thesis 2 parts

While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

• Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
• Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
• Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
• Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
• Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
• picture_as_pdf Thesis

Thesis Statements

What this handout is about.

This handout describes what a thesis statement is, how thesis statements work in your writing, and how you can craft or refine one for your draft.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you’ll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence near the beginning of your paper (most often, at the end of the first paragraph) that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively. (Check out our handout on understanding assignments for more information.)

How do I create a thesis?

A thesis is the result of a lengthy thinking process. Formulating a thesis is not the first thing you do after reading an essay assignment. Before you develop an argument on any topic, you have to collect and organize evidence, look for possible relationships between known facts (such as surprising contrasts or similarities), and think about the significance of these relationships. Once you do this thinking, you will probably have a “working thesis” that presents a basic or main idea and an argument that you think you can support with evidence. Both the argument and your thesis are likely to need adjustment along the way.

Writers use all kinds of techniques to stimulate their thinking and to help them clarify relationships or comprehend the broader significance of a topic and arrive at a thesis statement. For more ideas on how to get started, see our handout on brainstorming .

How do I know if my thesis is strong?

If there’s time, run it by your instructor or make an appointment at the Writing Center to get some feedback. Even if you do not have time to get advice elsewhere, you can do some thesis evaluation of your own. When reviewing your first draft and its working thesis, ask yourself the following :

• Do I answer the question? Re-reading the question prompt after constructing a working thesis can help you fix an argument that misses the focus of the question. If the prompt isn’t phrased as a question, try to rephrase it. For example, “Discuss the effect of X on Y” can be rephrased as “What is the effect of X on Y?”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? If your thesis simply states facts that no one would, or even could, disagree with, it’s possible that you are simply providing a summary, rather than making an argument.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? Thesis statements that are too vague often do not have a strong argument. If your thesis contains words like “good” or “successful,” see if you could be more specific: why is something “good”; what specifically makes something “successful”?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? If a reader’s first response is likely to  be “So what?” then you need to clarify, to forge a relationship, or to connect to a larger issue.
• Does my essay support my thesis specifically and without wandering? If your thesis and the body of your essay do not seem to go together, one of them has to change. It’s okay to change your working thesis to reflect things you have figured out in the course of writing your paper. Remember, always reassess and revise your writing as necessary.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? If a reader’s first response is “how?” or “why?” your thesis may be too open-ended and lack guidance for the reader. See what you can add to give the reader a better take on your position right from the beginning.

Suppose you are taking a course on contemporary communication, and the instructor hands out the following essay assignment: “Discuss the impact of social media on public awareness.” Looking back at your notes, you might start with this working thesis:

Social media impacts public awareness in both positive and negative ways.

You can use the questions above to help you revise this general statement into a stronger thesis.

• Do I answer the question? You can analyze this if you rephrase “discuss the impact” as “what is the impact?” This way, you can see that you’ve answered the question only very generally with the vague “positive and negative ways.”
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not likely. Only people who maintain that social media has a solely positive or solely negative impact could disagree.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? No. What are the positive effects? What are the negative effects?
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? No. Why are they positive? How are they positive? What are their causes? Why are they negative? How are they negative? What are their causes?
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? No. Why should anyone care about the positive and/or negative impact of social media?

After thinking about your answers to these questions, you decide to focus on the one impact you feel strongly about and have strong evidence for:

Because not every voice on social media is reliable, people have become much more critical consumers of information, and thus, more informed voters.

This version is a much stronger thesis! It answers the question, takes a specific position that others can challenge, and it gives a sense of why it matters.

Let’s try another. Suppose your literature professor hands out the following assignment in a class on the American novel: Write an analysis of some aspect of Mark Twain’s novel Huckleberry Finn. “This will be easy,” you think. “I loved Huckleberry Finn!” You grab a pad of paper and write:

Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn is a great American novel.

You begin to analyze your thesis:

• Do I answer the question? No. The prompt asks you to analyze some aspect of the novel. Your working thesis is a statement of general appreciation for the entire novel.

Think about aspects of the novel that are important to its structure or meaning—for example, the role of storytelling, the contrasting scenes between the shore and the river, or the relationships between adults and children. Now you write:

In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain develops a contrast between life on the river and life on the shore.

• Do I answer the question? Yes!
• Have I taken a position that others might challenge or oppose? Not really. This contrast is well-known and accepted.
• Is my thesis statement specific enough? It’s getting there–you have highlighted an important aspect of the novel for investigation. However, it’s still not clear what your analysis will reveal.
• Does my thesis pass the “how and why?” test? Not yet. Compare scenes from the book and see what you discover. Free write, make lists, jot down Huck’s actions and reactions and anything else that seems interesting.
• Does my thesis pass the “So what?” test? What’s the point of this contrast? What does it signify?”

After examining the evidence and considering your own insights, you write:

Through its contrasting river and shore scenes, Twain’s Huckleberry Finn suggests that to find the true expression of American democratic ideals, one must leave “civilized” society and go back to nature.

This final thesis statement presents an interpretation of a literary work based on an analysis of its content. Of course, for the essay itself to be successful, you must now present evidence from the novel that will convince the reader of your interpretation.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Anson, Chris M., and Robert A. Schwegler. 2010. The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers , 6th ed. New York: Longman.

Lunsford, Andrea A. 2015. The St. Martin’s Handbook , 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s.

Ramage, John D., John C. Bean, and June Johnson. 2018. The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing , 8th ed. New York: Pearson.

Ruszkiewicz, John J., Christy Friend, Daniel Seward, and Maxine Hairston. 2010. The Scott, Foresman Handbook for Writers , 9th ed. Boston: Pearson Education.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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How to write a thesis statement + examples

What is a thesis statement?

Is a thesis statement a question, how do you write a good thesis statement, how do i know if my thesis statement is good, examples of thesis statements, helpful resources on how to write a thesis statement, frequently asked questions about writing a thesis statement, related articles.

A thesis statement is the main argument of your paper or thesis.

The thesis statement is one of the most important elements of any piece of academic writing . It is a brief statement of your paper’s main argument. Essentially, you are stating what you will be writing about.

You can see your thesis statement as an answer to a question. While it also contains the question, it should really give an answer to the question with new information and not just restate or reiterate it.

Your thesis statement is part of your introduction. Learn more about how to write a good thesis introduction in our introduction guide .

A thesis statement is not a question. A statement must be arguable and provable through evidence and analysis. While your thesis might stem from a research question, it should be in the form of a statement.

Tip: A thesis statement is typically 1-2 sentences. For a longer project like a thesis, the statement may be several sentences or a paragraph.

A good thesis statement needs to do the following:

• Condense the main idea of your thesis into one or two sentences.
• Answer your project’s main research question.
• Clearly state your position in relation to the topic .
• Make an argument that requires support or evidence.

Once you have written down a thesis statement, check if it fulfills the following criteria:

• Your statement needs to be provable by evidence. As an argument, a thesis statement needs to be debatable.
• Your statement needs to be precise. Do not give away too much information in the thesis statement and do not load it with unnecessary information.
• Your statement cannot say that one solution is simply right or simply wrong as a matter of fact. You should draw upon verified facts to persuade the reader of your solution, but you cannot just declare something as right or wrong.

As previously mentioned, your thesis statement should answer a question.

If the question is:

What do you think the City of New York should do to reduce traffic congestion?

A good thesis statement restates the question and answers it:

In this paper, I will argue that the City of New York should focus on providing exclusive lanes for public transport and adaptive traffic signals to reduce traffic congestion by the year 2035.

Here is another example. If the question is:

How can we end poverty?

A good thesis statement should give more than one solution to the problem in question:

In this paper, I will argue that introducing universal basic income can help reduce poverty and positively impact the way we work.

• The Writing Center of the University of North Carolina has a list of questions to ask to see if your thesis is strong .

A thesis statement is part of the introduction of your paper. It is usually found in the first or second paragraph to let the reader know your research purpose from the beginning.

In general, a thesis statement should have one or two sentences. But the length really depends on the overall length of your project. Take a look at our guide about the length of thesis statements for more insight on this topic.

Here is a list of Thesis Statement Examples that will help you understand better how to write them.

Every good essay should include a thesis statement as part of its introduction, no matter the academic level. Of course, if you are a high school student you are not expected to have the same type of thesis as a PhD student.

Here is a great YouTube tutorial showing How To Write An Essay: Thesis Statements .

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Home » Thesis – Structure, Example and Writing Guide

Thesis – Structure, Example and Writing Guide

Table of contents.

Definition:

Thesis is a scholarly document that presents a student’s original research and findings on a particular topic or question. It is usually written as a requirement for a graduate degree program and is intended to demonstrate the student’s mastery of the subject matter and their ability to conduct independent research.

History of Thesis

The concept of a thesis can be traced back to ancient Greece, where it was used as a way for students to demonstrate their knowledge of a particular subject. However, the modern form of the thesis as a scholarly document used to earn a degree is a relatively recent development.

The origin of the modern thesis can be traced back to medieval universities in Europe. During this time, students were required to present a “disputation” in which they would defend a particular thesis in front of their peers and faculty members. These disputations served as a way to demonstrate the student’s mastery of the subject matter and were often the final requirement for earning a degree.

In the 17th century, the concept of the thesis was formalized further with the creation of the modern research university. Students were now required to complete a research project and present their findings in a written document, which would serve as the basis for their degree.

The modern thesis as we know it today has evolved over time, with different disciplines and institutions adopting their own standards and formats. However, the basic elements of a thesis – original research, a clear research question, a thorough review of the literature, and a well-argued conclusion – remain the same.

Structure of Thesis

The structure of a thesis may vary slightly depending on the specific requirements of the institution, department, or field of study, but generally, it follows a specific format.

Here’s a breakdown of the structure of a thesis:

This is the first page of the thesis that includes the title of the thesis, the name of the author, the name of the institution, the department, the date, and any other relevant information required by the institution.

This is a brief summary of the thesis that provides an overview of the research question, methodology, findings, and conclusions.

This page provides a list of all the chapters and sections in the thesis and their page numbers.

Introduction

This chapter provides an overview of the research question, the context of the research, and the purpose of the study. The introduction should also outline the methodology and the scope of the research.

Literature Review

This chapter provides a critical analysis of the relevant literature on the research topic. It should demonstrate the gap in the existing knowledge and justify the need for the research.

Methodology

This chapter provides a detailed description of the research methods used to gather and analyze data. It should explain the research design, the sampling method, data collection techniques, and data analysis procedures.

This chapter presents the findings of the research. It should include tables, graphs, and charts to illustrate the results.

This chapter interprets the results and relates them to the research question. It should explain the significance of the findings and their implications for the research topic.

This chapter summarizes the key findings and the main conclusions of the research. It should also provide recommendations for future research.

This section provides a list of all the sources cited in the thesis. The citation style may vary depending on the requirements of the institution or the field of study.

This section includes any additional material that supports the research, such as raw data, survey questionnaires, or other relevant documents.

How to write Thesis

Here are some steps to help you write a thesis:

• Choose a Topic: The first step in writing a thesis is to choose a topic that interests you and is relevant to your field of study. You should also consider the scope of the topic and the availability of resources for research.
• Develop a Research Question: Once you have chosen a topic, you need to develop a research question that you will answer in your thesis. The research question should be specific, clear, and feasible.
• Conduct a Literature Review: Before you start your research, you need to conduct a literature review to identify the existing knowledge and gaps in the field. This will help you refine your research question and develop a research methodology.
• Develop a Research Methodology: Once you have refined your research question, you need to develop a research methodology that includes the research design, data collection methods, and data analysis procedures.
• Collect and Analyze Data: After developing your research methodology, you need to collect and analyze data. This may involve conducting surveys, interviews, experiments, or analyzing existing data.
• Write the Thesis: Once you have analyzed the data, you need to write the thesis. The thesis should follow a specific structure that includes an introduction, literature review, methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, and references.
• Edit and Proofread: After completing the thesis, you need to edit and proofread it carefully. You should also have someone else review it to ensure that it is clear, concise, and free of errors.
• Submit the Thesis: Finally, you need to submit the thesis to your academic advisor or committee for review and evaluation.

Example of Thesis

Example of Thesis template for Students:

Title of Thesis

Table of Contents:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Chapter 3: Research Methodology

Chapter 4: Results

Chapter 5: Discussion

Chapter 6: Conclusion

References:

Appendices:

Note: That’s just a basic template, but it should give you an idea of the structure and content that a typical thesis might include. Be sure to consult with your department or supervisor for any specific formatting requirements they may have. Good luck with your thesis!

Application of Thesis

Thesis is an important academic document that serves several purposes. Here are some of the applications of thesis:

• Academic Requirement: A thesis is a requirement for many academic programs, especially at the graduate level. It is an essential component of the evaluation process and demonstrates the student’s ability to conduct original research and contribute to the knowledge in their field.
• Career Advancement: A thesis can also help in career advancement. Employers often value candidates who have completed a thesis as it demonstrates their research skills, critical thinking abilities, and their dedication to their field of study.
• Publication : A thesis can serve as a basis for future publications in academic journals, books, or conference proceedings. It provides the researcher with an opportunity to present their research to a wider audience and contribute to the body of knowledge in their field.
• Personal Development: Writing a thesis is a challenging task that requires time, dedication, and perseverance. It provides the student with an opportunity to develop critical thinking, research, and writing skills that are essential for their personal and professional development.
• Impact on Society: The findings of a thesis can have an impact on society by addressing important issues, providing insights into complex problems, and contributing to the development of policies and practices.

Purpose of Thesis

The purpose of a thesis is to present original research findings in a clear and organized manner. It is a formal document that demonstrates a student’s ability to conduct independent research and contribute to the knowledge in their field of study. The primary purposes of a thesis are:

• To Contribute to Knowledge: The main purpose of a thesis is to contribute to the knowledge in a particular field of study. By conducting original research and presenting their findings, the student adds new insights and perspectives to the existing body of knowledge.
• To Demonstrate Research Skills: A thesis is an opportunity for the student to demonstrate their research skills. This includes the ability to formulate a research question, design a research methodology, collect and analyze data, and draw conclusions based on their findings.
• To Develop Critical Thinking: Writing a thesis requires critical thinking and analysis. The student must evaluate existing literature and identify gaps in the field, as well as develop and defend their own ideas.
• To Provide Evidence of Competence : A thesis provides evidence of the student’s competence in their field of study. It demonstrates their ability to apply theoretical concepts to real-world problems, and their ability to communicate their ideas effectively.
• To Facilitate Career Advancement : Completing a thesis can help the student advance their career by demonstrating their research skills and dedication to their field of study. It can also provide a basis for future publications, presentations, or research projects.

When to Write Thesis

The timing for writing a thesis depends on the specific requirements of the academic program or institution. In most cases, the opportunity to write a thesis is typically offered at the graduate level, but there may be exceptions.

Generally, students should plan to write their thesis during the final year of their graduate program. This allows sufficient time for conducting research, analyzing data, and writing the thesis. It is important to start planning the thesis early and to identify a research topic and research advisor as soon as possible.

In some cases, students may be able to write a thesis as part of an undergraduate program or as an independent research project outside of an academic program. In such cases, it is important to consult with faculty advisors or mentors to ensure that the research is appropriately designed and executed.

It is important to note that the process of writing a thesis can be time-consuming and requires a significant amount of effort and dedication. It is important to plan accordingly and to allocate sufficient time for conducting research, analyzing data, and writing the thesis.

Characteristics of Thesis

The characteristics of a thesis vary depending on the specific academic program or institution. However, some general characteristics of a thesis include:

• Originality : A thesis should present original research findings or insights. It should demonstrate the student’s ability to conduct independent research and contribute to the knowledge in their field of study.
• Clarity : A thesis should be clear and concise. It should present the research question, methodology, findings, and conclusions in a logical and organized manner. It should also be well-written, with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
• Research-Based: A thesis should be based on rigorous research, which involves collecting and analyzing data from various sources. The research should be well-designed, with appropriate research methods and techniques.
• Evidence-Based : A thesis should be based on evidence, which means that all claims made in the thesis should be supported by data or literature. The evidence should be properly cited using appropriate citation styles.
• Critical Thinking: A thesis should demonstrate the student’s ability to critically analyze and evaluate information. It should present the student’s own ideas and arguments, and engage with existing literature in the field.
• Academic Style : A thesis should adhere to the conventions of academic writing. It should be well-structured, with clear headings and subheadings, and should use appropriate academic language.

Advantages of Thesis

There are several advantages to writing a thesis, including:

• Development of Research Skills: Writing a thesis requires extensive research and analytical skills. It helps to develop the student’s research skills, including the ability to formulate research questions, design and execute research methodologies, collect and analyze data, and draw conclusions based on their findings.
• Contribution to Knowledge: Writing a thesis provides an opportunity for the student to contribute to the knowledge in their field of study. By conducting original research, they can add new insights and perspectives to the existing body of knowledge.
• Preparation for Future Research: Completing a thesis prepares the student for future research projects. It provides them with the necessary skills to design and execute research methodologies, analyze data, and draw conclusions based on their findings.
• Career Advancement: Writing a thesis can help to advance the student’s career. It demonstrates their research skills and dedication to their field of study, and provides a basis for future publications, presentations, or research projects.
• Personal Growth: Completing a thesis can be a challenging and rewarding experience. It requires dedication, hard work, and perseverance. It can help the student to develop self-confidence, independence, and a sense of accomplishment.

Limitations of Thesis

There are also some limitations to writing a thesis, including:

• Time and Resources: Writing a thesis requires a significant amount of time and resources. It can be a time-consuming and expensive process, as it may involve conducting original research, analyzing data, and producing a lengthy document.
• Narrow Focus: A thesis is typically focused on a specific research question or topic, which may limit the student’s exposure to other areas within their field of study.
• Limited Audience: A thesis is usually only read by a small number of people, such as the student’s thesis advisor and committee members. This limits the potential impact of the research findings.
• Lack of Real-World Application : Some thesis topics may be highly theoretical or academic in nature, which may limit their practical application in the real world.
• Pressure and Stress : Writing a thesis can be a stressful and pressure-filled experience, as it may involve meeting strict deadlines, conducting original research, and producing a high-quality document.
• Potential for Isolation: Writing a thesis can be a solitary experience, as the student may spend a significant amount of time working independently on their research and writing.

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Tips and Examples for Writing Thesis Statements

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Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

1. Determine what kind of paper you are writing:

• An analytical paper breaks down an issue or an idea into its component parts, evaluates the issue or idea, and presents this breakdown and evaluation to the audience.
• An expository (explanatory) paper explains something to the audience.
• An argumentative paper makes a claim about a topic and justifies this claim with specific evidence. The claim could be an opinion, a policy proposal, an evaluation, a cause-and-effect statement, or an interpretation. The goal of the argumentative paper is to convince the audience that the claim is true based on the evidence provided.

If you are writing a text that does not fall under these three categories (e.g., a narrative), a thesis statement somewhere in the first paragraph could still be helpful to your reader.

2. Your thesis statement should be specific—it should cover only what you will discuss in your paper and should be supported with specific evidence.

3. The thesis statement usually appears at the end of the first paragraph of a paper.

4. Your topic may change as you write, so you may need to revise your thesis statement to reflect exactly what you have discussed in the paper.

Thesis Statement Examples

Example of an analytical thesis statement:

The paper that follows should:

• Explain the analysis of the college admission process
• Explain the challenge facing admissions counselors

Example of an expository (explanatory) thesis statement:

• Explain how students spend their time studying, attending class, and socializing with peers

Example of an argumentative thesis statement:

• Present an argument and give evidence to support the claim that students should pursue community projects before entering college

The Structure of a Thesis

• First Online: 25 February 2021

Cite this chapter

• C. George Thomas 2  

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Students enrolled for Master’s degree in agriculture and allied subjects have to conduct a short-term original research work, and present the outcome in the form of a thesis. A thesis is also mandatory for higher degrees in medicine and engineering. In basic sciences such as physics and botany, although thesis is not mandatory for Masters programme, the present trend is to have a dissertation or at least a project report. All the disciplines, whether basic or applied, demand the submission of a thesis for the award of Ph.D.

But man has still another powerful resource: natural science with its strictly objective methods . Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), Russian Nobel laureate

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Thomas, C.G. (2021). The Structure of a Thesis. In: Research Methodology and Scientific Writing . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64865-7_12

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Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement

Unlock the power of concise and persuasive argumentation with Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement Examples. This approach provides a dynamic framework for crafting compelling essays by presenting a claim followed by the reasoning behind it. Delve into how to effectively employ this method and uncover valuable tips to enhance your writing. Elevate your ability to articulate strong arguments and engage readers with well-structured, impactful thesis statements.

What is a Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement? – Definition

A Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement is a succinct and persuasive way to present an argument in academic writing. It consists of two essential components: the claim, which states the main point or position you’re asserting, and the reason, which provides a concise explanation or justification for why that claim is valid. This approach adds depth and clarity to your thesis statement, setting the stage for a well-structured and persuasive essay.

What is an example of a Two-Part (Claim + Reason) thesis statement?

Claim: “Mandatory physical education in schools is crucial.” Reason: “Regular physical activity not only improves students’ physical health but also enhances their cognitive abilities, contributing to better academic performance.”

In this example, the claim is that mandatory physical education in schools is essential. The reason provided explains why this claim is valid, highlighting the positive impact of physical activity on both physical health and academic achievement. This two-part structure effectively outlines the argument and its rationale.

100 Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement Examples

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Explore 100 Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement Examples, each carefully crafted to present compelling arguments along with their supporting rationales. This comprehensive collection spans various topics, allowing you to grasp the art of concise and impactful argumentation. Enhance your essay writing skills by learning how to effectively structure your ideas and convince your readers with well-reasoned claims.

• Claim: “Social media platforms have revolutionized communication.” Reason: “Their instant connectivity and vast user base facilitate global interactions, transforming how people connect and share information.”
• Claim: “Artificial intelligence is shaping the future of industries.” Reason: “Its ability to analyze massive data sets and automate complex tasks boosts efficiency and innovation across sectors.”
• Claim: “Climate change demands urgent attention and action.” Reason: “Mounting evidence of rising temperatures and extreme weather events underscores the critical need to mitigate environmental risks.”
• Claim: “Literature plays a pivotal role in fostering empathy.” Reason: “Engaging with diverse characters’ experiences cultivates understanding and compassion among readers.”
• Claim: “Diversity in the workplace enhances creativity and innovation.” Reason: “A range of perspectives fuels dynamic discussions and encourages fresh approaches to problem-solving.”
• Claim: “Higher education is a gateway to socioeconomic mobility.” Reason: “Access to advanced knowledge and skill development equips individuals to access better job opportunities.”
• Claim: “Government surveillance threatens individual privacy rights.” Reason: “Mass surveillance infringes on personal liberties and erodes the balance between security and freedom.”
• Claim: “Renewable energy sources are the solution to the climate crisis.” Reason: “Harnessing solar, wind, and hydro power reduces reliance on fossil fuels, curbing greenhouse gas emissions.”
• Claim: “Mandatory voting promotes a more engaged and informed citizenry.” Reason: “Compulsory participation ensures broader representation and encourages citizens to stay informed.”
• Claim: “Cultural diversity enriches a society’s social fabric.” Reason: “Different backgrounds and traditions contribute to a vibrant tapestry of experiences and perspectives.”
• Claim: “Online learning is revolutionizing education.” Reason: “Flexible schedules and interactive platforms enhance accessibility and engagement for learners worldwide.”
• Claim: “Gender equality is essential for societal progress.” Reason: “Empowering women in all spheres fosters innovation, economic growth, and social harmony.”
• Claim: “Space exploration drives technological advancements.” Reason: “The pursuit of cosmic knowledge inspires breakthroughs in engineering, materials science, and communication.”
• Claim: “Censorship of artistic expression hampers creative freedom.” Reason: “Limiting artistic freedom stifles cultural innovation and inhibits open dialogue on societal issues.”
• Claim: “Critical thinking is a crucial skill for modern education.” Reason: “Nurturing critical thinking abilities empowers students to analyze information, solve problems, and make informed decisions.”
• Claim: “Universal healthcare ensures equitable access to medical services.” Reason: “Healthcare for all reduces disparities, provides preventative care, and promotes overall well-being.”
• Claim: “The digital age has transformed the way we consume information.” Reason: “Instant access to online content and personalized algorithms reshape information consumption patterns.”
• Claim: “Financial literacy is essential for personal financial well-being.” Reason: “Understanding money management empowers individuals to make informed financial decisions.”
• Claim: “Technology addiction poses a significant societal concern.” Reason: “Excessive screen time impairs mental health, interpersonal relationships, and overall productivity.”
• Claim: “The preservation of natural habitats is crucial for biodiversity.” Reason: “Conserving ecosystems maintains species diversity and supports ecological balance.”
• Claim: “Ethical consumerism drives positive social and environmental change.” Reason: “Supporting eco-friendly and socially responsible products encourages responsible business practices.”
• Claim: “The advancement of robotics will redefine the job market.” Reason: “Automated tasks and AI technologies will reshape employment opportunities and skill requirements.”
• Claim: “Social media fosters both connection and isolation.” Reason: “Online interactions offer global connectivity, yet excessive screen time can lead to real-world disconnection.”
• Claim: “Youth involvement in civic activities cultivates active citizenship.” Reason: “Engaged young individuals contribute fresh perspectives and energize public discourse.”
• Claim: “Freedom of speech should have limitations to prevent hate speech.” Reason: “Balancing free expression with societal well-being safeguards marginalized communities and social harmony.”
• Claim: “Music therapy offers holistic healing for mental health.” Reason: “Engaging with music promotes emotional release, stress reduction, and cognitive improvement.”
• Claim: “Urbanization poses environmental challenges and opportunities.” Reason: “Concentrated urban living accelerates innovation and necessitates sustainable infrastructure solutions.”
• Claim: “Social inequality hinders economic growth and stability.” Reason: “Unequal distribution of resources stifles human potential and undermines social cohesion.”
• Claim: “The arts are essential for well-rounded education.” Reason: “Cultivating creative expression enhances critical thinking, communication, and empathy.”
• Claim: “Personalized learning empowers diverse student needs.” Reason: “Tailoring education to individual strengths fosters engagement and academic success.”
• Claim: “Ethical considerations should guide advancements in genetic engineering.” Reason: “Prioritizing ethical guidelines ensures responsible innovation and prevents unintended consequences.”
• Claim: “Effective communication is the cornerstone of successful relationships.” Reason: “Clear communication fosters mutual understanding, trust, and resolution of conflicts.”
• Claim: “Social media activism has transformed modern advocacy.” Reason: “Online platforms amplify voices, mobilize communities, and raise awareness about social issues.”
• Claim: “Multilingualism benefits cognitive development and cultural understanding.” Reason: “Learning multiple languages enhances brain function and promotes cross-cultural empathy.”
• Claim: “Early childhood education lays the foundation for lifelong learning.” Reason: “Quality early education nurtures cognitive, social, and emotional development.”
• Claim: “The gig economy provides flexible work options but lacks stability.” Reason: “Freelance opportunities offer autonomy, but inconsistent income poses financial challenges.”
• Claim: “Effective time management is key to academic success.” Reason: “Balancing priorities and deadlines enhances productivity and reduces stress.”
• Claim: “Alternative energy sources are vital for reducing carbon emissions.” Reason: “Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewables mitigates climate change and supports sustainability.”
• Claim: “Media literacy is essential in the digital age.” Reason: “Critical analysis of media sources promotes informed decision-making and safeguards against misinformation.”
• Claim: “Preserving indigenous languages safeguards cultural heritage.” Reason: “Language is intrinsic to identity, reflecting unique worldviews and historical legacies.”
• Claim: “Flexible work arrangements enhance work-life balance.” Reason: “Remote work and flexible hours accommodate personal needs, leading to improved well-being.”
• Claim: “Literacy is the foundation of lifelong learning and empowerment.” Reason: “Proficiency in reading and writing enables access to information, education, and opportunities.”
• Claim: “Rapid technological advancements pose ethical dilemmas in AI development.” Reason: “Ensuring AI aligns with human values and respects privacy is essential for responsible innovation.”
• Claim: “Universal basic income can address socioeconomic inequality.” Reason: “Providing a basic income cushion fosters economic security and reduces poverty.”
• Claim: “Cultural appropriation perpetuates stereotypes and erases history.” Reason: “Appropriating elements from marginalized cultures trivializes their significance and disregards their origins.”
• Claim: “Physical activity is crucial for overall health and mental well-being.” Reason: “Exercise releases endorphins, reduces stress, and improves cardiovascular health.”
• Claim: “Preserving biodiversity is essential for ecological balance.” Reason: “Each species contributes to ecosystem stability and resilience against environmental changes.”
• Claim: “Government transparency strengthens democracy and public trust.” Reason: “Open governance fosters accountability, ensures informed decisions, and curbs corruption.”
• Claim: “Critical reflection enhances personal growth and self-awareness.” Reason: “Examining experiences and beliefs promotes continuous learning and personal development.”
• Claim: “Technological advancements in healthcare improve patient outcomes.” Reason: “Innovations like telemedicine and precision medicine tailor treatments for better results.
• Claim: “Early childhood vaccinations are vital for public health.” Reason: “Immunizations prevent the spread of diseases, safeguarding individual and community well-being.”
• Claim: “Media plays a significant role in shaping public opinion.” Reason: “Information dissemination influences perspectives, leading to informed decisions and societal change.”
• Claim: “Globalization fosters cultural exchange and interconnectedness.” Reason: “Cross-cultural interactions promote understanding, collaboration, and shared values.”
• Claim: “Animal testing should be replaced with alternative research methods.” Reason: “Ethical considerations demand the use of cruelty-free testing methods that yield accurate results.”
• Claim: “Financial literacy education empowers responsible money management.” Reason: “Teaching budgeting and investment basics ensures informed financial decision-making.”
• Claim: “Promoting gender diversity in STEM fields drives innovation.” Reason: “Inclusive environments harness diverse perspectives, fostering creative problem-solving.”
• Claim: “Education empowers individuals to break the cycle of poverty.” Reason: “Access to quality education equips individuals with skills to overcome economic challenges.”
• Claim: “Cybersecurity measures are essential to protect digital assets.” Reason: “Preventing cyber threats safeguards personal information and prevents cybercrime.”
• Claim: “Economic growth should prioritize environmental sustainability.” Reason: “Balancing growth with conservation ensures future generations’ access to resources.”
• Claim: “Healthy eating habits contribute to overall well-being.” Reason: “Nutrient-rich diets support physical health, energy levels, and disease prevention.
• Claim: “Empathy is crucial for fostering harmonious interpersonal relationships.” Reason: “Understanding others’ perspectives cultivates compassion, reduces conflicts, and builds trust.”
• Claim: “Economic inequality hampers social mobility and undermines democracy.” Reason: “Unequal distribution of resources perpetuates disparities and limits equal opportunities.”
• Claim: “Online education offers accessible and flexible learning opportunities.” Reason: “Virtual learning platforms cater to diverse schedules and geographical constraints.”
• Claim: “Historical preservation maintains cultural heritage and identity.” Reason: “Preserving artifacts and landmarks ensures future generations connect with their past.”
• Claim: “Social entrepreneurship addresses societal challenges while generating profits.” Reason: “Innovative business models prioritize social impact, driving positive change and sustainability.”
• Claim: “Effective parenting strategies shape children’s emotional development.” Reason: “Nurturing emotional intelligence fosters resilience, empathy, and healthy relationships.”
• Claim: “Ethical fashion practices promote sustainable clothing production.” Reason: “Supporting ethically produced garments reduces environmental impact and supports fair labor practices.”
• Claim: “Inclusive education benefits students with diverse learning needs.” Reason: “Adapting curriculum and teaching methods empowers all students to thrive academically.”
• Claim: “Cultural preservation is integral to indigenous identity and rights.” Reason: “Preserving cultural traditions upholds sovereignty and protects indigenous ways of life.”
• Claim: “Volunteering enhances personal well-being and community resilience.” Reason: “Contributing time and skills fosters a sense of purpose and strengthens social ties.
• Claim: “A balanced work-life routine improves overall productivity and satisfaction.” Reason: “Prioritizing personal well-being and leisure time enhances focus and reduces burnout.”
• Claim: “Cultural diversity fosters innovation and global collaboration.” Reason: “Combining perspectives from different backgrounds sparks creative problem-solving and mutual understanding.”
• Claim: “Literacy rates correlate with socioeconomic development and empowerment.” Reason: “High literacy levels enhance access to education, employment opportunities, and civic engagement.”
• Claim: “Sustainable tourism preserves natural and cultural resources.” Reason: “Responsible travel practices protect fragile ecosystems and local traditions.”
• Claim: “Quality healthcare is a fundamental human right.” Reason: “Access to medical services promotes well-being and ensures equal opportunities for health.”
• Claim: “Community engagement enhances neighborhood safety and cohesion.” Reason: “Involved residents collectively address concerns and create a strong sense of belonging.”
• Claim: “Ethical considerations should guide AI’s role in decision-making.” Reason: “Responsible AI use prevents biased outcomes and respects human values.”
• Claim: “The arts promote emotional expression and healing.” Reason: “Creating and engaging with art facilitates catharsis and emotional release.”
• Claim: “Cultural sensitivity is vital for effective global communication.” Reason: “Understanding cultural nuances fosters mutual respect and minimizes misunderstandings.”
• Claim: “Social media’s impact on mental health warrants ethical guidelines.” Reason: “Balancing online engagement with mental well-being safeguards against digital stressors.
• Claim: “Economic globalization accelerates income inequality.” Reason: “Transnational corporations exploit cheap labor, exacerbating disparities between affluent and impoverished regions.”
• Claim: “Investing in early childhood education yields long-term societal benefits.” Reason: “Early learning programs enhance cognitive development and reduce future educational disparities.”
• Claim: “Active participation in local governance strengthens democracy.” Reason: “Engaging citizens in decision-making promotes accountability and responsive policies.”
• Claim: “Promoting mental health initiatives in schools benefits student well-being.” Reason: “Early support and awareness campaigns address psychological challenges and reduce stigma.”
• Claim: “Technology integration in education enhances student engagement.” Reason: “Interactive digital tools cater to diverse learning styles, encouraging active participation.”
• Claim: “Criminal justice reform is necessary for equitable legal outcomes.” Reason: “Eliminating biases in sentencing and addressing systemic flaws ensures fair justice.”
• Claim: “Sustainable agriculture practices are essential for food security.” Reason: “Regenerative farming methods preserve soil health and mitigate climate change impacts.”
• Claim: “Freedom of the press is integral to a functioning democracy.” Reason: “Unbiased journalism informs public discourse and holds authorities accountable.”
• Claim: “Intercultural education fosters global understanding and cooperation.” Reason: “Teaching cultural awareness cultivates empathy and prepares individuals for a diverse world.”
• Claim: “Inclusive urban planning improves accessibility and quality of life.” Reason: “Designing cities for all residents accommodates diverse needs and enhances urban livability.

With these 100 Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement examples, you have a diverse array of topics and arguments to explore, analyze, and incorporate into your essays.

Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement Examples for Essay

• Claim: “Exploring diverse cultures enriches personal growth.” Reason: “Cultural exposure broadens perspectives, fostering tolerance and empathy.”
• Claim: “Effective time management enhances academic success.” Reason: “Balancing study and leisure optimizes focus and reduces stress.”
• Claim: “Mindfulness practices improve mental well-being.” Reason: “Mindful techniques cultivate self-awareness, reducing anxiety and enhancing emotional balance.”
• Claim: “Literature is a powerful tool for social commentary.” Reason: “Fictional narratives offer insights into societal issues, prompting reflection and dialogue.”
• Claim: “Personalized learning caters to individual student needs.” Reason: “Tailoring education to learning styles boosts engagement and comprehension.”
• Claim: “Responsible social media usage preserves mental health.” Reason: “Setting boundaries online reduces comparison and fosters authentic connections.”
• Claim: “Community service fosters a sense of belonging.” Reason: “Volunteering connects individuals to their surroundings, enhancing civic engagement.”
• Claim: “Promoting eco-friendly habits protects the environment.” Reason: “Green choices like recycling and energy conservation reduce carbon footprint.”
• Claim: “Inclusive workplaces enhance employee morale.” Reason: “Valuing diversity creates a positive environment that promotes collaboration and creativity.”
• Claim: “Critical thinking skills are essential for informed decisions.” Reason: “Analytical thinking empowers individuals to evaluate information and make reasoned choices.”

Two-Part (Claim + Reason) Thesis Statement Examples for Argumentative Essay

• Claim: “Government surveillance infringes on individual privacy rights.” Reason: “Mass monitoring undermines civil liberties, opening doors to abuse of power.”
• Claim: “Social media platforms should implement stricter content moderation.” Reason: “Addressing harmful content reduces misinformation and protects user well-being.”
• Claim: “Mandatory voting promotes active citizenship and representative democracy.” Reason: “Compulsory participation ensures diverse voices are heard in political decisions.”
• Claim: “Gun control measures are necessary to prevent mass shootings.” Reason: “Stricter regulations reduce access to firearms, curbing potential violence.”
• Claim: “Access to quality healthcare is a fundamental human right.” Reason: “Affordable medical services ensure equitable well-being and protect lives.”
• Claim: “Climate change is a result of human activity.” Reason: “Scientific evidence links rising emissions to global temperature increases.”
• Claim: “Animal testing should be replaced with humane alternatives.” Reason: “Ethical considerations demand cruelty-free research methods that yield accurate results.”
• Claim: “Social media has negative effects on mental health.” Reason: “Excessive usage correlates with increased anxiety, depression, and social isolation.”
• Claim: “School dress codes infringe on students’ freedom of expression.” Reason: “Restrictive policies limit individuality and discourage self-confidence.”
• Claim: “Capital punishment should be abolished as it violates human rights.” Reason: “Irreversible consequences and the potential for wrongful convictions oppose ethical principles.”

Two-Part Thesis Statement Examples for Research Paper

• Claim: “AI-driven healthcare innovations enhance medical diagnostics.” Reason: “Machine learning algorithms analyze complex data, aiding accurate disease identification.”
• Claim: “Economic globalization impacts income distribution within nations.” Reason: “Global trade can lead to unequal wealth distribution among different socioeconomic groups.”
• Claim: “Gender pay gap persists despite progress in workplace equality.” Reason: “Societal norms and biases contribute to unequal compensation between genders.”
• Claim: “Urbanization affects mental health and well-being.” Reason: “City living can lead to increased stress levels due to noise and social pressures.”
• Claim: “Digital media’s influence on children’s development warrants scrutiny.” Reason: “Excessive screen time can hinder cognitive and social skills during formative years.”
• Claim: “Artificial intelligence has transformative potential in education.” Reason: “AI-powered personalized learning adapts to individual student needs, enhancing outcomes.”
• Claim: “Effects of climate change impact vulnerable populations disproportionately.” Reason: “Marginalized communities suffer more from environmental changes due to resource disparities.”
• Claim: “The role of genetics in mental disorders requires further exploration.” Reason: “Genetic factors contribute to mental health conditions, prompting research for targeted treatments.”
• Claim: “Criminal justice reform is needed to address racial disparities.” Reason: “Biased sentencing and profiling lead to unequal treatment within the justice system.”
• Claim: “Ethical implications of gene editing demand regulatory frameworks.” Reason: “CRISPR technology raises concerns about unintended consequences and responsible usage.”

Can you have a two point thesis?

Yes, you can have a two-point thesis, also known as a Two-Part Thesis Statement. This type of thesis statement presents two distinct aspects or ideas that will be discussed in your essay, each supported by specific reasons or evidence. It provides a clear structure for organizing your arguments and helps you convey a well-rounded perspective on your topic.

How to Write a Two Part Thesis Statement? – Step by Step Guide

Crafting a Two-Part Thesis Statement involves careful consideration of your topic and the main points you want to address. Here’s a step-by-step guide to help you create an effective Two-Part Thesis Statement:

• Choose a Specific Topic: Select a topic for your essay that is focused and manageable. Your thesis statement should address a specific aspect of the topic.
• Identify Two Key Points: Determine the two main points or arguments you want to make about the topic. These points should be distinct and complementary, contributing to a comprehensive understanding of the subject.
• Create a Claim for Each Point: Develop a clear and concise claim for each of the two points. These claims should represent the main ideas you will be discussing in your essay.
• Provide Reasons or Evidence: For each claim, outline the reasons or evidence that support your point. These reasons will help you elaborate on each point in your essay.
• Arrange the Structure: Organize your Two-Part Thesis Statement by presenting both claims in a logical order. You can choose to present one claim before the other or arrange them based on their significance.
• Concise Language: Write your Two-Part Thesis Statement in clear and concise language. Avoid unnecessary jargon or complex sentence structures.
• Revise and Refine: Review your Two-Part Thesis Statement for clarity and coherence. Make sure that each part is distinct and contributes to the overall argument.
• Alignment with Essay Content: Ensure that the points you’ve identified in your Two-Part Thesis Statement are directly related to the content of your essay. This alignment helps maintain a focused and organized essay.

How do you split a thesis statement?

Splitting a thesis statement refers to breaking it down into two distinct parts: the claim and the reason. The claim represents the main idea or argument you are making, while the reason provides a brief explanation or justification for that claim. Here’s how you can split a thesis statement:

Original Thesis Statement: “Online education is beneficial.”

Split Thesis Statement:

• Claim: “Online education offers numerous benefits.”
• Reason: “It provides flexible scheduling and access to a variety of courses.”

By splitting the thesis statement, you clearly separate the main claim from the reason that supports it. This structure sets the foundation for a Two-Part Thesis Statement.

Tips for Writing a Two Part Thesis Statement

• Be Clear and Specific: Ensure that your claims and reasons are clear, specific, and focused on the main points you want to discuss.
• Balance the Two Points: Choose two points that are relevant to your topic and provide a well-rounded perspective on the subject.
• Logical Order: Present your claims in a logical order that flows well and contributes to the coherence of your essay.
• Support with Evidence: Make sure you have enough evidence or reasoning to support each claim. This strengthens the credibility of your arguments.
• Avoid Overcomplication: Keep your language simple and straightforward. Avoid overly complex sentence structures that might confuse the reader.
• Consider Counterarguments: Anticipate potential counterarguments to your claims and address them in your essay to strengthen your position.
• Stay Focused: Each part of your thesis statement should relate directly to the points you’ll discuss in your essay. Avoid including unnecessary information.
• Revise and Edit: Like any other part of your essay, revise and edit your Two-Part Thesis Statement to ensure it effectively conveys your intended message.

A well-crafted Two-Part Thesis Statement guides your essay’s structure, helps you stay focused on your main points, and provides your readers with a clear roadmap of what to expect.

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What Are the Two Parts of an Effective Thesis?

A thesis statement informs the reader the point of your composition. An effective thesis contains two parts: your argument proposal and support for your claim. The first part declares your argument, and the second part states the point of the paper. Your thesis argument statement lets the reader know you are trying to persuade him to your point of view. The reader is not convinced yet but interested to understand how he might be persuaded. Writing your solid thesis statement idea will force you to think of the thesis in more logical, succinct and clear terms. The final draft form of this thesis statement will take shape as your paper evolves.

The Effective Thesis Offers Your Viewpoint

Place the most significant concept of your expository writing, the thesis statement, at the end of the introductory paragraph to focus your paper ideas. An effective two-part thesis argument statement offers the reader your viewpoint or insight in a mere sentence or two that reflects your main idea. Not only does the thesis allow the reader a good grasp of the paper's intent, but it helps the writer fully comprehend the thesis concept to demonstrate the logical structure and order for support that follows.

Inform the Reader What You Are Arguing About

Identify the two basics of an effective thesis: what the composition's ideas concern--indicating the type of required support--and what the composition's ideas are, which include the order of that support with problems explained. The thesis proposal informs the reader what you are arguing about, and the thesis angle ascertains what your ideas are about this proposal.

The Thesis Expresses the Main Idea of Your Composition

Assure that the thesis expresses the main idea of your paper and answers all questions posed by your essay. A thesis is not a fact, opinion or topic that can be answered with simply yes or no. An effective thesis has an arguable, well-thought-out and definable claim that refrains from overused general terms and abstractions.

Maintain the Thesis' Important Characteristics Throughout Your Essay

Revise the adjustable working thesis as you write the composition while maintaining the thesis' significant characteristics. If you come up with a fundamental, essential or organizing question about your composition, an effective two-part thesis must answer that question. The two parts of an effective thesis provide a definable and arguable claim that simply incorporates discussion relevant to your paper supported with specific evidence.

• Writing Center at Harvard University; Developing a Thesis; Maxine Rodburg, et al.; 1999
• Essay Town Academic Writing Blog; Art Thesis; 2011
• Empire State College; Shaping Information; Cathy Copley, et al.; 1996

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Thesis Structure: Writing Guide For Your Success

If you are about to start writing your thesis, then it is extremely important to know as much as possible about the thesis structure. Learning the main thesis chapters should enable you to quickly structure your academic paper. Keep in mind that not structuring the paper correctly usually leads to severe penalties. We know some of you are probably having questions about numbering dissertation chapters. Basically, you just need to give all the major sections consecutive numbers. Use Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, and so on). Check out the most frequently asked questions and them move on to the 7 parts of the thesis or dissertation structure.

Thesis Structure Frequently Asked Questions

• What is a basic good structure for a thesis? A: The best structure is the one listed below. It contains the 7 important parts any thesis should have.
• What does “the structure of this dissertation is in manuscript style” mean? A: It means that the thesis includes one or more manuscripts that have been written in a way that facilitates publication. The thesis can, in this case, be a collection of papers that have been written or co-authored by the student.
• Which chapters of dissertation are mandatory? A: All the 7 chapters below are necessary, if you want to get a top score on your paper.
• Where can I get a thesis structure template? A: You can quickly get a thesis structure example from one of our seasoned academic writers. Don’t base your thesis on mediocre samples you find online.
• What is the preferred thesis sentence structure? A: There is no set sentence structure that you have to follow. Just make sure your writing is organized in a logical manner and that all complex terms are explained the first time you use them.

Thesis Abstract

The first part of the thesis structure is the abstract. It is basically an overview of the entire paper. There is no set dissertation abstract structure. It is just a summary of your thesis and it should be just 200 to 300 words long.

Thesis Introduction

The introduction is one of the most important dissertation chapters. It should contain all of the following information:

A bit of background about the topic. Some information about the current knowledge. The aim of your research (the gap in knowledge that prompted you to write the thesis).

Remember that the introduction must present the thesis statement. It is very important to learn more about the thesis statement structure. A great thesis statement will pique the interest of the evaluation committee.

Thesis Literature Review

Many students who are looking to learn how to structure a thesis don’t know about the Literature Review section. Why? Because many people prefer to include it into the introduction. However, by separating the literature review from the intro, you can focus more on why your research is important. You can evaluate the most important research on your topic and clearly show the gap in knowledge.

Thesis Methods

In most cases, the Methods section is the easiest part of the structure of a thesis. All you have to do is present the method or methods you chose for the research. Don’t forget to also explain why you chose that specific research method. Your audience needs to understand that the chosen method is the best for the task.

Thesis Results

This is one of the most important chapters of a dissertation. In the Results chapter, you need to present your findings. Remember that written text is not enough. You need figures, stats, graphs, and other forms of data. This section contains all the facts of your research and should be written in an objective, neutral manner. It would be unusual for your to discuss your findings in this section.

Thesis Discussion

The Discussion chapter is very important in the dissertation chapters structure. It is the reason why you didn’t discuss your findings in the Results section. This is the section you can use to talk about your findings and provide your own opinions about the results. Here is what you can do in the discussion section:

Explain to the audience what your results mean for the scientific community. Comment on each of the results and discuss how your findings support your thesis. Explain any unexpected results so the evaluation committee can see that you know what you’re doing. Interpret the results and tie them with other research on the subject. How does your research help the academic community?

Thesis Conclusion

While not the most important chapter, the conclusion is one of the important chapters in a dissertation. It is the part where you can show your readers that you have achieved your research objectives. You can talk a bit about what you’ve learned in the process and even make some suggestions regarding the need for future research. In most cases, students also reiterate the thesis statement at the beginning of the conclusion, followed by a short summary of the paper’s most important chapters.

Still Not Sure How to Structure Thesis?

In case you are still struggling to find the best history dissertation structure, you should get some help as fast as possible. Remember that writing a thesis takes weeks, if not months. Don’t spend too much time trying to find the best structure. Instead, get in touch with a reliable academic company and get some quick assistance. For examples, one of our writers can create a thesis outline for you. You can just follow the outline and everything will be just fine.

Of course, you can also get some help with the thesis formatting. Citations and references can be difficult to master. Each academic writing style (MLA, Chicago, APA, etc.) has its own requirements. The way you format your academic paper is very important. Bolding and italicizing can emphasize certain ideas. A professional editor can help you make the thesis stand out from the rest. After all, a pleasantly-formatted dissertation that impresses the evaluation committee with its structure and quality of content has a very high chance of getting a top score.

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Thesis and Dissertation Guide

• « Thesis & Dissertation Resources
• The Graduate School Home

• Introduction

Copyright Page

Dedication, acknowledgements, preface (optional), table of contents.

• List of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations

List of Abbreviations

List of symbols.

• Non-Traditional Formats
• Font Type and Size
• Spacing and Indentation
• Tables, Figures, and Illustrations
• Formatting Previously Published Work
• Internet Distribution
• Open Access
• Registering Copyright
• Using Copyrighted Materials
• Use of Your Own Previously Published Materials
• Submission Steps
• Submission Checklist
• Sample Pages

I. Order and Components

Please see the sample thesis or dissertation pages throughout and at the end of this document for illustrations. The following order is required for components of your thesis or dissertation:

• Dedication, Acknowledgements, and Preface (each optional)
• Table of Contents, with page numbers
• List of Tables, List of Figures, or List of Illustrations, with titles and page numbers (if applicable)
• List of Abbreviations (if applicable)
• List of Symbols (if applicable)
• Introduction, if any
• Main body, with consistent subheadings as appropriate
• Appendices (if applicable)
• Endnotes (if applicable)
• References (see section on References for options)

Many of the components following the title and copyright pages have required headings and formatting guidelines, which are described in the following sections.

Please consult the Sample Pages to compare your document to the requirements. A Checklist is provided to assist you in ensuring your thesis or dissertation meets all formatting guidelines.

The title page of a thesis or dissertation must include the following information:

• The title of the thesis or dissertation in all capital letters and centered 2″ below the top of the page.
• Your name, centered 1″ below the title. Do not include titles, degrees, or identifiers. The name you use here does not need to exactly match the name on your university records, but we recommend considering how you will want your name to appear in professional publications in the future.

Notes on this statement:

• When indicating your degree in the second bracketed space, use the full degree name (i.e., Doctor of Philosophy, not Ph.D. or PHD; Master of Public Health, not M.P.H. or MPH; Master of Social Work, not M.S.W. or MSW).
• List your department, school, or curriculum rather than your subject area or specialty discipline in the third bracketed space. You may include your subject area or specialty discipline in parentheses (i.e., Department of Romance Languages (French); School of Pharmacy (Molecular Pharmaceutics); School of Education (School Psychology); or similar official area).
• If you wish to include both your department and school names, list the school at the end of the statement (i.e., Department of Pharmacology in the School of Medicine).
• A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Public Policy.
• A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the School of Dentistry (Endodontics).
• A thesis submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in the Department of Nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health.
• A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the School of Education (Cultural Studies and Literacies).
• The words “Chapel Hill” must be centered 1″ below the statement.
• One single-spaced line below that, center the year in which your committee approves the completed thesis or dissertation. This need not be the year you graduate.
• Approximately 2/3 of the way across the page on the right-hand side of the page, 1″ below the year, include the phrase “Approved by:” (with colon) followed by each faculty member's name on subsequent double-spaced lines. Do not include titles such as Professor, Doctor, Dr., PhD, or any identifiers such as “chair” or “advisor” before or after any names. Line up the first letter of each name on the left under the “A” in the “Approved by:” line. If a name is too long to fit on one line, move this entire section of text slightly to the left so that formatting can be maintained.
• No signatures, signature lines, or page numbers should be included on the title page.

Include a copyright page with the following information single-spaced and centered 2″ above the bottom of the page:

© Year Author's Full Name (as it appears on the title page) ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

This page immediately follows the title page. It should be numbered with the lower case Roman numeral ii centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Inclusion of this page offers you, as the author, additional protection against copyright infringement as it eliminates any question of authorship and copyright ownership. You do not need to file for copyright in order to include this statement in your thesis or dissertation. However, filing for copyright can offer other protections.

See Section IV for more information on copyrighting your thesis or dissertation.

Include an abstract page following these guidelines:

• Include the heading “ABSTRACT” in all capital letters, and center it 2″ below the top of the page.
• One double-spaced line below “ABSTRACT”, center your name, followed by a colon and the title of the thesis or dissertation. Use as many lines as necessary. Be sure that your name and the title exactly match the name and title used on the Title page.
• One single-spaced line below the title, center the phrase “(Under the direction of [advisor's name])”. Include the phrase in parentheses. Include the first and last name(s) of your advisor or formal co-advisors. Do not include the name of other committee members. Use the advisor's name only; do not include any professional titles such as PhD, Professor, or Dr. or any identifiers such as “chair” or “advisor”.
• Skip one double-spaced line and begin the abstract. The text of your abstract must be double-spaced and aligned with the document's left margin with the exception of indenting new paragraphs. Do not center or right-justify the abstract.
• Abstracts cannot exceed 150 words for a thesis or 350 words for a dissertation.
• Number the abstract page with the lower case Roman numeral iii (and iv, if more than one page) centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Please write and proofread your abstract carefully. When possible, avoid including symbols or foreign words in your abstract, as they cannot be indexed or searched. Avoid mathematical formulas, diagrams, and other illustrative materials in the abstract. Offer a brief description of your thesis or dissertation and a concise summary of its conclusions. Be sure to describe the subject and focus of your work with clear details and avoid including lengthy explanations or opinions.

Your title and abstract will be used by search engines to help potential audiences locate your work, so clarity will help to draw the attention of your targeted readers.

You have an option to include a dedication, acknowledgements, or preface. If you choose to include any or all of these elements, give each its own page(s).

A dedication is a message from the author prefixed to a work in tribute to a person, group, or cause. Most dedications are short statements of tribute beginning with “To…” such as “To my family”.

Acknowledgements are the author's statement of gratitude to and recognition of the people and institutions that helped the author's research and writing.

A preface is a statement of the author's reasons for undertaking the work and other personal comments that are not directly germane to the materials presented in other sections of the thesis or dissertation. These reasons tend to be of a personal nature.

Any of the pages must be prepared following these guidelines:

• Do not place a heading on the dedication page.
• The text of short dedications must be centered and begin 2″ from the top of the page.
• Headings are required for the “ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS” and “PREFACE” pages. Headings must be in all capital letters and centered 2″ below the top of the page.
• The text of the acknowledgements and preface pages must begin one double-spaced line below the heading, be double-spaced, and be aligned with the document's left margin with the exception of indenting new paragraphs.
• Subsequent pages of text return to the 1″ top margin.
• The page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals (starting with the page number after the abstract) centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Include a table of contents following these guidelines:

• Include the heading “TABLE OF CONTENTS” in all capital letters, and center it 2″ below the top of the page.
• Include one double-spaced line between the heading and the first entry.
• The table of contents should not contain listings for the pages that precede it, but it must list all parts of the thesis or dissertation that follow it.
• If relevant, be sure to list all appendices and a references section in your table of contents. Include page numbers for these items but do not assign separate chapter numbers.
• Entries must align with the document's left margin or be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• Major subheadings within chapters must be included in the table of contents. The subheading(s) should be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• If an entry takes up more than one line, break up the entry about three-fourths of the way across the page and place the rest of the text on a second line, single-spacing the two lines.
• Include one double-spaced line between each entry.
• Page numbers listed in the table of contents must be located just inside the right page margin with leaders (lines of periods) filling out the space between the end of the entry and the page number. The last digit of each number must line up on the right margin.
• Information included in the table of contents must match the headings, major subheadings, and numbering used in the body of the thesis or dissertation.
• The Table of Contents page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

Lists of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations

If applicable, include a list of tables, list of figures, and/or list of illustrations following these guidelines:

• Include the heading(s) in all capital letters, centered 1″ below the top of the page.
• Each entry must include a number, title, and page number.
• Assign each table, figure, or illustration in your thesis or dissertation an Arabic numeral. You may number consecutively throughout the entire work (e.g., Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.), or you may assign a two-part Arabic numeral with the first number designating the chapter in which it appears, separated by a period, followed by a second number to indicate its consecutive placement in the chapter (e.g., Table 3.2 is the second table in Chapter Three).
• Numerals and titles must align with the document's left margin or be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• Page numbers must be located just inside the right page margin with leaders (lines of periods) filling out the space between the end of the entry and the page number. The last digit of each number must line up on the right margin.
• Numbers, titles, and page numbers must each match the corresponding numbers, titles, and page numbers appearing in the thesis or dissertation.
• All Lists of Tables, Figures, and Illustrations page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

If you use abbreviations extensively in your thesis or dissertation, you must include a list of abbreviations and their corresponding definitions following these guidelines:

• Include the heading “LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS” in all capital letters, and center it 1″ below the top of the page.
• Arrange your abbreviations alphabetically.
• Abbreviations must align with the document's left margin or be indented to the right of the left page margin using consistent tabs.
• If an entry takes up more than one line, single-space between the two lines.
• The List of Abbreviations page(s) must be numbered with consecutive lower case Roman numerals centered with a 1/2″ margin from the bottom edge.

If you use symbols in your thesis or dissertation, you may combine them with your abbreviations, titling the section “LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS”, or you may set up a separate list of symbols and their definitions by following the formatting instructions above for abbreviations. The heading you choose must be in all capital letters and centered 1″ below the top of the page.

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• What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

What Is a Thesis? | Ultimate Guide & Examples

Published on 15 September 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on 5 December 2023.

A thesis is a type of research paper based on your original research. It is usually submitted as the final step of a PhD program in the UK.

Writing a thesis can be a daunting experience. Indeed, alongside a dissertation , it is the longest piece of writing students typically complete. It relies on your ability to conduct research from start to finish: designing your research , collecting data , developing a robust analysis, drawing strong conclusions , and writing concisely .

Thesis template

You can also download our full thesis template in the format of your choice below. Our template includes a ready-made table of contents , as well as guidance for what each chapter should include. It’s easy to make it your own, and can help you get started.

Download Word template Download Google Docs template

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Table of contents

Thesis vs. thesis statement, how to structure a thesis, acknowledgements or preface, list of figures and tables, list of abbreviations, introduction, literature review, methodology, reference list, proofreading and editing, defending your thesis, frequently asked questions about theses.

You may have heard the word thesis as a standalone term or as a component of academic writing called a thesis statement . Keep in mind that these are two very different things.

• A thesis statement is a very common component of an essay, particularly in the humanities. It usually comprises 1 or 2 sentences in the introduction of your essay , and should clearly and concisely summarise the central points of your academic essay .
• A thesis is a long-form piece of academic writing, often taking more than a full semester to complete. It is generally a degree requirement to complete a PhD program.
• In many countries, particularly the UK, a dissertation is generally written at the bachelor’s or master’s level.
• In the US, a dissertation is generally written as a final step toward obtaining a PhD.

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The final structure of your thesis depends on a variety of components, such as:

• Your discipline
• Your theoretical approach

Humanities theses are often structured more like a longer-form essay . Just like in an essay, you build an argument to support a central thesis.

In both hard and social sciences, theses typically include an introduction , literature review , methodology section ,  results section , discussion section , and conclusion section . These are each presented in their own dedicated section or chapter. In some cases, you might want to add an appendix .

Thesis examples

We’ve compiled a short list of thesis examples to help you get started.

• Example thesis #1:   ‘Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the “Noble Savage” on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807’ by Suchait Kahlon.
• Example thesis #2: ‘”A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man”: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947’ by Julian Saint Reiman.

The very first page of your thesis contains all necessary identifying information, including:

• Your full title
• Your full name
• Your department
• Your institution and degree program
• Your submission date.

Sometimes the title page also includes your student ID, the name of your supervisor, or the university’s logo. Check out your university’s guidelines if you’re not sure.

Read more about title pages

The acknowledgements section is usually optional. Its main point is to allow you to thank everyone who helped you in your thesis journey, such as supervisors, friends, or family. You can also choose to write a preface , but it’s typically one or the other, not both.

Read more about acknowledgements Read more about prefaces

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An abstract is a short summary of your thesis. Usually a maximum of 300 words long, it’s should include brief descriptions of your research objectives , methods, results, and conclusions. Though it may seem short, it introduces your work to your audience, serving as a first impression of your thesis.

Read more about abstracts

A table of contents lists all of your sections, plus their corresponding page numbers and subheadings if you have them. This helps your reader seamlessly navigate your document.

Your table of contents should include all the major parts of your thesis. In particular, don’t forget the the appendices. If you used heading styles, it’s easy to generate an automatic table Microsoft Word.

Read more about tables of contents

While not mandatory, if you used a lot of tables and/or figures, it’s nice to include a list of them to help guide your reader. It’s also easy to generate one of these in Word: just use the ‘Insert Caption’ feature.

Read more about lists of figures and tables

If you have used a lot of industry- or field-specific abbreviations in your thesis, you should include them in an alphabetised list of abbreviations . This way, your readers can easily look up any meanings they aren’t familiar with.

Read more about lists of abbreviations

Relatedly, if you find yourself using a lot of very specialised or field-specific terms that may not be familiar to your reader, consider including a glossary . Alphabetise the terms you want to include with a brief definition.

Read more about glossaries

An introduction sets up the topic, purpose, and relevance of your thesis, as well as expectations for your reader. This should:

• Ground your research topic , sharing any background information your reader may need
• Define the scope of your work
• Introduce any existing research on your topic, situating your work within a broader problem or debate
• State your research question(s)
• Outline (briefly) how the remainder of your work will proceed

In other words, your introduction should clearly and concisely show your reader the “what, why, and how” of your research.

Read more about introductions

A literature review helps you gain a robust understanding of any extant academic work on your topic, encompassing:

• Selecting relevant sources
• Determining the credibility of your sources
• Critically evaluating each of your sources
• Drawing connections between sources, including any themes, patterns, conflicts, or gaps

A literature review is not merely a summary of existing work. Rather, your literature review should ultimately lead to a clear justification for your own research, perhaps via:

• Addressing a gap in the literature
• Building on existing knowledge to draw new conclusions
• Exploring a new theoretical or methodological approach
• Introducing a new solution to an unresolved problem
• Definitively advocating for one side of a theoretical debate

Read more about literature reviews

Theoretical framework

Your literature review can often form the basis for your theoretical framework, but these are not the same thing. A theoretical framework defines and analyses the concepts and theories that your research hinges on.

Read more about theoretical frameworks

Your methodology chapter shows your reader how you conducted your research. It should be written clearly and methodically, easily allowing your reader to critically assess the credibility of your argument. Furthermore, your methods section should convince your reader that your method was the best way to answer your research question.

A methodology section should generally include:

• Your overall approach ( quantitative vs. qualitative )
• Your research methods (e.g., a longitudinal study )
• Your data collection methods (e.g., interviews or a controlled experiment
• Any tools or materials you used (e.g., computer software)
• The data analysis methods you chose (e.g., statistical analysis , discourse analysis )
• A strong, but not defensive justification of your methods

Read more about methodology sections

Your results section should highlight what your methodology discovered. These two sections work in tandem, but shouldn’t repeat each other. While your results section can include hypotheses or themes, don’t include any speculation or new arguments here.

Your results section should:

• State each (relevant) result with any (relevant) descriptive statistics (e.g., mean , standard deviation ) and inferential statistics (e.g., test statistics , p values )
• Explain how each result relates to the research question
• Determine whether the hypothesis was supported

Additional data (like raw numbers or interview transcripts ) can be included as an appendix . You can include tables and figures, but only if they help the reader better understand your results.

Read more about results sections

Your discussion section is where you can interpret your results in detail. Did they meet your expectations? How well do they fit within the framework that you built? You can refer back to any relevant source material to situate your results within your field, but leave most of that analysis in your literature review.

For any unexpected results, offer explanations or alternative interpretations of your data.

Read more about discussion sections

Your thesis conclusion should concisely answer your main research question. It should leave your reader with an ultra-clear understanding of your central argument, and emphasise what your research specifically has contributed to your field.

Why does your research matter? What recommendations for future research do you have? Lastly, wrap up your work with any concluding remarks.

Read more about conclusions

In order to avoid plagiarism , don’t forget to include a full reference list at the end of your thesis, citing the sources that you used. Choose one citation style and follow it consistently throughout your thesis, taking note of the formatting requirements of each style.

Which style you choose is often set by your department or your field, but common styles include MLA , Chicago , and APA.

Create APA citations Create MLA citations

In order to stay clear and concise, your thesis should include the most essential information needed to answer your research question. However, chances are you have many contributing documents, like interview transcripts or survey questions . These can be added as appendices , to save space in the main body.

Read more about appendices

Once you’re done writing, the next part of your editing process begins. Leave plenty of time for proofreading and editing prior to submission. Nothing looks worse than grammar mistakes or sloppy spelling errors!

Consider using a professional thesis editing service to make sure your final project is perfect.

Once you’ve submitted your final product, it’s common practice to have a thesis defense, an oral component of your finished work. This is scheduled by your advisor or committee, and usually entails a presentation and Q&A session.

After your defense, your committee will meet to determine if you deserve any departmental honors or accolades. However, keep in mind that defenses are usually just a formality. If there are any serious issues with your work, these should be resolved with your advisor way before a defense.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation shouldn’t take up more than 5-7% of your overall word count.

When you mention different chapters within your text, it’s considered best to use Roman numerals for most citation styles. However, the most important thing here is to remain consistent whenever using numbers in your dissertation .

If you only used a few abbreviations in your thesis or dissertation, you don’t necessarily need to include a list of abbreviations .

If your abbreviations are numerous, or if you think they won’t be known to your audience, it’s never a bad idea to add one. They can also improve readability, minimising confusion about abbreviations unfamiliar to your reader.

A thesis or dissertation outline is one of the most critical first steps in your writing process. It helps you to lay out and organise your ideas and can provide you with a roadmap for deciding what kind of research you’d like to undertake.

Generally, an outline contains information on the different sections included in your thesis or dissertation, such as:

• Your anticipated title
• Your abstract
• Your chapters (sometimes subdivided into further topics like literature review, research methods, avenues for future research, etc.)

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Department of Art presents the M.F.A. Thesis Exhibitions 2024

The UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts Department of Art proudly announces the opening of the 2024 M.F.A. thesis exhibitions, showcasing the culmination of three years of intensive study and creative exploration by its graduate candidates.

Under the guidance of a globally acclaimed faculty, the graduate program at UC Irvine offers a dynamic and interdisciplinary platform for visual arts education. The program comprising a comprehensive curriculum of core and elective classes in production, theory, and contemporary issues, the program fosters both creative and critical development among its students. This ethos is further enriched by the university's status as a leading research institution, allowing graduate students to access courses across various departments and programs, enhancing their academic experience.

The 2024 M.F.A. thesis exhibitions present the solo works of the following candidates:

• Alberto Lule
• Gintautė Skvernytė
• Joshua Thomen
• Lauren Goldenberg Longoria
• Liz Stringer
• Devin Wilson

The exhibitions are divided into two rounds, with the first featuring Alberto Lule, Gintautė Skvernytė, Joshua Thomen, and Mona Welch. Please join the department for an opening reception for "Part 1" on Saturday, April 20, from 2 to 5 p.m. "Part 2" will showcase the works of Lauren Goldenberg Longoria, Liz Stringer, and Devin Wilson, with their opening reception scheduled for Saturday, May 11, from 2 to 5 p.m.

These exhibitions not only highlight the artistic achievements of the M.F.A. candidates but also underscore the Department of Art's commitment to nurturing creative excellence and fostering a vibrant intellectual community.

Read further to learn more about the artists and their work. Both exhibitions will be held at the Contemporary Arts Center Gallery, University Art Gallery and Room Galler. Admission is free and open to the public.

M.F.A. Thesis Exhibitions, Part 1 April 20 – May 4, 2024 Opening: Saturday, April 20 from 2–5 p.m.

Alberto Lule  |  Displacement Erratic Examines the displacement of the body through various systems. Artworks attempt to find connections between overlooked systems of power, often seen as unrelated.

Gintautė Skvernytė  |  Switch Works shown: Paraffin Slides, Flicks (contact prints), Still, and a character named Sugar.

Joshua Thomen  |  On a Particularly Windy Day This latest exhibition of sculptures deepens a sense of animacy within the decorative, ephemeral, and unseen. Disparate ways of working come together to weave a quiet and wistful poem.

Mona Welch  |  7 Paintings for Spring A yellow painting, a blue painting, three brown paintings, a red painting, and a beige one.

M.F.A. Thesis Exhibitions, Part 2 May 11 – 25, 2024 Opening: Saturday, May 11 from 2–5 p.m.

Lauren Goldenberg Longoria  |  Sweet Spit Lauren Goldenberg Longoria’s paintings are vulnerable meditations of material, memory, and time. Rooted in a spirit of cannibalizing, Sweet Spit considers how her papermaking process simultaneously relates to the body, nostalgic objects in her grandmother’s home, and the compulsive desire to squeeze what’s oozing. These compact paper works are sympathetic to eachother in how they scaffold, disguise, and unearth.

Liz Stringer  |  The Showings Horror is the allure of the forbidden, and what is more forbidden than a body? The Showings is a sculptural procession of amalgamated ceramic, steel, copper, and resin that compound to articulate a body in various stages of protection and metamorphosis. Within this material drama, this existential narrative navigates the various ways in which monstrosity reveals a cultural understanding of a body and its corporeal dread.

Devin Wilson  |  The Pigeon Has Landed The Pigeon Has Landed explores the pigeon as the symbolic nexus of capitalism. Serving as both a reflection on obsolete technology in delivery services and an exploration of pigeons as agents of militarized spying, the project confronts the whimsical yet unsettling conspiracy theory that posits "Birds Aren't Real." Through the use of digital fabrication and advanced engineering processes, the work in the exhibition explores the satirical nature of internet meme culture which produces, replicates, and disseminates fictional narratives and misinformation.

University Art Gallery | 712 Arts Plaza CAC Gallery | Contemporary Arts Center | Bldg 721 Room Gallery | Art Culture and Technology | Bldg 727

Gallery Hours: Tuesday–Saturday | 12–6pm Email: [email protected] Please follow @uag_ucirvine on Instagram or visit www.uag.arts.uci.edu

Media Contact: Sasha Ussef, Associate Director [email protected]

Parking: Mesa Parking Structure 4002 Mesa Road, Irvine, CA 92617 Price: $15/day or $4/hr After turning onto Mesa Road, take the second right and drive towards the first floor kiosk of the parking structure. Or take a right at the first stop sign to pass through the second floor kiosk. If there is no attendant stationed, visit parking.uci.edu/pay and enter the code 3M270 to register your vehicle. Please park in an unmarked spot. The third floor is the most ideal, but any floor can be parked on. Cross the bridge that attaches from the third floor to the Art Courtyard.

• Getty PST exhibition centering complex systems to open at UC Irvine’s Beall Center for Art + Technology this August
• UC Irvine’s Department of Drama presents “The Brother’s Paranormal”
• Q&A: Backhausdance
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Imax gets boost from ‘dune: part two’ but revenue tumbles.

The cinema technologies company saw overall revenue fall 9 percent to $71.9 million.

By Etan Vlessing

Etan Vlessing

Canada Bureau Chief

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Imax continued a box office recovery on its global screens during the first quarter as Dune: Part Two has pulled in more than $143 million in global box office to date, or 21 percent of the film’s total gross, the cinema technologies company reported Thursday.

Overall revenue at the giant screen technologies company came to $79.1 million, down 9 percent from a year-earlier $86.9 million.

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The adjusted net profit per share in the latest period came to 15 cents, which compared to 16 cents per-share in the same year-ago period.

Content Solutions revenue — Imax’s business from agreements with the major studios and filmmakers — come to $34 million, an increase of 6 percent year-over-year, underpinned by box office growth worldwide. Technology Products and Services revenues, or the proceeds from the sale, lease and maintenance of Imax’s theater systems network, by contrast, fell 16 percent to $43.1 million.

During the latest quarter, global box office of $261 million marked the company’s third-highest-grossing first quarter ever. Also during the latest quarter, Imax recorded $55 million in local-language box office, and Queen Rock Montreal earned over $5.5 million and delivered the biggest opening weekend for an Imax exclusive event release.

“Our industry-leading momentum is fueled in part by our strategic expansion of the Imax value proposition; increasingly, our technology is driving content creation as much as it is content delivery. Oppenheimer, Dune – Part Two and Godzilla x Kong demonstrate that more and more of today’s commercially and critically successful blockbusters are shot with Imax cameras for the Imax platform — which drives our global box office and makes our systems even more of a ‘must have’ for global exhibitors,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond said in a statement that accompanied his latest financial results.

The documentary, to debut May 17, is produced in partnership with J.J. Abrams and Glen Powell and was shot by the same team behind Top Gun: Maverick . “Its aerial footage rivals anything in that megahit,” Gelfond insisted. Other documentary tentpoles upcoming from Imax include Stormbound , produced by Adam McKay.

“Our diversified content strategy — with Hollywood and local language blockbusters, Imax documentaries and new events and experiences — is delivering great results, resulting in a Q1 that was among our best of all time at the global box office,” Gelfond told analysts.

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Kanye, aka Ye, and Ty Dolla $ign have confirmed May 3 as the new release date for “Vultures 2,” the sequel to their Billboard 200-topping album. The album, originally slated for a March 8 release , will include the pre-existing “Let Me Chill Out,” a single featuring Rich the Kid and NBA Youngboy and the late Migos member Takeoff .

Kanye revealed the “Vultures 2” release date news during a recent appearance on Justin LaBoy’s “The Download” podcast. “Vultures” was announced as a three-part album series with the third volume said to arrive on April 5 though the third volume of the album was not discussed during Kanye and LaBoy’s conversation.

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Kanye and Ty Dolla released “Vultures 1” on Feb. 10 via YZY, which debuted atop the Billboard 200, launching its lead single, “Carnival” to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song competed with fresh singles from Beyoncé, and remains at No. 20 on the chart.

There have been more than a few broken promises when it comes to “Vultures” (including the pair’s disappointing Rolling Loud set ). Kanye and Ty Dolla supported the album with various “listening sessions” that were supposed to hit arenas (in Tampa, Fort Lauderdale, Pittsburgh, Nashville, Charlotte and Washington, D.C), but those shows were scrapped within a day or two of first being announced.

Kanye has also spoken about possibly releasing the second part of the record solely as a paid download, or through a new and exclusive streaming site, rather than a conventional rollout to DSPs, but only time will tell what “Vultures 2” will actually bring.

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‘rebel moon part 2: the scargiver’ dethroned in netflix’s top 10 list by a new movie.

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Rebel Moon Part 2: The Scargiver managed about three or four days on the top of Netflix’s Top 10 movies list, but now a new entry has come along and dethroned it. Though given how big the new movie is, that seems like it would have been inevitable for any other movie.

The new #1 film is Anyone But You, the Sydney Sweeney/Glen Powell megahit romcom that grossed $200 million on a $25 million budget, and was one of the biggest genre hits in recent memory with two of the industry’s top young stars. Netflix landed the streaming rights from Sony, and here we are. It was always going to debut at #1.

There’s some debate about whether or not Rebel Moon is meeting, surpassing or falling short of expectations. It did top the Global Top 10 list for the week of April 15 through April 21, despite being available for just three of those days. That said, it had only 3 million more views in that window than “Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp” Its 21 million views is a steep drop from the 34 million views that Part 1: A Child of Fire got back in January of 2024. That movie went on to get 80-90 million views eventually, according to director Zack Snyder, but by default, it seems like Part 2 is going to underperform that.

The arrival of Part 2 of Rebel Moon did cause Part 1 to appear on the Top 10 charts so people could watch (or rewatch) the first one before watching the second one. It appeared low on the list and is now hanging on at #10, but it no doubt added to its overall total.

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Of course, we’re still not done. Six more hours of Rebel Moon are coming, two, three-hour cuts of these two films with R-rated elements. Snyder describes them as practically entirely new films. Though it would also be logical for those films to be viewed less than the original Part 1 and 2. Six hours is a big ask and the amount of people willing to invest that time in more Rebel Moon is likely pretty low, especially given that the films are…not especially good, by most metrics. There’s always this idea if you just execute Snyder’s exact vision it would be transformative and make a bad movie good. It did sort of happen with Justice League, but I think there are limits to this concept, particularly when it comes to Rebel Moon, but we’ll see.

Anyone But You is going to be planted in that top spot for a long time. It dominated the paid digital charts when it was released on places like Amazon, and now that it’s streaming on Netflix itself? Forget about it.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy .

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Harvey Weinstein’s New York Conviction Is Overturned

The state’s top court ruled that Mr. Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood producer whose sexual abuse case incited the #MeToo movement, did not receive a fair trial. A separate 16-year sentence in California was not affected.

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Maria Cramer

Here are five takeaways from the overturned conviction.

In a 4-to-3 decision on Thursday, New York’s highest court overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges , a reversal that horrified and dismayed many of the women whose decision to speak out against Mr. Weinstein, a prominent Hollywood producer, accelerated the #MeToo movement.

The New York Court of Appeals agreed with Mr. Weinstein’s defense team that the trial judge who presided over the sex crimes case in Manhattan, Justice James Burke, made a critical error when he let prosecutors call as witnesses several women who testified that Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, even though none of those allegations had led to charges.

The women became known as Molineux witnesses, a term that refers to trial witnesses who are allowed to testify about criminal acts that the defendant has not been charged with committing. In writing for the majority, Judge Jenny Rivera said permitting such testimony in Mr. Weinstein’s case had served to wrongly “diminish defendant’s character before the jury.”

The ruling, four years after Mr. Weinstein was convicted of forcibly performing oral sex on a production assistant and of raping an actress, did not surprise many legal analysts who had questioned whether prosecutors had taken too big a risk in their efforts to win over the jury.

The Harvey Weinstein Appeal Ruling, Annotated

Read the ruling from New York’s top court that overturned the 2020 conviction of Harvey Weinstein on felony sex crime charges in Manhattan, with context and explanation by New York Times journalists.

In its decision, the court came to the conclusion that prosecutors had done just that and, along with Justice Burke, had violated a central tenet of criminal trials: Defendants should be judged only on the charges against them.

Here are five takeaways from the court’s ruling:

The court cited “egregious errors.”

The court said the trial’s fairness had been compromised by two key prosecution strategies: the use of Molineux witnesses and the prosecutors’ disclosure that if Mr. Weinstein took the stand in his own defense, they would ask him about dozens of allegations of other crimes and boorish, frightening behavior.

Before the trial, during what is known as a Sandoval hearing, Justice Burke said he would let prosecutors question Mr. Weinstein about 28 allegations that included physically attacking his brother, threatening to cut off a colleague’s genitals with gardening shears, throwing a table of food, and screaming and cursing at hotel restaurant staff after they told him the kitchen was closed.

That threat made it impossible for Mr. Weinstein to take the stand even though he was “begging” to testify in his own defense, his lawyer, Arthur Aidala, said during oral arguments before the Court of Appeals in February.

In its majority opinion, the court agreed.

“The threat of a cross-examination highlighting these untested allegations undermined defendant’s right to testify,” Judge Rivera wrote. “The remedy for these egregious errors is a new trial.”

The three dissenting judges slammed the majority.

Three judges — Madeline Singas, Anthony Cannataro and Michael J. Garcia — dissented in a pair of scathing opinions that accused the majority of continuing “a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”

The judges said the court had ignored evidence that the Molineux witnesses had established: that Mr. Weinstein had displayed a pattern of coercion and manipulation.

Judge Singas said the ruling would make it harder to use such witnesses in future sexual assault cases.

“Men who serially sexually exploit their power over women — especially the most vulnerable groups in society — will reap the benefit of today’s decision,” she wrote.

Judge Cannataro said the additional witnesses the prosecution had presented had helped upend the still-pervasive notion that a sexual assault must involve “the stereotypical stranger in a dark alley who isolates his victim or waits for her to be alone before launching a violent assault.”

The case clearly caused tension among the court, evident in a series of back-and-forth statements between the judges, with the majority defending itself against the dissenters’ claims that the ruling weakened the ability of accusers to push their cases through the criminal court system.

“We do not ‘shut eyes to the enduring effect of rape culture on notions of consent, and intent,’” Judge Rivera wrote, referring to part of Judge Singas’s dissent. “On the contrary, consistent with our judicial role, our analysis is grounded on bedrock principles of evidence and the defendant’s constitutional right to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial.”

Victims and activists are devastated but remain determined.

Dawn Dunning, one of the Molineux witnesses who testified against Mr. Weinstein, said she was asked after the ruling if she regretted testifying.

“My answer is a resounding ‘no,’” she said in a statement. “I am a stronger person for having done so, and I know that other women found strength and courage because I and other Weinstein survivors confronted him publicly. The culture has changed, and I am confident that there is no going back.”

She and others encouraged Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, to retry the case. The 2020 case was tried under Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Mr. Bragg’s predecessor. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Bragg said that he would retry the case.

Ashley Judd , the first actress to come forward with allegations against Mr. Weinstein, called the news “unfair to survivors.”

“We still live in our truth,” she said. “And we know what happened.”

Ms. Judd appeared with several other sexual assault survivors and activists on Thursday at a hastily arranged news conference on the 29th floor of the Millennium Hilton in Midtown.

Tarana Burke, the founder of #MeToo, said one of the overarching goals of the movement — to get the court system to take sexual assault cases more seriously — is “long, strategic and thoughtful.”

“The bad thing about survivors is there are so many of us,” she said. “But the good thing about survivors is that there are so many of us.”

Mr. Weinstein’s conviction in California still stands.

Mr. Weinstein, who had been serving a 23-year sentence at Mohawk Correctional Facility in upstate New York, learned about the decision after someone at the prison showed him a news report about the ruling, according to his lawyer, Mr. Aidala.

He talked to Mr. Aidala just after 10 a.m., about an hour after the ruling came down.

Mr. Aidala said Mr. Weinstein “wasn’t emotional, like crying,” but he was “very gracious, very grateful.”

Even with the conviction overturned, Mr. Weinstein is not a free man. He is still facing a 16-year sentence in California, where a jury convicted him in 2022 of raping a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel . He was to serve that term after his New York sentence. Now, he could be transferred to California, but he will most likely be transferred from state prison to Rikers Island, the jail complex in New York City, as he waits for Mr. Bragg to decide whether to push for another trial.

… But he will soon appeal it.

After Thursday’s decision came down, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer in California, Jennifer Bonjean, said she expected the ruling to help him when he appeals his California conviction on May 20.

A jury in Los Angeles Superior Court deadlocked on charges of sexual battery by restraint, forcible oral copulation and forcible rape in December 2022. Those charges were related to accusations brought by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker and the wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, and Lauren Young, a model and screenwriter.

But the jury found Mr. Weinstein guilty on three other counts — rape, forcible oral sex and sexual penetration — involving an Italian actress who testified that he attacked her in a hotel room in 2013. The jury acquitted Mr. Weinstein of one count of sexual battery involving a massage therapist.

In that case, as in New York, prosecutors were allowed to use witnesses who accused Mr. Weinstein of sex crimes that he had not been charged with. However, the laws around such witnesses are different in California.

Jurors in the California trial were “overwhelmed with this bad character evidence that was not legitimate, that tainted the whole trial in California from our perspective,” Ms. Bonjean said.

Jodi Kantor , Jan Ransom , Chelsia Rose Marcius and Hurubie Meko contributed reporting.

Claire Fahy

Lindsay Goldbrum, a lawyer who has represented a number of Weinstein’s accusers, said in a statement that the witness testimony at issue was crucial to rebutting the defense’s assertion that the sexual encounters were consensual. The ruling today “will undoubtedly deter future sexual assault victims from coming forward,” she said.

Hurubie Meko

Weinstein’s lawyer Arthur Aidala said he would be brought to a facility closer to New York City in preparation for a new case, and then “we start from scratch.”

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Benjamin Weiser

What is the Court of Appeals, and how does it work?

The Court of Appeals, which handed down the Weinstein ruling on Thursday, is New York’s highest court — and thus gets the final say on cases in the state before a party may seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The appeals court’s seven members include a chief judge, Rowan Wilson , and six associate judges. The judges’ vote to overturn Weinstein’s conviction was 4-to-3.

In order for Harvey Weinstein to have the appeals court hear his case after he was found guilty in a Manhattan trial in 2020, he first had to appeal to an intermediate court — called the appellate division. A panel of that court unanimously upheld Mr. Weinstein’s conviction in 2022. From there, he then could pursue his case in the Court of Appeals.

According to Thursday’s ruling, two associate judges on the Court of Appeals did not participate in the Weinstein decision; they were replaced by two justices from the appellate division.

Weinstein learned about the decision after someone showed him a news report that said his conviction had been reversed, his lawyer Arthur Aidala said.

Mr. Weinstein’s criminal convictions in California still stand.

A decision by New York’s highest court to overturn the 2020 sex crimes conviction of Harvey Weinstein has upended a criminal case that helped ignite the #MeToo movement. But that conviction was just one of two secured against Mr. Weinstein in recent years.

In the other case, brought by prosecutors in Los Angeles in January 2020 , Mr. Weinstein was accused of rape and other crimes, convicted and ultimately sentenced to 16 years in prison , with the term to begin after his New York sentence. Mr. Weinstein is expected to appeal the California conviction next month, said his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean.

Ms. Bonjean added that she thinks Thursday’s decision — which found that Mr. Weinstein was not tried solely on the crimes he was charged with but also for past behavior — will bolster the appeal in Los Angeles.

“The New York decision relates to the excessive use of other accusers — and the concept of uncharged accusers and bad acts is equally applicable in the L.A. case,” Ms. Bonjean said.

In the Los Angeles case, prosecutors called 44 witnesses, including four women who said they had been assaulted by Mr. Weinstein and were allowed to testify to show a pattern of abuse, though their accounts were not tied to the charges.

“They were overwhelmed with this bad character evidence that was not legitimate that tainted the whole trial in California from our perspective,” Ms. Bonjean said of the jurors in that case.

Ms. Bonjean, who represented Bill Cosby in the successful appeal of his sexual assault conviction, also said that the Los Angeles prosecutors erred by informing the jury that Mr. Weinstein had been convicted in New York, which might have unfairly swayed jurors.

“That turned the presumption of innocence on its head and tainted the entire trial and was even used to enhance his sentencing,” said Ms. Bonjean, who added that she expected to file an appeal in the California case on May 20.

The California prosecution in Los Angeles Superior Court focused in part on allegations that Mr. Weinstein raped a woman identified as Jane Doe 1 in a hotel room in February 2013. He was convicted in December 2022 of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object. But he was not convicted on four other counts.

At his sentencing, Mr. Weinstein pleaded for leniency, telling the judge that the case against him was not solid and did not justify a long prison term.

“I tried all my life to bring happiness to people,” Mr. Weinstein said in court. “Please don’t sentence me to life in prison. I don’t deserve it.”

Jane Manning, the director of the Women’s Equal Justice Project and a former sex crimes prosecutor, said that the appeals court decision in New York should not affect the case in Los Angeles.

“California law explicitly permits prosecutors to show that a defendant’s sexually predatory conduct is part of a pattern,” Ms. Manning said. “They explicitly permit evidence of similar crimes to be admitted in sex assault cases because they understand just how relevant this evidence is.”

Ms. Manning said that New York, on the other hand, does not have a statute that guides courts on this issue and “so it is left completely to the courts to determine what is and isn’t permissible when it comes to evidence of similar crimes.”

It was unclear on Thursday just when Weinstein would be transferred to a California prison. A spokesman for the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the prison where he is now in custody, said the agency was “reviewing the court decision.”

Duncan Levin, a former New York prosecutor who was briefly part of Weinstein’s legal team, said in a statement: “This is how the court system is supposed to work: fundamental due process for everyone without fear or favor. The New York Court of Appeals adhered to the basic principles of rule of law, and that was not an easy thing to do here.”

At a news conference outside Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building, where Weinstein was convicted in 2020, Arthur Aidala, one of Weinstein’s lawyers, said that from the start his team “knew that Harvey Weinstein did not get a fair trial.”

Aidala called Judge Jenny Rivera, who wrote the decision, a “real hero for women.” The decision, he said, stated that “you can’t convict someone based on their entire life.”

Weinstein will now be able to return to court and tell his side without having “so much baggage” from his past divulged to the jury, Aidala said. “He’s been dying to tell his story from Day 1,” he said.

Weinstein is slated to appeal his California conviction on May 20, according to his lawyer Jennifer Bonjean, who said that she expected that today’s ruling would bolster his appeal in that case. She said jurors were “overwhelmed with this bad character evidence that was not legitimate, that tainted the whole trial in California from our perspective.”

The Model Alliance, a labor rights group focused on young women in the fashion industry, criticized the ruling in a news conference on Zoom. Carré Otis, a model who is on the group’s board, described herself as “sickened” by the decision. “As an advocate, I’m fired up,” she added.

Sara Ziff, the executive director of the Model Alliance, called on lawmakers in Albany to pass the Fashion Workers Act, which would provide labor protections for models, before the end of the legislative session on June 6. “While today’s news is devastating, it only strengthens our commitment to reforming industries predominantly made up of young women,” she said.

In their dissents, three judges offer sharp critiques of the majority’s decision.

In a pair of scathing opinions, three judges on the New York Court of Appeals who dissented in the court’s ruling to overturn Harvey Weinstein’s conviction accused the majority of continuing “a disturbing trend of overturning juries’ guilty verdicts in cases involving sexual violence.”

Madeline Singas, one of the dissenting judges, said the majority of the court had ignored the evidence that showed Mr. Weinstein’s affinity for “manipulation and premeditation.”

Worse, she wrote, the court had made it harder for victims to hold their assailants accountable in future cases.

“Men who serially sexually exploit their power over women — especially the most vulnerable groups in society — will reap the benefit of today’s decision,” Judge Singas wrote.

She joined Judges Anthony Cannataro and Michael J. Garcia in the dissent. Judge Garcia did not write his own opinion, but agreed with the other two dissenting judges.

In his dissent, Judge Cannataro said that the additional witnesses the prosecution presented — who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him — had been vital to show Mr. Weinstein’s pattern of manipulation and coercion.

Their testimony, he wrote, helped upend the still-pervasive notion that a sexual assault must involve “the stereotypical stranger in a dark alley who isolates his victim or waits for her to be alone before launching a violent assault.”

In the Manhattan trial, Justice James Burke was careful in his decision to let prosecutors present evidence that showed that more “complex psychological and sociological dynamics” were at play, Judge Cannataro wrote.

The decision to overturn the conviction “represents an unfortunate step backward from recent advances in our understanding of how sex crimes are perpetrated and why victims sometimes respond in seemingly counterintuitive ways,” Judge Cannataro wrote.

Judge Singas said that the witness testimony of the additional women, who described their disgust and horror at Mr. Weinstein’s advances, had made it clearer to the jury that the former producer had to have known that he did not have the women’s consent.

“Their testimony explained the idiosyncrasies of the entertainment industry that allow assaults to be perpetrated by influential and powerful men against young and relatively powerless aspiring actresses,” Judge Singas wrote.

The majority appeared to take umbrage with the fierce statements of the dissenting judges, defending their ruling in numerous footnotes and throughout the opinion, a back-and-forth that suggested the decision had given rise to considerable tension among the judges.

Judge Jenny Rivera, who wrote for the majority, said Judge Singas “misconstrues” their analysis of why the additional witnesses were not needed to combat “rape myths.”

She pushed back on Judge Singas’s assertions that the court had made it harder for future victims to have their cases prosecuted, calling them “exaggerated claims.”

Weinstein’s team is scheduled to hold a news conference at 1:30 p.m. at the park across the street from Manhattan’s Criminal Courts building, where the trial of Donald J. Trump is underway inside. The area is surrounded by security and camera banks of press.

Maia Coleman

Sarah Ann Masse, an actress who in 2017 accused Weinstein of sexually assaulting her and who has founded an organization supporting survivors of sexual abuse in Hollywood, said in a statement that today’s decision reflects a broader failure of the justice system to support survivors.

“Abusers are given chance after chance to get back to their ‘normal lives’ while survivors continue to suffer from a lack of support, prolonged trauma, chronic illness, mental health struggles, economic harm and various forms of retaliation,” she said.

Reached by phone, Donna Rotunno, Weinstein’s lead trial attorney in New York, lauded the court’s decision. “From Day 1 of this I have said they were prosecuting him for sins, not crimes,” she said. “I think it’s bigger than Weinstein; this speaks to our justice system as a whole. The court ruling says to prosecutors: Winning at all costs is not your job. Your job is to put on a fair trial.”

Chelsia Rose Marcius

Fatima Goss Graves, the chief executive of the National Women’s Law Center, said at a news conference in Manhattan that today’s decision would only invigorate the #MeToo movement. “One well-known case does not define this movement,” she said.

Despite their visibly deep disappointment about today’s decision, Judd, Burke and Graves are composed and smiling. All said they took solace in their strong bond. Burke said movements like #MeToo are “long, strategic and thoughtful.” She added: “The bad thing about survivors is there are so many of us. But the good thing about survivors is that there are so many of us.”

Weinstein’s accusers express fury and disappointment over the court’s ruling.

Several women who have accused Harvey Weinstein of sex crimes or harassment expressed a range of emotions on Thursday morning after New York’s highest court overturned Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction.

It’s “a terrible reminder that victims of sexual assault just don’t get justice,” said Katherine Kendall , an actress who accused Mr. Weinstein of luring her to what she believed would be a work discussion in 1993. Instead, she said, he chased her around his New York apartment while he was nude. “I’m completely let down by the justice system right now,” she added. “I’m sort of flabbergasted.”

Ambra Battilana Gutierrez , a Filipino Italian model, had accused Mr. Weinstein of grabbing her breasts and putting his hands up her skirt in 2015 during a business meeting at his office in Manhattan, but the Manhattan district attorney’s office decided not to charge him .

“If the D.A. had taken my case seriously in 2015, we wouldn’t be here,” Ms. Battilana Gutierrez said on Thursday. “This is an ongoing failure of the justice system — and the courts — to take survivors seriously and to protect our interests.”

Amber Tamblyn, an actress, writer and director who has been outspoken during the #MeToo movement , was flooded with anger when she learned of Thursday’s decision, calling it “a loss to the entire community of women who put their lives and careers on the line to speak out.”

Tomi-Ann Roberts, a professor of psychology at Colorado College, said the ruling infuriated her but did not shock her. She had accused Mr. Weinstein of sexually harassing her during an encounter at a hotel in 1984 that she believed was a business meeting.

“The only thing I can hope with this is that it re-energizes the #MeToo movement to demand that the criminal and civil justice systems do better at holding perpetrators accountable for this range of activities that are all degrading and all should be illegal,” said Dr. Roberts, whose research focuses on the consequences of sexual objectification.

Ms. Kendall added that sexual assault victims “who go up against powerful men rarely get justice.”

“But the important thing is that we do not stop speaking out,” she said. “Our culture needs to keep supporting silence breakers.”

Jodi Kantor , Jan Ransom and Maria Cramer contributed reporting.

Michael Osgood, the former head of the New York Police Department’s special victims division, who led a team of 25 detectives in the Weinstein investigation, said that the decision today was a result of missteps by the former Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance. “We built a rock-solid case,” he said of the 2015 case involving the model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez. “Harvey Weinstein was able to penetrate the district attorney’s office and cover that assault up.”

The actress Ashley Judd is speaking now at a news conference in Manhattan. This morning, she said, she heard the news from my colleague Jodi Kantor. Judd said she was stunned. “This is what it's like to be a woman in America,”she said, “living with male entitlement to our bodies.”

Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, said this news conference was pulled together quickly in response to the ruling. Many people, she said, had thought that the original verdict represented a change in how the justice system operates. “This moment makes it feel like we were wrong.”

Nicole Hong

The appeals court agreed with Weinstein that the trial judge violated his right to testify in his own defense. The trial judge had ruled that if Weinstein took the stand, prosecutors would be allowed to question him about a long history of bad behavior, including allegations that he threw food at an employee and punched his brother at a business meeting. The appeals ruling said this “impermissibly” affected Weinstein’s decision not to testify at trial.

William Rashbaum

Cyrus R. Vance Jr., the former Manhattan district attorney who oversaw the investigation and prosecution of Weinstein, said in a lengthy statement that he was “shocked” by the decision, which he said “did not advance justice.”

Of Weinstein’s victims, he said, “I am deeply grateful to and humbled by the survivors who came forward in the brightest glare of a public courtroom to tell their stories at great personal cost and trauma,” adding, “The judicial system, in my opinion, has let them down today.”

Vance, noting that Weinstein’s conviction was previously upheld by a lower appeals court in “a thoughtful and unanimous opinion,” said the witness testimony at issue “was fair and necessary to explain to the jury how and why these women were repeatedly victimized.” He also said those witnesses were just a fraction of the women victimized by Weinstein over years of abuse.

The model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, who had accused Weinstein of groping her breast and putting his hand up her skirt, said in a statement: “If the D.A. had taken my case seriously in 2015, we wouldn’t be here. This is an ongoing failure of the justice system — and the courts — to take survivors seriously and to protect our interests.”

Justice Madeline Singas wrote a fiery dissent that accused the court of making it more difficult for victims to seek justice against their assailants. “Men who serially sexually exploit their power over women — especially the most vulnerable groups in society — will reap the benefit of today’s decision,” she wrote.

Justice Anthony Cannataro, who also dissented, wrote that the additional witnesses the prosecution presented were vital to show Weinstein’s pattern of manipulation and coercion. Their testimony helped upend the still pervasive notion that a sexual assault must involve “the stereotypical stranger in a dark alley who isolates his victim or waits for her to be alone before launching a violent assault.”

Weinstein has been held in semi-protective custody at Mohawk Correctional Facility east of Syracuse, where he has spent his days reading and studying the law, his spokesman said.

Weinstein, who has diabetes, eye problems and heart issues, has used a walker in prison and was housed in a medical unit, his spokesman said. “He’s been to the hospital for his eye issues,” said the spokesman, Juda Engelmayer. “He has been going through bouts of difficulty.”

Testimony by these witnesses was a key part of Weinstein’s appeal argument.

Central to the decision to overturn the conviction of Harvey Weinstein was something called “Molineux witnesses.” That term refers to witnesses in a trial who are allowed to testify about criminal acts that the defendant has not been charged with committing.

During the trial, prosecutors sought to persuade jurors that Mr. Weinstein had a long history of using his prominence as a Hollywood producer to lure young women to hotel rooms and sexually assault them.

They did this by calling other women to the stand who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them, including Dawn Dunning, Tarale Wulff and Lauren Young . Mr. Weinstein was not charged with assaulting those women, but Justice James Burke allowed them to appear for the prosecution as Molineux witnesses, also known as “prior bad act” witnesses.

The legal standard for prior bad acts in New York State dates back to the case of a chemist named Roland B. Molineux , who was convicted in 1900 of sending a bottle full of cyanide to the director of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club , with whom he had a personal feud. The cyanide killed a woman who was living with the club director and took the poison, believing it was a medicine.

During Mr. Molineux’s trial, prosecutors presented evidence that he had previously poisoned another rival in the same manner, with a mailed tin of poison masquerading as medicine. He was never charged with the earlier crime.

A year later, the Court of Appeals overturned his conviction in a landmark decision that said the state could not present evidence about a defendant’s other alleged crimes. Jurors, the court ruled, would believe a defendant “was guilty of the crime charged because he had committed other, similar crimes in the past.”

But exceptions to the ruling were laid out. For instance, a judge could admit such evidence to establish a motive for the crime being tried, to prove the crime wasn’t an innocent mistake or to establish a common scheme or plan.

Before letting the evidence in, the judge would have to weigh the extent to which the evidence helped to prove that the crime was part of a pattern, versus how prejudicial the effect on the jury would be, the court decided.

But those are both highly subjective judgments, according to legal experts. And that leaves defendants like Mr. Weinstein ample ground to challenge a guilty verdict in higher courts.

Jonah Bromwich

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said in a statement: “We will do everything in our power to retry this case, and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.”

A spokesman for Weinstein said the lawyers will respond to the New York Court of Appeals decision at 1:30 p.m. on the steps of the criminal courthouse at 100 Centre Street.

Here’s a timeline of Weinstein’s New York case.

March 27, 2015 : Prosecutors in Manhattan decline to prosecute Harvey Weinstein after a Filipino Italian model, Ambra Battilana Gutierrez, tells the police that Mr. Weinstein groped her breast and slid his hand up her skirt during a business meeting at his office in Manhattan. The Manhattan district attorney at the time, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., reaches the decision despite a secret recording obtained by Ms. Battilana Gutierrez in which Mr. Weinstein can be heard apologizing and offering what seems like an admission.

Oct. 5, 2017 : Investigations by The New York Times and The New Yorker reveal accusations that Mr. Weinstein mistreated women and that his company covered it up.

March 19, 2018 : Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York orders a review of the decision not to charge Mr. Weinstein in 2015, calling Mr. Vance’s decision-making into question.

April 25, 2018 : Mr. Vance assigns a new prosecutor to lead the investigation.

May 25, 2018 : Mr. Weinstein surrenders to the police after being indicted on charges of rape and criminal sexual act. The rape charge stems from an alleged assault on an aspiring actress, Jessica Mann, at a Manhattan hotel in 2013. The criminal sexual act charge involves Lucia Evans, a marketing executive who told investigators that Mr. Weinstein forced her to perform oral sex on him during a meeting in his office in 2004.

July 2, 2018 : Prosecutors add charges against Mr. Weinstein related to accusations that he forced oral sex on Miriam Haley, a former production assistant on the television show “Project Runway,” in his Manhattan apartment in July 2006.

Oct. 11, 2018 : A judge dismisses the forcible oral sex charge against Mr. Weinstein involving Ms. Evans after prosecutors acknowledge that the lead detective in the case withheld pertinent information that a witness had cast doubt on Ms. Evans’s account.

Aug. 26, 2019 : Prosecutors obtain a new indictment against Mr. Weinstein, allowing them to call as a witness Annabella Sciorra, an actress who said that Mr. Weinstein raped her at her Manhattan apartment in 1993 or 1994.

Jan. 6, 2020 : Mr. Weinstein is indicted in Los Angeles, where he is accused of raping one woman and groping and masturbating in front of a second within two days in February 2013. The California charges are filed the same day that the legal parties in Mr. Weinstein’s New York trial first gather in Manhattan to discuss jury selection and other legal matters.

Feb. 18, 2020 : After a monthlong trial in which they hear testimony from Ms. Sciorra, Ms. Haley and Ms. Mann, among other people, jurors in New York began deliberations.

Feb. 24, 2020 : The jury, consisting of five men and seven women, finds Mr. Weinstein guilty of rape and criminal sexual act but acquits him on three other counts, including the two most serious charges against him: being a sexual predator.

March 11, 2020 : Mr. Weinstein is sentenced to 23 years in prison. His first stop in New York’s penal system is the notorious Rikers Island jail complex where he becomes inmate No. 3102000153.

April 10, 2020 : Prosecutors in California add a charge against Mr. Weinstein, alleging that he committed an assault at a Beverly Hills hotel in May 2010.

April 5, 2021 : Mr. Weinstein appeals his New York conviction, saying several women who had accused him of sexual assault should not have been allowed to testify.

June 2, 2022 : A New York appeals court upholds Mr. Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crimes in a unanimous decision.

Dec. 19, 2022 : After a trial that began in October 2022, jurors in Los Angeles return a mixed verdict, finding Mr. Weinstein guilty of raping and sexually assaulting an actress in 2013, but not guilty of one other charge. They are unable to reach a decision on three additional counts.

Feb. 23, 2023 : Mr. Weinstein is sentenced to 16 years in prison in the Los Angeles case, with that prison term to begin after he serves his time in New York.

April 25, 2024 : New York’s highest court overturns the 2020 conviction, ruling that Mr. Weinstein was not tried solely on the crimes he was charged with, but instead for much of his past behavior.

Jodi Kantor

Jodi Kantor has been reporting on Harvey Weinstein since 2017, when she and Megan Twohey revealed decades of abuse allegations against him.

News analysis

Harvey Weinstein’s conviction was fragile from the start.

The overturning of Harvey Weinstein’s New York sex crimes conviction on Thursday morning may feel like a shocking reversal, but the criminal case against him has been fragile since the day it was filed. Prosecutors moved it forward with risky, boundary-pushing bets. New York’s top judges, many of them female, have held rounds of pained debates over whether his conviction was clean.

“I’m not shocked,” said Deborah Tuerkheimer, a former Manhattan prosecutor who is now a law professor at Northwestern, in an interview. The issue of whether Mr. Weinstein’s trial was fair “is a really close question that could have gone either way.”

Outside the justice system, evidence of Mr. Weinstein’s sexual misconduct is overwhelming. After The New York Times revealed allegations of abuse by the producer in 2017, nearly 100 women came forward with accounts of pressure and manipulation by Mr. Weinstein. Their stories sparked the global #MeToo reckoning.

But while Mr. Weinstein’s alleged victims could fill an entire courtroom, few of them could stand at the center of a New York criminal trial. Many of the horror stories were about sexual harassment, which is a civil violation, not a criminal one. Some were from out of state, especially California. Others fell beyond the statute of limitations. One of the original accusers was dropped from the trial because of allegations of police misconduct.

Manhattan prosecutors, under pressure for not pursuing charges earlier, made a series of gambles.

First, they proceeded with a trial based on only two victims, who accused him of sexually assaulting them but also admitted to having consensual sex with him at other times — a combination that many experts say is too messy to win convictions . To prove their case against Mr. Weinstein, who denies all allegations of non-consensual sex, the prosecutors had little concrete evidence.

So to persuade the jury, the lawyers turned to a controversial strategy that would ultimately lead to the conviction’s undoing. They put additional women with accounts of abuse by Mr. Weinstein — so-called Molineux witnesses — on the stand to establish a pattern of predation. The decision seemed apt for the moment: In a legal echo of the #MeToo movement, Mr. Weinstein was forced to face a chorus of testimony from multiple women.

The women’s testimony was searing, and when Mr. Weinstein was convicted in 2020, and then sentenced to 23 years in prison, it looked like the prosecutors had expanded the possibilities for holding sex offenders accountable.

“I did it for all of us,” Dawn Dunning , who served as a supporting witness in the trial, said in an interview afterward. “I did it for the women who couldn’t testify. I couldn’t not do it.”

But because New York law is open to interpretation on when those witnesses are allowed, the move risked violating a cardinal rule of criminal trials: Defendants must be judged on the acts they are being charged with.

That became the main basis for Mr. Weinstein’s repeated appeals of his conviction. For years, his lawyers have argued that his trial was fundamentally unfair, because it included witnesses who fell outside the scope of the charges. In addition to the alleged sexual assault victims, prosecutors brought in character witnesses who portrayed Mr. Weinstein as a capricious, cruel figure.

In 2022, a New York appeals court dismissed those concerns and upheld his conviction, after a vigorous debate by the judges. They wrote that the testimony from the additional witnesses had been instrumental in showing that the producer did not see his victims as “romantic partners or friends,” but that “his goal at all times was to position the women in such a way that he could have sex with them, and that whether the women consented or not was irrelevant to him.”

This February, when New York’s highest court heard the producer’s last-chance appeal, the proceedings did not garner much attention . But they felt quietly dramatic: Seven of the state’s highest judges, four of them women, were debating whether the man whose alleged offenses formed the cornerstone of the #MeToo movement had been treated fairly in court.

Today the court decided, with a majority that included three of those female judges, to throw out the conviction and order a new trial. Mr. Weinstein remains convicted in California and could be moved to prison there.

“We conclude that the trial court erroneously admitted testimony of uncharged, alleged prior sexual acts against persons other than the complainants of the underlying crimes,” the judges wrote in their decision on Thursday.

“No person accused of illegality may be judged on proof of uncharged crimes that serve only to establish the accused’s propensity for criminal behavior,” the opinion continued.

But the decision landed by the slimmest of majorities: 4 to 3, with stinging dissents from judges who said they feared the implications of the court’s ruling. “The majority’s determination perpetuates outdated notions of sexual violence and allows predators to escape accountability,” Judge Madeline Singas wrote, adding that witness rules had evolved to be more flexible. “By ignoring the legal and practical realities of proving a lack of consent, the majority has crafted a naive narrative.”

Reached by phone a few minutes after the court shared its decision, Ashley Judd, the first actress to come forward with allegations against Mr. Weinstein, was unwavering in her own judgment. “That is unfair to survivors,” she said of the ruling.

The heated back-and-forth from the New York judges, and the early reaction to the decision, launched fresh debate about whether the ground rules for sexual misconduct convictions need to be updated.

“The #MeToo movement showed how important it is to have accounts from multiple accusers,” Ms. Tuerkheimer said. But witness rules — which are strict for a reason — can leave courtrooms an “alternate universe in which evidence relevant to sex crimes is often kept from the jury.”

“There’s a tension at the heart of it,” she said, “and prosecution in the #MeToo era will continue to deal with this dilemma.”

Jonah E. Bromwich ,  Maria Cramer and Jan Ransom

Here’s the latest on the reversal of Weinstein’s conviction.

New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges , a staggering reversal in the foundational case of the #MeToo era.

In a 4-3 decision , the New York Court of Appeals found that the trial judge who presided over Mr. Weinstein’s case, Justice James M. Burke, had made a crucial mistake, allowing prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.

Citing that decision and others it identified as errors, the appeals court determined that Mr. Weinstein, who as a movie producer had been one of the most powerful men in Hollywood, had not received a fair trial.

The ruling does not mean Mr. Weinstein, 72, who is being held in semi-protective custody in an upstate New York prison, is a free man. He was also sentenced in 2022 to 16 years in prison in California after he was convicted of raping a woman in a Beverly Hills hotel , and could now be sent to California to continue his sentence on the convictions there, according to his spokesman.

When reached by phone, Arthur Aidala, Mr. Weinstein’s lawyer, praised the appeals court “for upholding the most basic principles that a criminal defendant should have in a trial.”

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney’s office said, “We will do everything in our power to retry this case and remain steadfast in our commitment to survivors of sexual assault.”

Mr. Weinstein was accused of sexual misconduct by more than 100 women ; in New York, he was convicted in 2020 of assaulting two of them. Thursday’s appeals decision underscores the legal system’s difficulty in delivering redress to those who say they have been the victims of sex crimes.

Here’s what else to know:

The decision was disappointing for Mr. Weinstein’s accusers and supporters of the #MeToo movement. Jane Manning, the director of the Women’s Equal Justice project, called it “a shocking and disheartening day for survivors of sexual assault,” and said it “shows how much more work we all have to do to bring the ideals of the #MeToo movement forward.”

In a dissent, Judge Anthony Cannataro wrote that the additional witnesses — known as Molineux witnesses — presented by the prosecution were vital to show Mr. Weinstein’s pattern of manipulation and coercion. Read more about what the three dissenting justices wrote .

Mr. Weinstein, who has diabetes, eye problems and heart issues, has used a walker in prison and was housed in a medical unit at Mohawk Correctional Facility east of Syracuse, N.Y., according to Juda Engelmayer, his spokesman. “He’s been to the hospital for his eye issues,” the spokesman said. “He has been going through bouts of difficulty.”

Mr. Weinstein is slated to appeal his California conviction on May 20, according to his lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean. She said she expected Thursday’s ruling to bolster his appeal in the Los Angeles case. Read more about the case in California .

Reports of Mr. Weinstein having sexually abused women appeared in The New York Times in the fall of 2017. Their stories ignited what would become known as the #MeToo movement, a global repudiation of sexual misconduct by powerful men.