First Defence

The First Defence ("Verteidigung des Dissertationsprojektes") is an oral board examination. Topic and supervisors are registered in the scope of the application for the First Defence. The First Defence has to succesfully completed within the first year of the doctoral studies and is a prerequiste to register for courses. After the positive completation of the First Defence, the title of the thesis will be added into the electronic system (UNIGRAZonline) and will not be longer available to other students.

The chairperson of the board is the Dean of Studies of the Faculty of Law. Both supervisors have to attend the First Defence as well. Please make sure to agree with both of your supervisors in advance if they could attend the First Defence at an intended specific date to a specific time! Usually, there are only certain dates (first come, first served) when the First Defence can be completed (since the schedule of the chairperson is tight). Please contact us well in advance via e-mail (rewi.studium(at)uni-graz.at) if you intend to do your First Defence. Possible dates and times are usually listed here ("Termine"). 

Please contact the Dean's Office of the Law Faculty at least three weeks before the date agreed upon and submit the documents required by this time, already signed by both of your supervisors.

Documents required in order to register for the First Defence:  

• exposé / research proposal (10 to 15 pages). Its objective is to show the ideas of the student and a working plan. In particular, it should include: Working title, name of student and supervisor and date, description of the research and field, research question and methodology, preliminary table of content, preliminary bibliography of primary and secondary sources, time table.
• the form DOCT_E01 "Application for the First Defence"*: In order to complete this form, you also need to check for suitable courses in your intended subjetcs
• supervision agreement* (please have our template signed),
• master data* (please have our template submitted by the supervisor if one of the supervisors is currently not a staff member at the University of Graz),
• proof of the postdoctoral lecture qualification of a supervisor (only required from supervisors not being a staff member at the University of Graz): confirmation by their home university in which field they are entitled to supervise doctoral theses

*All forms and templates can be found here.