The Academic Committee of the doctoral programme will assess your progress in completing your doctoral thesis every year. The Postgraduate and Doctoral Studies Office has designed the TCSO: doctoral students module as an online tool for monitoring the progress of your studies. Students have to complete a tracking process for their doctoral thesis through the TCSO: Students module that you can include in your Campus Global through the "Applications" section.

Doctoral students are responsible for keeping the activities document and research plan up to date. The information and documents uploaded in the TCSO module will form part of the documentation that the PhD student must submit for the annual assessment by the Academic Committee (AC) of the PhD programme of the Department of Political and Social Sciences. Therefore, it is very important that you make sure that the research plan and the training activities have been uploaded in the TCSO within the deadlines established by the CA and also that they have been supervised/authorised by your supervisor.

Only the following cases are exempted from the annual assessment:

  • First-year students. The thesis project, which is submitted in June, is used for their first-year assessment. 
  • Students who have submitted their thesis for external evaluation as they have already fulfilled the objective of completing the first full draft of the doctoral thesis.
  • Students who have requested the interruption of their studies during the academic year.

We encourage all students - including first-year students - to record their research activities (attendance at courses, conferences, workshops, etc.) in the 'activities document'. This is a good practice to build up the curriculum that the academic committee consults for the annual evaluations, which will be printed at the end of the doctoral studies. 

Annual assessment deadlines for the academic year: 2022-2023

Update the information into the TCSO application:  21st May 2023

Evaluation: 12th June 2023 (Academic Committee meeting)

What is assessed?

  • Activities document: The activities document is a personalised document where all the training activities are registered that will be carried out over the course of your doctoral studies. These activities have to be authorised by the thesis tutor/director. Access to the TCSO module must be done through the 'Campus Global'

  • Research plan: project progress report about the PhD student's work throughout the year including a work plan for the following year. Enter the reports and documents for training activities. We use this document to ask students who are at the end of their PhD (in the third or fourth year) if they intend to apply for an extension of their PhD programme. It is important that you do not forget to answer this question because we will have to record this extension, which must be justified in the research plan.

  • The thesis supervisor's report (first-year students are not required to present this report). 

What are the possible grades?

  • Positive assessment
  • Negative assessment

Consequences of a negative assessment:

  • A negative assessment on justifiable grounds will lead to the doctoral student being re-assessed within six months of the previous assessment. The student will be evaluated at the CA meeting in December. 
  • To that end, the doctoral student will prepare a new research plan.

Very important: a second negative assessment will lead to the student being withdrawn from the programme.

Remember that you must register the academic supervision within the stipulated deadlines every year, regardless of the grades obtained in the assessment in question.