PhD Research Support

Doctoral candidates almost never need help writing. What they need, and rarely get, is an informed outside reader at the specific moments when a supervisor’s familiarity with the project becomes a limitation rather than an asset. A supervisor who has watched an argument develop for three years cannot easily see how it reads to an examiner encountering it once, in full, for the first time.

The stages of a UK doctorate

1. 1Registration and initial review. Usually registered as MPhil with an expectation of upgrading. The research proposal here is provisional and will change.
2. 2Upgrade or transfer viva, months 9 to 18. The first real gate.
3. 3Annual progression review. Lighter than the upgrade but formally recorded, and repeated concerns here are what precede a recommendation to submit for MPhil instead.
4. 4Fieldwork or data collection. The stage most vulnerable to external delay.
5. 5Writing up. Often a formally distinct registration status with reduced fees and reduced supervision.
6. 6Submission and viva voce. Two examiners, one internal and one external, usually two to three hours.
7. 7Corrections. Minor or major, then final deposit.

The upgrade viva

This is the milestone candidates most underestimate, because it arrives before the work feels substantial enough to defend. That misunderstands what it tests.

The upgrade panel is not asking whether you have made an original contribution. It is asking whether the project, as designed, could plausibly produce one within the time and resources remaining. Those are different questions, and answering the first when you were asked the second is why capable candidates get referred.

What a strong upgrade submission demonstrates:

• A gap that is specific and current. Named prior work, and why it does not already answer your question.
• A method that is actually executable. Access secured, ethics considered, sample realistic.
• Evidence you can write at the level. The sample chapter is doing this job, so it should be your strongest work rather than your most recent.
• A credible timeline with contingencies for the parts outside your control.

Writing up, and where it stalls

Three failures account for most of the difficulty in the final year, and all three come from the project having been written over a long period.

The contribution is implied, not stated

You can describe it fluently in conversation. It appears nowhere in the document as a plain sentence. Examiners will not infer it, and a viva that opens with them asking what the contribution is has already started on the back foot.

The literature review is frozen at year one

Approved early, never revisited. If the field moved and your review did not, the gap you claim may have been filled. This is a common cause of major corrections and it is entirely preventable with a refresh before submission.

Terminology has drifted across chapters

The construct named one way in chapter two is named differently in chapter six. Each choice was deliberate at the time. Read end to end, it reads as conceptual imprecision.

What support covers

• Upgrade report review before you submit it, focused on whether the panel’s actual question is answered.
• Chapter-by-chapter structural review as chapters are completed rather than all at the end.
• Contribution framing. Turning what you know into a sentence an examiner can test.
• Coherence review across the full submission for terminology drift and argument continuity.
• Data analysis and interpretation in SPSS, R, Stata, Python or Excel, from £99.
• Editing and proofreading at £12 per 1,000 words.
• Viva preparation at £149, including a mock viva on your actual submission.
• Corrections support, mapping an examiner report to specific sections.

Rates