For those of you who DON'T use "I" how do you refer to the thesis. Is it just "this thesis..." or "the thesis...."?

mix of 'this thesis' and 'this doctoral study' and occasionally for something different just 'this study'! When I'm talking about myself I call myself 'this researcher' and I think it looks and sounds awful :-(

Or this research/study shows ... or the author did this/that ...

I've just been told off for saying "this programme of research" with the comment "you can talk about it like its YOUR thesis you know!?" from my sup - but don't know what she means. i can't just a have a 'my' in the middle of it all being not I/me etc. ???

I *think* she means use 'this thesis' ??? not sure

this is weird because I was using the same terminology has her previous supervisee, she's obviously decided its now a problem. hmmm.

======= Date Modified 12 Mar 2011 09:43:45 =======
I wouldn't know how to get around this.

I quote the first paragraph of my thesis - *my thesis has a single word title btw, just one word, and 3 words of a sub title* :-) As per below


Warfare: From animals to aliens

OPENING PARA

In this thesis, I ask, in what ways our knowledge about the battle of mammals, emergent from many decades of empirical research with animal warfare, is useful in understanding warfare amongst aliens. Throughout this thesis I use warfare as the sum total of active, engaged, involved, sometimes critical and resistant tasks performed in fighting with the opposition, irrespective of the directionality of warfare (i.e. one way, interactive etc.) I use warfare to indicate a set of tasks enmeshed within social histories and practices of animals and aliens and shaped to a considerable extent by the provisions of the battlefield itself. Throughout this thesis, I use the word warfare to connect animals and aliens and extend animal warfare theory into the age of aliens, without positioning a gulf between animals and aliens. What is of interest to me is how far the conceptual framework accumulated around the notion of uni-directional animal war activity is instructive and constructive in the context of multi-directional, alien-generated, interactive warfare. I carry these concepts into a project with aliens from Venus but the subjects of interrogation are the concepts themselves. "

END of first para

of course, I do not work with aliens etc...

That's very similar to the approach I take Bug, it's mostly an intro thing, I think I have less 'I's though. It's a shame you're not writng about aliens and animals tho! Would be fun,,,

Sneaks: Maybe your sup is teetering on the brink of being converted to 'I' and is, thus, inconsistent - there seems to be something of a generally sea change on this issue?

Does seem odd to just throw a random 'I' in; you could ask her and then report back to us with her answer; it would be interesting to find out where she's at with this.