Dr. Martin Weißmann

Notes on the supervision of theses

In general, I recommend that, if possible, you write your thesis with teaching staff with whom you have already attended at least one seminar and completed a seminar paper. In addition, the topic of your planned thesis should at least roughly match the research and teaching topics of your supervisor (in my case, you can find information on this by looking at my list of publications and the courses I have offered so far in the electronic course catalogue (eKVV)). Another good option is to develop your thesis following on from a seminar paper you have already completed or as part of a course offered during the current semester.

If you are interested in having me supervise your BA or MA thesis, please send me your supervision enquiry by e-mail . The enquiry should include an outline of the content of your research interest, on the basis of which I can then give you feedback on your enquiry. This outline of your planned thesis ("exposé") has the function of...

1. clarify what exactly you intend to do in your final project and how you intend to realise this in concrete terms (for example: Topic, research question, (hypo)thesis, planned approach, literature to be analysed and, if applicable, empirical data, ...)

2. display the extent to which your planned writing project is sociologically interesting and meaningful (which sociological literature or which sociological theses do you want to connect to, for what reasons and in what way?)

3. make a credible case that your final project can be realised within the time frame specified by the study regulations or the time you have set yourself

A reasonable length for the synopsis is usually two to five pages of text. The synopsis can include a preliminary outline, but should not be limited to this. In general, mere bullet points are less informative for the reader of your synopsis than a fully formulated continuous text. The synopsis can also take the form of a 'preliminary introduction' to your planned thesis.

 

Courses

Notes on my consultation hours

I offer consultation hours by appointment via the "Make an appointment" function in the electronic course catalogue (ekvv). If there are no appointments available, please send me an e-mail.

Consultations without preparation and follow-up are usually unsatisfactory experiences not only for students, but also for teaching staff. They cost a lot of time and effort and rarely lead to the desired results. I would therefore ask you to prepare yourself and me well for our discussion by

1. Before making an appointment, check what exactly your concern is that you want to clarify with me during the consultation

2. Thinking about the questions arising from your concern that you would like to ask me during the consultation and how much time we will need for this. An appointment of 15 minutes is usually sufficient for the preparation or debriefing of seminar papers, but in the case of a supervision meeting for a thesis, it may be useful to arrange a longer appointment of 30 minutes

3. Send me the result of your considerations, i.e. the questions you would like to discuss with me, in a short e-mail at least 24 hours before our meeting .

   If you feel that the basis for the discussion is longer than a short e-mail, it makes sense to send the basis for the discussion as a separate document attached to the e-mail (.doc, .docx or .pdf). Please note that this document should also be kept as concise and clear as possible to enable us to have a focussed discussion.

   If you would like to ask me for oral feedback on an outline of an argument that you have already written down or on the preliminary introduction to your paper, please note that the text excerpt you select should generally not be longer than a maximum of 20% of the length of the subsequent paper. For a seminar paper of 10-15 (BA) or 12-20 (MA) pages of text, you should therefore generally limit your selection to two to four pages of text. Please also note that I usually only offer such an oral commentary on drafts of parts of written examination papers once during the entire supervision process.