Premature speculation

It is without a doubt, far, far too early for me to be thinking about how to structure my thesis. I don’t even start my PhD proper until January 2014. I should definitely, without a shadow of a doubt, not be thinking about how to compartmentalize things. And yet…

Because my thesis is going to be focused on looking at how to increase and monitor social impact of academic work, it makes sens e that it will feature case studies to demonstrate how this is possible. And, as I want to do different case studies for different subject areas, it also makes sense that I follow a 1 case study per chapter format, to keep things nice and tidy.

In my head, this will make for a thesis that it is made up as follows:

Introduction

Literature Review

Methodology

Case studies 1-15

Conclusion

Implications/recommendations

I’m very aware that this is a rough idea, and doesn’t necessarily follow the traditional format. That said, as my subject is so focused on creating impact, I really feel that tying it in with case studies and making practical recommendations is central to the work.

I would love to know if anyone else has used a similar structure, or if anyone has any comments about this is a proposed way of formatting my thesis?

Obviously, this will probably all change umpteen million times between now and the dreaded Viva, but hey ho!