I am just putting together my first year report for Monday now.

What form did yours take and include?

I am not sure what to expect from the panel next week - but I hope I have prepared at least reasonably for it!

Hi Chris. I included as much as I could in the three pages we were expected to hand in! I started by summarising the objectives of my research and the methodology I intend to use. I highlighted some key publications that I read, what I have written so far, the archival material I found; the papers that I presented at conferences; libraries/ archives/ institutions where I worked; awards, courses attended, etc. what I intend to do in the forthcoming months.
The interview was fairly straightforward, but I had a couple of unexpected questions. Nothing to worry about anyway. Good Luck!

Yay! I just printed out my first year report. Phew!

Funny, I had to write my first year report in May when I was only 8 months into my PhD.

Funny, I had to write my first year report in May when I was only 8 months into my PhD.
We were supposed to write around 500 words which is really not enough, but basically as Corinne said: I described which material I had been looking at naming a few examples and how did it fit within my dissertation plan. I also referred to the material I had written and presentations I had given.

I am writing mine now, am doing a mini-thesis type thing similar to my undergrad dissertation. I haven't had any guidelines as to what I'm meant to write so am winging it!

It was about 40 pages long, with figs and refs. Not very exciting

Mine was 130 odd pages long and consisted of 3 chapters, 1 lit and 2 my own work giving a grand total of 28,000 words.

It was long and boring!

Funny how there's so much variation..

Did any of you guys have a viva to go with your report? I had a 10,000 report and a viva!

fifi, me too, 10,000 words plus Viva.

for me it was 5000 words after 8 months plus "viva", this is in my case not to be confused with the upgrade though, which will involve three full chapters of the thesis, outlines of the rest of the thesis, and a slightly more formal "viva" than the first one. the latter to be submitted sometime around the end of year two.