Philosophy BA thesis in Winter Semester 2024/25

BA thesis registration

• The Bachelorarbeit (BA thesis) should be completed in the final semester of your program and should run to approximately 80,000 characters according to the examination regulations (i.e. approximately 35-40 pages). This is a guideline: your thesis may be shorter, or longer, by a certain amount. Work on the BA thesis can also be started in an earlier semester, even if you have not yet passed all other assessments in your major and minor subjects.
• Registration period: 5 November to 8 November 2024. This form, filled out by both the student and their supervisor, must be sent to the degree program coordinator Dr. Thomas Wyrwich by post or, in digital form, by e-mail (thomas.wyrwich@lrz.uni-muenchen.de) within this period. Either the candidate or their supervisor must send the form. It will then be forwarded to the Examinations Office (Prüfungsamt).
  
  Please also note that it can take some time (about three weeks) for the Examinations Office to input the data from your written BA thesis registration into your LSF transcript and into LSF "List of exams registered for"!
• The supervisor should not fix the precise and final thesis topic, or sign the form, before 1 October 2024.

Supervision of the BA thesis

You should seek out a supervisor yourself. It is recommended that you make first contact with potential supervisors by the end of September 2024. The supervisor and student must agree on a topic, but the topic is ultimately provided by the supervisor. There is no entitlement on the part of the student to work on a very specific topic.

It is also possible to further explore a topic which you already worked on in previous assignments and essays. However, you may not reproduce verbatim a text, or parts thereof, which you have already written (without citing it). Your BA thesis must be an original piece of work. The thesis topic does not have to be identical to the final title of the thesis, but it must be related in any case. You can find a list of selected BA thesis topics from previous years below, which may also serve as possible inspiration or a rough orientation.

The following teaching staff at the faculty in the relevant semester may supervise a thesis: professors, Prviatdozenten/Privatdozentinnen (private lecturers) and wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter/Mitarbeiterinnen (reserach associates) who are members of Faculty 10 and teach philosophy at the faculty. You can find the research interests of staff on their individual homepages. If you have questions about finding the right supervisor for a particular topic, you can also get in touch with Dr. Thomas Wyrwich, the degree program coordinator.

Writing period and submission of the BA thesis

• Official writing period: 5 November 2024 - 13 January 2025 (ten weeks)
• Final submission deadline to the Examinations Office (Prüfungsamt): Tuesday, 14 January 2025
  
  Address:
  Prüfungsamt für Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften (PAGS)
  z. Hd. Herrn Widerna
  Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1
  80539 München
• Two bound copies of the thesis must be submitted by the deadline in one of the following ways:
  • handed to Herr Widerna in the Examinations Office (Room D 205 in the main building) during the Office's opening hours
  • or submitted by post to the address above (it is not necessary to send it as registered mail or with signed-for delivery - what counts is the postmark)
  • or posted (in an envelope) in the LMU letterbox (LMU-Briefkasten) at Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 in the main entrance.

A personally signed declaration must be included as the last page of your thesis (glue or spiral binding), which confirms that the thesis is your own independent work and that only the given sources and aids were used in its preparation. (This declaration must be written in German.) Other than that, there are no further formal requirements for the presentation of the thesis. You can decorate the title page using your own imagination. It is recommended that you clarify expectations regarding the font size, the margins and so on with your supervisor.

Further information about the disputation, grading and the colloquium/Oberseminar

• After submission, the BA thesis must be defended in the form of a 20-minute-long disputation, which is typically held and graded by the supervisor. The disputation should take place shortly after thesis submission (and in the typical case by the end of February 2025 at latest). You should arrange a time for the disputation together with your supervisor well in advance. It is required that someone with subject-specific knowledge (at least a Bachelor degree in Philosophy or a closely related area) takes minutes of the disputation; the supervisor should find a suitable minute-taker.
• The BA thesis is graded (only) by the supervisor. Only if the thesis is graded lower than 4,0 is a second grader consulted.
• The BA thesis project must also be presented in a colloquium or Oberseminar in the form of a talk (around 20 minutes). You should give the talk in the BA colloquium with which your supervisor is associated according to the list above. Please register in advance for the correct colloquium by 7 October 2024 via LSF. If you have questions or are unclear about these matters, please get in touch with the degree program coordinator. Important: those who are giving a talk are required to be present at the planning session/first session; at the very least (for example, in case of illness) they must contact the lecturer before the first session by e-mail in order to agree on a date for the talks by voting on several possible options.
• In the Oberseminar, you must also take notes on the other final/research projects and submit these in the form of a wissenschaftliches Protokoll, around ten pages in length, according to the specifications of the seminar leader.