Writing a Master’s Thesis in the Humanities: Oxford vs. Harvard

Writing a Master’s thesis in the humanities at a world-leading university such as the University of Oxford or Harvard University requires much more than producing a long academic document. Both institutions expect students to demonstrate independent research, command of the literature, critical thinking, and a clear scholarly argument. However, the structure, expectations, supervision arrangements, and intellectual traditions can differ considerably by programme and department.

It is important to note that neither Oxford nor Harvard has one universal thesis format for every humanities Master’s student. Requirements are set partly by individual faculties, departments and degree programmes. At Oxford, for example, the Humanities Division normally expects a one-year Master’s dissertation to be 10,000–20,000 words, while a two-year Master’s dissertation is normally 20,000–30,000 words. Harvard likewise emphasizes that Master’s requirements are determined by the relevant programme and departmental rules rather than by a single university-wide thesis template.

1. The biggest difference: the intellectual approach

A useful way of understanding the distinction is that an Oxford humanities thesis often reflects a strong tradition of close engagement with texts, historical evidence, philosophical arguments and scholarly interpretation, whereas a Harvard humanities thesis may place comparatively strong emphasis on developing an original scholarly intervention within an existing academic debate.

This does not mean that Oxford lacks originality or that Harvard does not value close reading. Both require originality. The difference is often more visible in the way the student frames the research problem.

For example, consider a thesis about colonial representations of Africa in twentieth-century British literature.

An Oxford-oriented approach might ask:

How did British writers construct representations of African society in selected twentieth-century literary texts, and how did those representations change across different historical periods?

The researcher would then undertake extensive textual analysis, historical contextualisation and engagement with literary criticism.

A Harvard-oriented project could frame the problem more explicitly around a scholarly intervention:

How did changing British ideas about empire influence literary representations of African political agency, and what does this reveal about the relationship between literary production and imperial discourse?

The distinction is subtle. Both projects could ultimately produce excellent scholarship, but the second formulation makes the intervention into an existing scholarly debate particularly explicit.

2. Oxford: the importance of the argument

At Oxford, humanities Master’s dissertations are normally relatively focused pieces of research. The University’s Humanities Division gives a general norm of 10,000–20,000 words for a one-year Master’s dissertation. Individual programmes can establish their own requirements.

This word limit has an important implication:

The Oxford student must learn to make a large intellectual question manageable.

A weak topic might be:

The Impact of Colonialism on African Literature

That is far too broad for a 15,000-word dissertation.

A stronger Oxford-style topic might be:

Representations of Political Authority in Selected Ugandan Novels, 1960–1990

The researcher can then examine perhaps three or four carefully selected texts.

The thesis needs a clear argument rather than simply presenting information.

Typical Oxford humanities structure

A Master’s humanities thesis might broadly contain:

1. Title page
2. Abstract
3. Table of contents
4. Introduction
5. Literature review / scholarly context
6. Methodological or theoretical framework, where appropriate
7. Several analytical chapters
8. Conclusion
9. Bibliography
10. Appendices, where necessary

The exact structure varies considerably by discipline.

For example, an anthropology dissertation may look different from a history dissertation, which may in turn differ from a philosophy or literature dissertation.

Oxford’s regulations also emphasize careful presentation. For research theses, for example, Oxford specifies requirements concerning spacing, margins, footnotes and abstracts, while individual boards can impose additional requirements.

3. Harvard: the importance of the scholarly contribution

Harvard’s humanities environment is also highly research-oriented, but the precise expectations depend heavily on the department.

Harvard’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences explicitly states that students should consult their departmental requirements, because graduate programmes maintain their own requirements for dissertation content and evaluation.

This means that it would be misleading to say that there is a single “Harvard thesis structure.”

Nevertheless, Harvard humanities programmes commonly expect the student to demonstrate:

• familiarity with major scholarship;
• command of relevant primary sources;
• critical engagement with existing interpretations;
• an original research question;
• a coherent argument;
• methodological awareness;
• and a contribution to scholarly discussion.

Harvard’s English programme, for example, describes its doctoral dissertation as an original and substantial work of scholarship or criticism, illustrating the institution’s broader emphasis on original scholarly work.

For a Master’s student, the scale is obviously much smaller than a PhD dissertation, but the principle of making a defensible scholarly contribution remains important.

4. Literature review: Oxford versus Harvard

One of the most important differences a humanities student may notice concerns the role of the literature review.

In many universities, students are taught to write literature reviews as a chapter that essentially says:

Author A said this.
Author B said this.
Author C said this.
Author D disagreed with Author A.

At elite research universities, that approach is generally insufficient.

Instead, the literature review should identify a debate.

For example:

Weak literature review

Smith (2021) studied colonial literature. Jones (2022) studied African literature. Brown (2023) examined postcolonial identity.

Stronger literature review

Existing scholarship has largely interpreted colonial representations of African identity through the framework of cultural domination. However, a second body of scholarship emphasizes African agency in negotiating colonial discourse. The disagreement between these approaches raises a question that remains insufficiently examined: how did literary representations of African political agency change across different stages of late colonial rule?

The second version does something much more important.

It identifies:

what scholars know → where they disagree → what remains unresolved → what the thesis will investigate.

This is valuable at both Oxford and Harvard.

5. The research question is treated differently from an ordinary university essay

A Master’s thesis is not simply an extended essay.

An ordinary essay might ask:

What were the effects of colonialism on African literature?

A thesis should normally formulate a researchable problem:

How did colonial educational institutions influence representations of African political identity in Ugandan literature between 1950 and 1980?

The second question gives the researcher:

• a population or corpus;
• a period;
• a geographical context;
• a conceptual problem;
• and identifiable sources.

The thesis then attempts to answer that question through evidence.

6. Oxford tends to reward precision and depth

A particularly important lesson for an Oxford humanities student is:

Do not confuse a large topic with a sophisticated topic.

A thesis does not become more scholarly because it discusses 20 countries, 50 authors or 100 years of history.

A highly sophisticated 15,000-word thesis may focus on:

• three novels;
• one historical period;
• one intellectual debate;
• one philosophical problem;
• one archive;
• or one particular cultural phenomenon.

The objective is to demonstrate depth of analysis rather than breadth of description.

Oxford’s humanities norms themselves reflect the relatively focused nature of Master’s dissertations, with the one-year Master’s dissertation normally falling within the 10,000–20,000-word range.

7. Harvard can also demand a clearly identifiable intervention

Harvard students should similarly avoid writing a thesis that merely summarizes what other scholars have already established.

Consider this topic:

Women in African Literature

This is a subject, not yet a research problem.

A more research-oriented version might be:

Reconstructing Female Political Agency in Postcolonial Ugandan Fiction: A Study of Three Selected Novels

The researcher can then ask:

• How have previous scholars interpreted female agency?
• What assumptions dominate the literature?
• What evidence challenges those assumptions?
• What theoretical framework is appropriate?
• What do the selected novels reveal?
• How does the thesis modify or extend existing scholarship?

That is the foundation of an academic contribution.

8. Primary sources are extremely important

For humanities research, both institutions expect students to engage seriously with primary sources where appropriate.

Depending on the discipline, primary sources could include:

Literature

• novels;
• poems;
• plays;
• manuscripts;
• literary correspondence.

History

• government records;
• newspapers;
• diaries;
• letters;
• archival documents;
• speeches.

Philosophy

• original philosophical texts;
• manuscripts;
• correspondence;
• historical editions.

Anthropology

• interviews;
• ethnographic observations;
• field notes;
• cultural artefacts.

Art history

• paintings;
• sculptures;
• photographs;
• exhibition catalogues.

A thesis becomes much stronger when the student does not simply tell the reader what other scholars have said but returns to the evidence itself.

9. The role of theory

Another major difference between an ordinary Master’s thesis and a high-level humanities thesis is how theory is used.

A common mistake is to create a chapter called:

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

and then describe Marxism, feminism, postcolonial theory, structuralism, etc., without actually using the theory.

That produces a theoretical chapter but not necessarily a theoretical thesis.

Instead, theory should help the researcher interpret evidence.

For example:

Postcolonial theory is used to examine how literary characters negotiate competing forms of cultural and political authority.

Then the researcher applies that theoretical concept to the primary texts.

The question should therefore be:

What does this theory allow me to see that I could not see otherwise?

10. Citation and referencing

Humanities disciplines frequently make extensive use of footnotes and detailed bibliographic references.

Oxford’s thesis regulations, for example, specifically address the treatment of footnotes and require careful formatting of the thesis.

However, the citation system can differ according to discipline.

A humanities student might encounter:

• Chicago;
• MLA;
• MHRA;
• OSCOLA for law;
• discipline-specific systems.

Oxford itself notes that requirements vary by course and department.

Harvard similarly does not impose one citation system across every humanities programme.

Therefore, never choose a referencing style simply because someone says “Harvard uses Harvard referencing.” The Harvard author-date system is not synonymous with writing a thesis at Harvard University.

11. The introduction is particularly important

A strong humanities thesis introduction should answer approximately six questions:

1. What is the problem?

What intellectual problem is being investigated?

2. Why does the problem matter?

Why should scholars care?

3. What has already been said?

What is the existing scholarship?

4. What is missing?

Where is the unresolved question, limitation or debate?

5. What will this thesis argue?

State the central argument clearly.

6. How will the thesis demonstrate the argument?

Explain the sources, approach and chapter structure.

For example:

This thesis argues that representations of African political agency in selected Ugandan novels cannot be understood solely as products of colonial cultural domination. Through close textual analysis of three novels published between 1965 and 1985, the study demonstrates that the authors simultaneously reproduced and challenged dominant representations of political authority.

That is much stronger than:

This study examines colonialism and African literature.

12. Chapter structure

A humanities Master’s thesis should normally have chapters that advance the argument, rather than chapters that merely divide information.

For example:

Chapter One — Introduction

Research problem, questions, objectives, argument, methodology and structure.

Chapter Two — Scholarly Debate

Existing literature and identification of the gap.

Chapter Three — Historical and Intellectual Context

Relevant historical background.

Chapter Four — Primary Analysis

Detailed analysis of the first group of sources.

Chapter Five — Comparative Analysis

Analysis of additional evidence and comparison with the preceding chapter.

Chapter Six — Discussion

Bringing the findings back to the central scholarly debate.

Chapter Seven — Conclusion

Answering the research question and explaining the contribution.

But this is only an example. A philosophy thesis, history thesis and literature thesis may require very different structures.

13. Oxford versus Harvard: a practical comparison

The table should not be read as saying that every Oxford thesis follows one model or every Harvard thesis follows another. Both universities give substantial authority to individual departments and programmes. Harvard explicitly directs students to their departmental requirements, while Oxford similarly requires students to consult the relevant faculty and examination regulations.

14. What makes a thesis “Oxford/Harvard level”?

It is not the vocabulary.

It is not using complicated words.

It is not having 200 references.

It is not making the thesis 300 pages long.

And it is certainly not filling every paragraph with quotations from famous scholars.

A strong humanities thesis demonstrates a chain of reasoning:

Research problem → scholarly debate → research gap → research question → evidence → analysis → argument → contribution

For example:

Existing scholarship: Scholars have generally interpreted the novels through postcolonial resistance.

↓

Problem: This interpretation gives insufficient attention to internal conflicts among African characters.

↓

Research question: How do selected Ugandan novels represent conflicts between collective political identity and individual political agency?

↓

Evidence: Three novels, archival reviews and contemporary criticism.

↓

Analysis: Close reading combined with historical contextualisation.

↓

Argument: The novels represent political agency not simply as resistance to colonial authority but as a contested process within African communities.

↓

Contribution: The thesis provides a more nuanced interpretation of political agency in the selected literature.

That is the basic intellectual architecture of a serious humanities thesis.

15. The most important lesson for Master’s students

Whether the degree is at Oxford, Harvard or another research-intensive university, the student should stop thinking of the thesis as:

“A long academic report about my topic.”

Instead, think of it as:

“A sustained answer to a specific scholarly problem, supported by evidence and positioned within an existing academic debate.”

For a Master’s humanities student, the goal is generally not to solve an enormous problem that has occupied scholars for centuries.

The goal is to make a small but defensible contribution.

A 15,000-word thesis can be academically impressive if it demonstrates that the student can:

1. identify an important research problem;
2. formulate a precise question;
3. understand the relevant scholarship;
4. locate appropriate primary and secondary sources;
5. analyse those sources critically;
6. construct an original argument;
7. defend that argument with evidence; and
8. explain what the research contributes to the field.

That is ultimately more important than whether the thesis has 10 chapters or 5 chapters, or whether it contains 15,000 or 20,000 words.

In short: Oxford and Harvard humanities Master’s theses are not separated by a simple “Oxford style” versus “Harvard style.” The more meaningful difference is that requirements are highly programme-specific, while both institutions expect sophisticated independent research, critical engagement with scholarship, rigorous evidence and a clearly defensible argument. Oxford provides a general Humanities Division Master’s dissertation norm, while Harvard places particular emphasis on following the requirements of the student’s individual graduate programme.