After more than a decade spent copyediting and proofreading PhD theses for economics students, I can say that, in general, doctoral candidates view writing thesis acknowledgments as either a formality or a celebration of finishing thesis writing. Between the two extremes lies a unique opportunity to show your personality, strengthen your professional network, and enjoy the “warm glow of giving”—all without the constraints of academic writing.
In this long blog post, I’ll examine the seemingly trivial topic of writing acknowledgments to help you make the most of this thesis section. I aim to achieve two goals. The first is to change your opinion about the importance of PhD thesis acknowledgments. The second is to help you write memorable acknowledgments you can be proud of even when the euphoria of finishing your PhD is gone.
Although all the examples here are from economics theses, my tips should be useful for writing acknowledgments in any other academic field.
The purpose of the acknowledgments section of a PhD thesis
The acknowledgment section is the place where you attempt to thank everyone who made a notable contribution, tangible or intangible, to your PhD journey.
It’s a place for transmitting positive messages, expressing gratitude, reflecting on lessons learned, and offering proof of your academic integrity.
It’s not a place to vent your anger or frustration with the academic system or to be ironic or sarcastic.
The importance of PhD thesis acknowledgments
The acknowledgment section is more than just something to check off your thesis submission list. This section is an opportunity to show your personality more than you’re able to do in a job market paper or in a dissertation.
In thesis acknowledgments you have a chance to “present a social and scholarly self disentangled from academic discourse conventions”, writes Ken Hyland, the author of the paper “Dissertation Acknowledgements: The Anatomy of a Cinderella Genre” published in Written Communication. He adds, “the textualization of gratitude reveals social and cultural characteristics.”
How you write your dissertation acknowledgments can say a lot about you as an economist and as a person. For this reason, it’s wise to maintain a professional tone, even if you choose a more informal writing style than in an economics paper.
In addition to being a piece of writing that can reveal your character, the acknowledgments section can also serve another purpose: You can put your achievement into perspective. Listing all the people who lent a hand with your PhD will allow you to understand the value of teamwork and collaboration.
Finally, you can use this thesis section to strengthen your professional relationships with the people you mention—provided you’re honest and specific about the way they left a mark. Here are just two examples of dissertation acknowledgments where the authors explained why they are so grateful to their advisors and mentors: PhD thesis of Adam Zhang, University of California, Berkeley (2023); and PhD thesis of Livia Alfonsi, the same university and year.
Your acknowledgments can reveal who you are when you’re off the camera. Whoever reads your thesis may also read your acknowledgment section. And you probably want to impress the reader who holds the key to your success as an economist. It may be true that hiring committees care more about candidates’ peer-reviewed publications than about their theses. But it’s still possible, even if unlikely, that a prospective employer will read your thesis acknowledgments. Prospective employers aside, future PhD students in your department will read your thesis acknowledgments and may use them as a template.
Given that someone will care about your thesis acknowledgments, what would you prefer this section to say about you? It depends a lot on whom you mention in acknowledgments, to start with.
Whom to thank in dissertation acknowledgments
First, you should express your gratitude to all the people and institutions that had a tangible contribution to your thesis. In general, these are the people in your professional network:
- Advisors
- Mentors
- Other academics who provided advice or help
- Staff members who went the extra mile to fix a problem you had with your PhD work
- Colleagues who provided feedback on your doctoral work
- Participants to seminars or workshops where you presented your research
- Funding organizations
- Data providers
- Professionals who provided technical assistance for your thesis, including copyeditors and proofreaders
Second, you can mention anyone in your personal network who helped you complete your doctorate, whether they had a tangible or intangible contribution. There’s no limit to whom you can thank, but at some point these details can become ridiculous. So think twice before expressing your gratitude to “the cats and dogs of the neighbor’s nephew”, as Stefan Rüger said. Aim to strike a balance between the detail you present about your pets and the detail you present about the humans you’re grateful to.
Remember you cannot—and shouldn’t try to—mention all those people who had an intangible contribution to your PhD journey. At some point you’ll need to draw a line between your professional and personal life. Consider that mentioning any name of a person in your personal circle will reveal some personal information about you. How much about your life are you happy to give away? (See Step 4 below for more details)
Advisor order in acknowledgments
Some PhD candidates whose theses I copyedited asked me in which order they should put the names of professors in acknowledgments. Order of importance of their contribution, academic rank, or alphabetical order?
Any order makes sense, depending on context. If you’re unsure, alphabetical order or reverse alphabetical order is a choice no one can complain about. Random order works fine, too, but maybe you want to specify you’re listing people in random order.
How long should PhD thesis acknowledgments be?
Unless your department has guidelines that limit the length of the acknowledgments section, you can write as much or as little as you wish.
As a freelance editor, I suggest that you keep your acknowledgments around 500 words. Longer and this section starts to sound like a rant. Shorter can be fine if it’s well written.
To give you an idea about word count range for thesis acknowledgments, those in the sample I analyzed vary from 19 words to more than 1300 words (see list at the end of article). But word count for thesis acknowledgments is only a small decision compared to the choice of writing style.
How to write beautiful thesis acknowledgments that reflect your personality
Equally important to what you write in thesis acknowledgments is how you write: Style, tone, grammar, and vocabulary are all tools you can use to white beautiful thesis acknowledgments. You can follow the steps below to craft memorable thesis acknowledgments you can be proud of.
Step 1: Cool off
This section of the dissertation is not a place to express your enthusiasm about everyone or everything that made your life meaningful and led you to a doctorate. And it’s not the ideal place to let your emotions run wild.
This section belongs to your thesis, which lies in your professional realm, and you should show you’re able to manage your emotions. If your goal is to appear professional, you’ll write better dissertation acknowledgments if you’re not too angry, ecstatic, tired, or euphoric when you start writing.
Step 2: Define your audience
The target audience for your thesis includes your PhD committee, hiring committees, colleagues, future PhD students in your department, as well as your competitors (why not?), your archenemy, and anyone else interested in you as a professional.
Keep your target audience in mind before writing, while writing, and while revising your acknowledgments. It’s easy to get carried away by the warm feeling of gratitude and forget you’re not writing for your loved ones.
Step 3: List names
List everyone who helped you complete your thesis. Then list everyone you’re expected to mention—including advisors who offered no valuable advice, funding institutions that scrimped on conference fees, or data providers who released the promised dataset one year too late.
Step 4: Set boundaries
When you choose what to say and how to say it, be honest but also tactful. This piece of writing is a unique opportunity to promote yourself as a professional and help others understand what kind of person you really are. By setting boundaries I mean making a conscious choice about what to include in your acknowledgments and what to leave out.
What kind of information you wouldn’t like to disclose to your potential employers, thesis committee, proofreader, academic archnemesis, or random people who come across your thesis while doing research for a blog post?
- Your age?
- When someone in your family died?
- Personal relationship issues?
- The name of your former father-in-law?
- The names of almost everyone in your extended family?
- Your hobbies?
- Details of your health problems?
- Your family’s debt?
I found information about all of the above in some of the 30 theses I’ve examined as part of my research for this blog post. (I chose not to link each example to a specific dissertation.)
Step 5: Think about the implications of what you write in thesis acknowledgments
What you write in this thesis section can benefit you in so many ways. Here are some inferences that a reader can draw by reading between the lines of your acknowledgments:
- If you’re a pleasant person
- If you’re grateful and humble or presumptuous
- If you recognize other people’s contribution to your success
- If you’re guilty of hubris
- If you’re learned big lessons from your PhD journey
- If you’re detail-oriented
- If you have a good memory
- If you’re enjoy discussing your work with other people
- If you’re open to debate
- If you can reflect on the milestones and turning points in your PhD journey
- If you can write eloquently when you’re not constrained by publication guidelines
- If you’re proud of your achievement or if your PhD is just a stepping stone
- If you’re afraid of revealing your true self
- If you stand out in a positive way
Almost anything you write in your dissertation acknowledgments says something about you. But some sentences tell entire stories.
Take, for instance, a seemingly simple statement such as “At last, I thank myself.” I found it in the thesis of Adam Zhang, Stanford University (2023). It was such an unusual yet powerful sentence that I had to ask the author why he included it in his acknowledgments. He said:
“As academics, we are used to seeing the imperfections and limitations, so we can improve on them. So, it is difficult to celebrate almost anything because we never achieve perfection. However, despite all the regrets, frustration, anger, and disappointment, I did not give up and kept moving forward. Seeing all the dissertation chapters coming together reminded me of the good times and small victories which got lost as I was questing for perfection. I wanted to give myself the recognition because I was proud of how far I had come. By thanking myself, I was letting go of all the regrets, frustration, anger, and disappointment. I was moving forward like I always did.”
I hope this quote will inspire you to look at your academic accomplishment from a new point of view. Completing a doctorate is often such a proof of resilience that you should consider writing a self-appreciation statement in your thesis acknowledgments. You couldn’t have done it without you.
Step 6: Write
To speed up writing thesis acknowledgments, make writing and revising two separate tasks. Draft the whole acknowledgment section in one go, without stopping to question your grammar, word choice, and so on. Be as honest as possible and write as you would speak.
Step 7: Revise, edit, and proofread
Read your draft and identify all areas that need improvement, such as grammar and flow. Get help if you need to edit your draft. For example, a freelance editor may recommend editing the following sentences for style, to avoid generic statements or clichés, such as the following, because they do not add value:
- “A Ph.D. is a personal journey that claims to, in some small way, improve society. A giant leap for man, an infinitesimal step for humanity.” (Alice Hallman, Uppsala University, 2023)
- “Many people contributed to the making of this thesis […] I could not have done this without you.” (Cristina Bratu, Uppsala University, 2019)
Then, ask your colleagues, family, or friends to give you feedback on your acknowledgment section. Consider their advice and revise the text again if you need to. Then edit it again to ensure there are no errors.
Tip: Using too many intensifiers—very, extremely, incredibly, sincerely, and so on—usually has the opposite effect. Instead of making you look sincere, these so-called weasel words may suggest you’re not.
Finally, when you are happy with your draft, proofread the text. As well as checking the grammar, spelling, and word usage, check all proper names and job titles. Take proofreading seriously and don’t rely on your memory. Misspelling a person’s name in the acknowledgment section is a faux pas. Talking about proofreading, you may be wondering “Is it acknowledgments or acknowledgements?” If you write in American English, use acknowledgments; if you write in British English, use acknowledgements (reference: Garner’s Modern English Usage, 4th edition).
Avoid acknowledgment section mistakes
When I’m editing PhD theses for authors, they expect me to query anything that seems out of place or may put them in a bad light. The following are some things I would query, because they have the potential to hit a nerve.
- Writing in a foreign language. The author of an economics thesis written in English wrote a big chunk of the acknowledgment section in French. A faux pas. Writing a few words in another language is fine if the reader can grasp the meaning of those words from the context. But writing entire paragraphs in a foreign language may offend a reader who expects to read your acknowledgments in the same language as that of the rest of the thesis.
- Lacking focus. Talking about everything and anything that left a mark during your PhD journey will make your acknowledgment section look sloppy. Proper planning and revision can help you improve the structure of your thesis acknowledgments.
- Including too many personal details. It’s admirable to be filled with gratitude for everyone who helped you steer in the direction of grad school. But mentioning everyone and explaining how they left a mark might be better suited to other media, such as a blog or a Facebook post or message. If you’ve defined your audience well, you can put yourself in the reader’s shoes and decide what doesn’t belong in your dissertation acknowledgments.
- Having an unbalanced acknowledgment section. By “unbalanced” I mean a section where you spend just a few words on your professional network and too many words on thanking your family and friends. It’s in your interest to strike a balance in terms of space and gratefulness between your professional and personal connections. Yes, even if you had a miserable time in academia and would not have completed your PhD without your personal support system. (None of us would.) Still, you probably want to be perceived as someone who can handle the stress of completing a degree. If you overemphasize your personal support system, you might be perceived as someone who lacks self-reliance. Examples of PhD thesis acknowledgments that overemphasize personal support systems: David Choi, Harvard University, 2018, and Fei Ao, Uppsala University, 2024. Examples of PhD thesis acknowledgments that strike a balance between personal and professional support systems: Duhyeong Kim, Western University, and Mingshi Kang, The University of Western Ontario.
Not having an acknowledgment section in your thesis
An economics PhD thesis without acknowledgments is rare, based on my research for this post and on my 10+ years’ experience as a freelance academic editor and proofreader.
Out of 30 dissertations I examined for this post, plus 50 more I browsed through, only two theses lack an acknowledgment section, and only one thesis has a very short acknowledgment section (19 words)—the thesis of Diana Moreira, Harvard University (2017).
Before you decide not to write acknowledgments, consider the cost and benefits of omitting this section. And if you choose to invest time and effort into writing impactful thesis acknowledgments, the following tips should be useful.
A freelance editor’s tips for writing an impactful PhD acknowledgment section
Writing thesis acknowledgments that are memorable for the right reasons requires both skill and art. Here I’ll give you some more helpful tips, to make your job easier.
1. Accept that you cannot name everyone who contributed to your thesis
You could write “Many people contributed to the making of this thesis. Here is my attempt to name all of you.” (Cristina Bratu, Uppsala University, 2019) or “Finally, if you were expecting to see your name here, but I forgot, I am sorry for that, for whomever you are.” (Gulbike Mirzaoglu, Tilburg University, 2023). But these statements are not necessary, because dissertation acknowledgments cannot be a comprehensive list.
2. Be yourself and know what you want
It’s fine to look at what others in your department do, but everyone’s different: personality, culture, background, level of formality in professional life, expectations, writing style, and more. Authentic acknowledgments is what you should strive for to make the most of this section. (Do I need to mention ChatGPT?)
Some PhD candidates may want to express their gratitude in beautiful prose that reflects their personality. If that’s your case but you don’t have the time or the skills to write well, you can ask the help of a writing consultant.
Other PhD candidates may want to simply list the people they are grateful to. In that case, a concise acknowledgment section using simple language will work perfectly. As long as your acknowledgments are heartfelt, they will feel authentic.
3. Look beyond the theses in your department
The theses in your department may not be the best examples, and they may be propagating the errors of a previous cohort of PhD candidates.
I wish I didn’t write my own PhD thesis acknowledgments mostly in the passive voice (“…is thanked”, “…is acknowledged”) just because that seemed to be the preference in my department at the time. Thirteen years later and working as a freelance editor, I strongly recommend that you write thesis acknowledgments in the active voice.
4. Aim for a professional tone and good writing style
Even if you use a more informal writing style than in the rest of the dissertation, your acknowledgment section shouldn’t read like your personal blog or Facebook posts. Here is an example of an acknowledgment section that is very informal: Gulbike Mirzaoglu, Tilburg University, 2023.
As well as maintaining a professional tone, pay attention to your writing style.
Aim for an acknowledgment section that is clear, coherent, concise, and correct. Polish this section so you can be proud of it now and in the future: Revise it; edit it or have it edited for correctness, style, and brevity; and proofread it. Additionally, pepper your acknowledgment section with positive words (such as encourage, guide, inspire, support, motivation, genuine, authentic, overcome, success, achievement).
5. Focus on others and be specific
First, putting yourself in your best light does not mean singing your own praise.
Second, when you thank the people who mostly contributed to your PhD journey, can you quote something they said that was life-changing? Can you detail how that person changed your approach to your thesis? Did some conference or workshop participants make you reconsider your analysis? Those kinds of situations are worth detailing. They can not only serve as inspiration for others but also make your acknowledgments more authentic, as well as more valuable for the people who left a mark during your PhD journey. The thesis acknowledgment section is a good example: Livia Alfonsi, University of California, Berkeley, 2023.
6. Don’t burn bridges
You’ll gain nothing but temporary satisfaction from deliberately omitting the name of a person who made a tangible contribution to your thesis.
On the same note, avoid being ironic or sarcastic (thanks to one of my advisors for teaching me how to rely only on my own efforts to achieve a goal; thanks to my colleague who helped me build resilience in the face of constant adversity during my first year).
How about excluding an advisor from acknowledgments? Whether it’s a good idea depends a lot on the context. However, in general, unless integrity or ethics is at play, I wouldn’t advise omitting an advisor from acknowledgments. Even if there’s a feud between you and that advisor, your doctoral thesis is not the place to raise a dispute. In most cases, mentioning all your advisors in acknowledgments is likely the wiser choice for your career prospects and future collaboration opportunities.
7. Avoid plagiarism
I encourage you to read other people’s PhD thesis acknowledgment section for inspiration. But then use your own words to express your gratitude to those who helped you.
Plagiarism in the acknowledgment section is just as serious as plagiarism in the rest of your thesis. Later down the road, when you hold an important position (an Ivy League university president maybe?), someone may comb your entire academic writing record, including your PhD thesis acknowledgment section, to look for plagiarism.
Inspiration for writing acknowledgments for a PhD thesis
A trivial part of a PhD thesis compared to the rest of it, the acknowledgment section has a lot of potential to serve many purposes. It can let others infer your personality, and it can help you strengthen your professional network. In addition, beautifully written acknowledgments may serve as an example for other doctoral candidates. For these reasons, and others discussed above, this section of your thesis deserves your attention—even if you’re under a tight deadline for thesis submission. So, make the most of this opportunity. There are only so many PhD thesis acknowledgment sections you’ll ever write!
The following are some economics PhD thesis acknowledgment examples you can draw inspiration from if you’re stuck writing your acknowledgment section.
- Howard Zihao Zhang, Columbia University, 2023
- Martsella Davitaya, Columbia University, 2023
- Xavier Jaravel, Harvard University, 2016
- Yipei Zhang, University of California, Berkeley, 2023
- Martin Souchier, Stanford University, 2023
- Livia Alfonsi, University of California, Berkeley, 2023
Theses I consulted for this blog post
For this blog post, I consulted the following economics PhD theses, in addition to browsing through about 50 others and editing more than I can recall throughout my career as a freelance editor. I don’t claim that my sample is representative. I chose universities I was familiar with and that had PhD thesis repositories available online for free.
- Cunqiang Shi, Cardiff University, 2022, about 250 words, https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/161663/1/2023shicphd.pdf
- Mingshi Kang, The University of Western Ontario, 2022, about 600 words, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/8557/
- Charles Gauthier, The University of Western Ontario, 2022, about 200 words, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/8623/
- Duhyeong Kim, Western University, 2023, 330 words, https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/9247/
- Eleonora Alabrese, University of Warwick, 2022, about 400 words, https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/179619/
- Yatish Arya, University of Warwick, 2021, about 300 words, https://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/169594/1/WRAP_Theses_Arya_2022.pdf
- Gulbike Mirzaoglu, Tilburg University, 2023, about 1000 words, https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/67502029/Thesis_Gulbike_Mirzaoglu.pdf
- Simona Hannon, Tilburg University, 2024, about 700 words, https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/essays-on-consumer-finance
- Adam Zhang, Stanford University, 2023, 288 words, https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/14783541
- Martin Souchier, Stanford University, 2023, about 400 words, https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/14784055
- Agathe Pernoud, Stanford University, 2023, about 500 words, https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/14781482
- Marion Chabrost, Paris School of Economics, 2018, about 1300 words, https://www.chaire-eppp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/PhD-Chabrost-Marion.pdf
- Livia Alfonsi, University of California, Berkeley, 2023, about 800 words, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6n5782w2
- Yipei Zhang, University of California, Berkeley, 2023, about 500 words, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3k6510j8
- Cristobal Otero, University of California, Berkeley, 2023, about 1400 words, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1dq013d6
- Xavier Jaravel, Harvard University, 2016, about 400 words, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33493555/JARAVEL-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y
- Diana Seixas Bello Moreira, Harvard University, 2017, 19 words, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/40046494/MOREIRA-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y
- David Choi, Harvard University, 2018, about 400 words, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/40050050/CHOI-DISSERTATION-2018.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y
- Cristina Bratu, Uppsala University, 2019, about 800 words, https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1331509/FULLTEXT01.pdf
- Alice Hallman, Uppsala University, 2023, about 800 words, https://www.uu.se/en/events/defences/2023-06-09-alice-hallman-hypocrites-devils-advocates-and-bandwagoneers-essays-on-costly-signaling
- Fei Ao, Uppsala University, 2024, about 1000 words, https://uu.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1813075/FULLTEXT01.pdf
- Sikandar Singh Soin, The University of Edinburgh, 2022, about 200 words, https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/39432/SoinSS_2022.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
- Stuart Alexander Breslin, The University of Edinburgh, 2023, about 200 words, https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/41345/BreslinSA_2023.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
- Rachel Scarfe, The University of Edinburgh, 2022, about 200 words, https://era.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/39402/Scarfe2022.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
- David Thompson, Columbia University, 2021, about 100 words, https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/d8-rzpq-8s86/download
- Martsella Davitaya, Columbia University, 2023, about 200 words, https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/3783-a431
- Howard Zihao Zhang, Columbia University, 2023, about 150 words, https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/pbjv-g720
- Lukas Marinus Schwarz, Harvard University, 2016, no acknowledgments section, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/33493425/SCHWARZ-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y
- Jessica Laird, Harvard University, 2017, https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/40046517/LAIRD-DISSERTATION-2017.pdf?sequence=4&isAllowed=y, no acknowledgments section
- Alkiviadis Georgiadis-Harris, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2022 https://etheses.lse.ac.uk/4446/1/Georgiadis-Harris__Essays-information-ecnomics.pdf, about 150 words
Finally, my own acknowledgments section
This post was labeled “easy topic” in my blog content calendar. But the more theses I downloaded, the clearer it became to me that writing thesis acknowledgments that reflect the author’s personality is far from trivial. I can now understand why so many authors have asked me about advisor order, word count, vocabulary, and writing style in thesis acknowledgments. They knew this section of a thesis was important even when I did not. I’m grateful to the people who asked me questions about thesis acknowledgments. Thanks to Adam Zhang for allowing me to include his quote in this post, as well as for making me look at thesis acknowledgments from a new angle. Thanks to Diana Neagu for the illustration.
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