harvard University, Committee on Degrees in History and Literature

Polina Barskova (Slavic, 2006)

Associate Professor of Russian Literature; Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies Faculty, Hampshire College

Jane McGonigal (Performance Studies, 2006)

Games designer and researcher, lecturer, consultant

Christopher Oscarson (Scandinavian, 2006)

Associate Professor, Department of Humanities, Classics and Comparative Literature, Brigham Young University

Minh-ha T. Pham (Ethnic Studies, 2006)

Associate Professor/Faculty Fellow of Social and Cultural Analysis, Pratt institute

Andrey Shcherbenok (Rhetoric, 2006)

Three-year post-doc, Columbia University, Society of Fellows; since 2010, Fellow, Russian and Slavonic Studies, The University of Sheffield

Reid Davis (Performance Studies, 2005)

Adjunct Professor, Department of Performing Arts, Saint Mary’s College, Moraga; also works extensively as a theater director.

Deborah Shamoon (Japanese, 2005)

Associate Professor, East Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Notre Dame

Andrew Uroskie (Rhetoric, 2005)

Associate Professor, Art Department, Stony Brook University (fields of specialization: Late Modern and Contemporary Art, Photography and the Moving Image)

Christopher Caes (Slavic, 2004)

Lecturer in Polish/Acting Director, East Central European Center, Columbia University

Kirsten Cather (Japanese, 2004)

Associate Professor, Asian Studies, University of Texas, Austin

José Alaniz (Comparative Literature, 2003)

Associate Professor, Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Washington

Jennifer Kapczynski (German, 2003)

Assistant Professor, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Washington University, St Louis

Arne Lunde (Scandinavian, 2003)

Associate Professor, The Scandinavian Section, University of California, Los Angeles

Lucia Galleno (Spanish and Portuguese, 2002)

Associate Professor, Queens University, Charlotte, North Carolina

Jared Sexton (Ethnic Studies, 2002)

Associate Professor, African American Studies and Film and Media Studies, School of Humanities, University of California, Irvine

Cari Borja (Anthropology, 2001)

Clothes designer. See Cariborja.com

Lilya Kaganovsky (Comparative Literature, 2000)

Professor of Comparative Literature, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Graduate Program

Phd requirements.

The Political Science department at UC Berkeley admits students only for the Ph.D. degree. The Ph.D. program has two major phases: coursework and examinations, and dissertation research and writing. The two phases typically take approximately five or six years (three years to candidacy and two or three for dissertation research and writing).

The coursework and examination phase requires 40 units (typically 10 classes) of graduate-level coursework and competence in three of nine  Subfields . Subfield competence is demonstrated through written exams offered each semester. The Field Exams are typically taken in the student's second and third years of the program. All students must pass one exam in a major subfield (Comparative, American, International Relations, or History of Political Theory). Competency in a second and third subfield may be demonstrated by taking a prescribed series of courses in that field with a combined GPA of 3.5.

The particular sequence of courses that a student takes in preparation for the comprehensive exams is not prescribed. Rather, the faculty assist students with selection of courses that best meet their intellectual and academic interests. There are no formal foreign language or statistics requirements although many students will find that their program of study and dissertation research will require the engagement of particular foreign language or methodology coursework.

When the coursework and examination requirements have been met, the student prepares a prospectus for dissertation research. The student convenes a committee known as the Qualifying Exam (QE) committee. The Qualifying Exam committee advises on the prospectus and examines the student on specific research plans. Berkeley is highly committed to interdisciplinary scholarly engagement and this is codified in the requirement that both the Qualifying Exam committee and the dissertation committee include a faculty member from another department at Berkeley. Engagement with members of the faculty from other departments should commence during the coursework stage so that the advisement and input of the "outside member" is represented in the prospectus.

When sufficient preparation for the proposed research has been demonstrated to the Qualifying Exam committee, the student is advanced to doctoral candidacy. It is expected (and for most funding packages, required) that students advance to doctoral candidacy by the end of their third year.

Doctoral candidacy initiates the second phase of the program during which the student normally devotes full attention to the research and writing of the dissertation. The student's dissertation committee is typically comprised of the members of the Qualifying Exam committee although there are sometimes changes in committee membership as the research evolves. The doctorate is awarded when the student submits a satisfactory dissertation to the dissertation committee. A reasonable estimate of the research and writing phase of the program is approximately two to three years although students whose dissertations require more extensive research may take longer to earn their degree.

• Second year
• Sixth year and beyond

The second year is used to further narrow down one's interests and to continue exploring ideas and potential advisors for a dissertation topic. Coursework continues as students prepare for the M.A./Second Year Paper and Field Exam.

Students who plan to continue in the Ph.D. program are expected to engage in advanced topical research leading to a research paper to be completed by the end of the second year, together with any additional coursework appropriate to their topical focus. Three faculty members (one of whom is selected by the student and serves as principal advisor for the paper) will review this paper. This paper, which continuing students will submit at the end of their second year, also serves as the M.A. project.

Completion of a yearlong graduate seminar (Research & Writing 290A and 290B) during the second year is strongly recommended.  Each student taking this course is advised by a faculty advisor external to the course (who will also serve as one reviewer of the second-year paper) as well as the two co-instructors of the seminar. The goal of the seminar is to assist students in preparing a high-quality research paper, which will serve as the M.A./Second-year paper as mentioned above.

All students are reviewed at the end of the second year of study on their continued overall academic performance. This overall evaluation will include GPA, successful completion of all required units, and successful completion of the M.A./Second-year paper. The Graduate Studies Committee will take these factors as well as the rigor of the academic program and the number of incompletes into consideration when determining whether to invite the student to continue in the PhD program.

Students in their second year also usually serve as a Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs), which are 20-hour per week positions

During the third year, most students continue to teach as GSIs and complete their coursework in addition to taking their Field Exam. Political Science graduate students must show competency in three Subfield specialties to be eligible to sit for the oral prospectus defense (known formally as the Qualifying Exam). Instead of sitting for three Field Exams, students have the option to "course out" of two field specialties by taking a prescribed set of three-four courses in the Subfield.

Students may sit for the Field Exam as early as the beginning of the second year, but if desired, students may sit for an exam in their second year or in the third year. Field Exams are offered at the beginning of the Fall and Spring semesters. All students are expected to have completed their Field Exam, to have “coursed out” of a two fields, and to have written and defended their dissertation prospectus (passed their Qualifying Exam) by the end of the third year. It is highly recommended (and essential to most funding packages) that students advance to Doctoral Candidacy by the end of the third year. The third year is also when students should begin to apply for extramural fellowships to support their dissertation research.

Doctoral (Ph.D.) Program

In order to receive the Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering, all students must successfully complete the following three milestones:

• Required coursework: major and minor requirements
• Departmental Exams: first year screening exams and the oral qualifying exam

Dissertation

Major Field Requirement

The major field is always defined as “Nuclear Engineering”, not the student’s specific research area.  All six courses required for this field must be NE courses in the department.  Occasionally students may petition to include courses taught by NE faculty in other departments.

Minor Requirements (two minors required)

In addition to a major field, each student must select two minor fields that serve to broaden the base of the studies and lend support to the major field. Each minor program field should have an orientation different from the major program.  Typically, at least one minor field consists of regular courses taken outside the department (i.e., no 298 or 299 independent studies or non-graded courses).  Each field must contain at least 6 units of course credit.

Department Exams

Screening Exam

During the first year in graduate study, students must pass the screening exams, consisting of four written exams in four different subject areas. Choose four subjects from the following eight subject areas: (1) radiation detection, (2) heat transfer and fluid mechanics, (3) nuclear physics,(4) neutronics, (5) fusion theory, (6) nuclear materials, (7) radioactive waste management, and (8) Radio Biophysics. All graduate students, whether MS or PhD students, must pass four screening exams during the first year of study if they wish to be admitted to, or continue into the PhD program.

Qualifying Exam (QE)

After completing the required coursework for the PhD the student takes the oral Qualifying Exam (QE).  Students must apply to the Graduate Division to take the QE no later than three weeks before the exam date, and they they are required to list at least three subject areas to be covered during the examination, as well as the members of their QE exam committee.

Advancement to PhD candidacy 

After passing the QE, the student submits an application for advancement to PhD candidacy to the Graduate Division.  The application should be submitted no later than the end of the semester following the one in which the student passed the QE.

Non-resident students who have been advanced to PhD candidacy are eligible for a waiver of the non-resident tuition fee for a maximum calendar period of three years.

Candidacy for the doctorate is only valid for a limited time.  The Graduate Division informs the student of the number of semesters they are eligible to be a PhD candidate. Students who do not complete the dissertation within that time, plus a two-year grace period, will have their candidacy lapsed.

In order to receive a degree in any given term, all work for the degree must be completed by the last day of the term.  Students must meet the Graduate Division eligibility requirements to file a dissertation .

A dissertation on a subject chosen by the candidate, bearing on the principal subject of the student's major study and demonstrating the candidate's ability to carry out independent investigation, must be completed and receive the approval of the dissertation committee and the dean of the Graduate Division.   Students should consult " Dissertation Writing and Filing " on the Graduate Division's website.

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Recent Dissertations

Physics ph.d. degrees - spring 2022.

Juan Camilo Buitrago Casas Advisor: Stuart Bale On the Sun's faintest coronal hard X-rays

David Dunsky Advisor: Lawrence Hall Fingerprints of High Energy Physics Beyond Colliders

Satcher Hsieh Advisor: Norman Yao Quantum sensing at high pressures using nitrogen-vacancy centers in diamond

Francisco Leal Machado Advisor: Norman Yao Out-of-equilibrium dynamics and phases of matter in Atomic, Molecular and Optical systems

Zengyi Li Advisors: Mike DeWeese and Friedrich Sommer Entropy in Unsupervised Machine Learning

Nikola Maksimovic Advisor: James Analytis Advances in nearly-magnetic superconductivity

Bradley Mitchell Advisor: Irfan Siddiqi Investigating Microwave-Activated Entangling Gates on Superconducting Quantum Processors

Christopher Olund Advisor: Norman Yao State Structure and Operator Dynamics in Quantum Many-Body Systems: from s-Sourcery to Strong Zero Modes

Leon Otis Advisors: Jeffrey Neaton and Eric Neuscamman Optimization Algorithms in Variational Monte Carlo for Molecular Excited States

Eric Parsonnet Advisor: R. Ramesh Dynamics and Methods of Manipulating Ferroic Order in BiFeO3 and Related Materials

Elizabeth Peterson Advisor: Jeffrey Neaton First-principles studies of complex functional oxides and chalcogenides

Sai Neha Santpur Advisor: Marjorie Shapiro Search for Non-pointing and Delayed Photons in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector

Conrad Stansbury Advisor: Alessandra Lanzara Cohesive Experimental and Analysis Techniques for Angle Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy

QinQin Yu Advisor: Oskar Hallatschek Empirical tools for studying genetic drift in microbial populations

Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Fall 2021

Roger Huang Advisor: Yury Kolomensky Searching for 0νββ Decay with CUORE and CUPID

Oliver Jeong Advisor: Adrian Lee Development of Simons Array Optics for Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimetry

Matthew Kramer Advisor: Kam-Biu Luk Robust Measurement of Mixing Parameters $\sin^2 2\theta_{13}$ and $\Delta m^2_{ee}$ with Reactor Antineutrinos at Daya Bay

Jonathan Han Son Ma Advisors: Naomi Ginsberg and Patrick Naulleau Understanding Radiation Physics and Chemistry of Extreme Ultraviolet Resists

Nathan Ng Advisors: Jeffrey Neaton and Eran Rabani Aspects of localization in centrally coupled systems

Kelsey Oliver-Mallory Advisors: Robert Jacobsen and Kevin Lesko Backgrounds in LUX and LZ: Extending the Sensitivity of LUX to Low-mass Dark Matter

Dylan Rees Advisor: Joseph Orenstein Nonlinear Optical Properties of the Chiral Weyl Semimetal RhSi

Fernando Torales Acosta Advisor: Barbara Jacak Isolated Photon Hadron Correlations in √sNN = 5.02 TeV pp and p–Pb Collisions

Physics Ph.D. Degrees - Summer 2021

Vyassa Baratham Adviser: Michael DeWeese and Kristofer Bouchard Constraining Ill-Posed Inverse Problems in Neural Electrophysiology via Biophysically Detailed Forward Simulation

Micah Brush Adviser: Oskar Hallatschek and John Harte Macroecological Patterns Out Of Steady State

Venkatesa Chandrasekaran Adviser: Raphael Bousso Classical and Quantum Aspects of Black Holes and Spacetime

Ahmet Coskuner Adviser: Lawrence Hall and Kathryn Zurek Dark Matter Detection Phenomenology

Siva Darbha Adviser: Daniel Kasen Signatures from Aspherical Kilonovae and Unconventional Tidal Disruption Events

Hannah Klion Adviser: Eliot Quataert Monte Carlo Radiation Transport Simulations of Asymmetric Neutron Star Mergers

Jonathan Liu Adviser: Hernan Garcia Investigating the Dynamics of Non-Equilibrium Behavior in Eukaryotic Transcriptional Regulation

Stephen Martis Adviser: Oskar Hallatschek Eco-evolutionary dynamics in high dimensions

Christopher Mogni Adviser: Petr Horava Quantum Gravity Beyond Equilibrium

Stephen Randall Adviser: Petr Horava Topological Quantum Gravity of the Ricci Flow

Pratik Sachdeva Adviser: Michael DeWeese and Kristofer Bouchard The impact of correlated variability on models of neural coding

Tianrui Xu Adviser: Joel Moore Quantum Dynamics of Correlated Fermions In- and Out-of-Equilibrium

Vector Microprocessors

Krste asanović.

Constructing Taxonomies from Pretrained Language Models

Catherine chen and kevin lin and daniel klein, eecs department, university of california, berkeley, technical report no. ucb/eecs-2024-141, may 31, 2024, http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/pubs/techrpts/2024/eecs-2024-141.pdf.

We present a method for constructing taxonomic trees (e.g., WORDNET) using pretrained language models. Our approach is composed of two modules, one that predicts parenthood relations and another that reconciles those predictions into trees. The parenthood prediction module produces likelihood scores for each potential parent-child pair, creating a graph of parent-child relation scores. The tree reconciliation module treats the task as a graph optimization problem and outputs the maximum spanning tree of this graph. We train our model on subtrees sampled from WORDNET, and test on nonoverlapping WORDNET subtrees. We show that incorporating web-retrieved glosses can further improve performance. On the task of constructing subtrees of English WORDNET, the model achieves 66.7 ancestor F1, a 20.0% relative increase over the previous best published result on this task. In addition, we convert the original English dataset into nine other languages using OPEN MULTILINGUAL WORDNET and extend our results across these languages.

Advisors: Daniel Klein and Jack Gallant

BibTeX citation:

EndNote citation:

The combinatorics of h*-polynomials of rational polytopes

Author:  Esme Bajo Sylvie Corteel Matthais Beck Publication date:  May 10, 2024 Publication type:  PhD Thesis (Author field refers to student + advisor)

PhD-Year-2024

The combinatorics of h*-polynomials of rational polytopes.

• Read more about The combinatorics of h*-polynomials of rational polytopes

A boundary value problem on manifolds with boundary

• Read more about A boundary value problem on manifolds with boundary

The Burau representation and Euclidean cone surfaces

• Read more about The Burau representation and Euclidean cone surfaces

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PhD candidate wins two prestigious fellowships for research into road safety in the age of Uber Eats

Cheng-Kai (Kai) Hsu's findings highlight the need for regulatory oversight to protect vulnerable gig workers and the public.

Cheng-Kai (Kai) Hsu, a PhD candidate in the Department of City & Regional Planning, has been honored with two prestigious fellowship awards: the Institute of Research on Labor and Employment Dissertation Fellowship and the Roselyn Lindheim Award in Environmental Design and Public Health. The IRLE Dissertation Fellowship recognizes Kai’s research into occupational road safety among those working in Taiwan’s on-demand food-delivery sector. The Roselyn Lindheim Award supports his interdisciplinary investigation into the impact of urban heat on increasing road traffic injury risks in Taiwan and Latin America.

Kai’s dissertation, tentatively titled “Heat Exposure and Road Safety in the Era of a Changing Climate and the Precariousness of the Gig Economy: Evidence from Taiwan and Latin America,” explores the complex interplay between road safety dynamics, global warming, and the evolving gig economy. Utilizing wearable sensors, AI image recognition, and advanced biostatistical techniques, he aims to understand how factors like high heat exposure and precarious work structures contribute to traffic injuries and risky driving behavior.

Spanning six cities in Taiwan and 272 cities in Latin America, Kai's research has policy implications for the enhancement of road safety in tropical regions. Gig economy workers in these areas often use motorcycles, whose open designs offer little physical protection and expose their riders to high heat. In addition, the gig economy business model may exacerbate risky driving behaviors such as speeding, harsh acceleration, and tailgating, among food-delivery workers. Kai's findings point to the urgent need for regulatory oversight to safeguard the road safety of this vulnerable occupational group and the general public.

This recognition and the accompanying support significantly strengthen Kai's dissertation research as he enters his last  year of the PhD program.