Theses galore

Every so often, students ask me how they can get hold of doctoral theses. While undergraduate and Masters degree dissertations may offer helpful insights and can serve as treasure troves of useful references to support your own research, doctoral theses are considered scholarly publications fit to be referenced in their own right. The Library has a large collection of doctoral theses from past students. Theses from other universities are held in various other online databases.

Reading theses from the University of Portsmouth

Most of the theses completed at the University since 2014 are held online and can be found and read through the University’s research portal.

Some older theses are only available in print. You can search our thesis collection using the Library catalogue advanced search. Please ask if you would like to consult one of our printed theses. While these are available for you to borrow, they tend to be big and heavy, so it is usually best to plan to read them in the Library! You can search our printed theses using the advanced search on the Library catalogue, as shown below, or just search normally and click the Theses collection link on the left (click the + button first on mobile to bring up the list of available filters).

Reading other universities’ theses

The main collection of UK theses are held by the British Library and were made available through their EThOS database. Sadly, the British Library is still recovering from a cyberattack in October 2023 that rendered much of its collections unavailable. They hope to restore access to EThOS at some point in 2025. The British Library maintain a summary of the current status of all British Library services.

You can find theses from other countries through their national repositories.