Tuesday, 23 October 2012

A thesis to read, a thesis to examine: what do you think?

Do you want a newly
defended PhD thesis to be
delivered to you?
Anyone fancying some EU copyright discussion?   As readers of The 1709 Blog will probably know, in the last few years I have been engaged in doctoral research at the European University Institute, whose beautiful premises are located in the idyllic hills surrounding Florence. Thanks to such a congenial environment, I could explore what perhaps appears now as one of the least placid areas of intellectual property: copyright. In particular, I devoted my efforts to analysing the debate surrounding further (full?) copyright harmonisation at the EU level, in parallel with ever-growing activism on the side of the Court of Justice of the European Union. In the very last few years, this has in fact provided the de facto harmonisation of basic copyright principles, including originality.

Now that I have produced and defended my "own intellectual creation", which carries the title Judge-Made EU Copyright Harmonisation. The Case of Originality (you can find further details here), I would be delighted to make it available to any serious scholar or practitioner who is currently working in this field, so to engage in discussion with and receive comments/inputs/feedback from them. If you are one of those lucky and enthusiastic EU copyright folks, you can send an email to eleonorarosati{at}gmail.com. Many thanks in advance!

Not every PhD candidate
is sleepless though
How to examine PhDs?   Still on the topic of PhD, this morning Jeremy posted his thoughts on possible methodologies for conducting PhD examinations that are fair and effective, and such as to allow PhD candidates to benefit as fully as possible from examiners' feedback. The 1709 Blog thinks that this topic has not yet been addressed as thoroughly as it deserves, despite being something which makes PhD examiners often upset and PhD candidates invariably sleepless. Therefore, it warmly encourages its readers (either PhD students, examiners or simple fans of methodological issues) to share their thoughts on such an important issue. 
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1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7 February 2013 at 10:12

    A slightly belated congratulations to Eleonora!

    In response to Jeremy's thoughts on how to examine PhDs: I was told through the grape vine as a science PhD student (in the UK) that if one's supervisor allowed one to submit the thesis he would also give an informal thumbs up to the Examiners that it was worth a PhD. The viva can be very traumatic and mine was, though I passed it. My supervisor had warned me that the Examiners have several weeks to think up awful questions, which might not even have an answer. And that's what happened. In response to several questions I said 'I don't know' and the Examiners would gleefully reply 'Yes. That's right. No one does.', which was meant to be the answer. Afterwards I really felt I had been pushed to the limits of every concept in the thesis, not necessarily in a fair way. That happened because the system is too informal and closed, and so I very much support conducting examinations/vivas along the lines described for the EUI.

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