Dissertation Acknowledgements: Examples and Writing Tips

One thing that causes unnecessary stress for many doctoral candidates is writing their dissertation acknowledgements (The other stress is finding out how much a doctoral robe costs for graduation.)

The challenge is creating a balance between thanking everyone who made a meaningful contribution to your dissertation and the political aspects of who should be included.

Dissertation Dedication

In my case I used a dedication page to acknowledge someone who inspired me beginning when I was five years old, to pursue a doctorate. This allowed me to provide a special honor while including a wider range of individuals in my dissertation acknowledgement. I believe it is especially poignant when you present a printed copy of your dissertation to the person in the dedication section.

Dissertation Acknowledgements: Examples

For the acknowledgements, there are a variety of approaches. Rather than list them I've provided a list of dissertation acknowledgements examples for you to look at. What you write is pretty much up to you but make sure to give yourself time to look it over several times. Once it's printed or posted to your university repository it's difficult to change.

• My Dissertation Acknowledgments (On pp. 5 and 6).
  Note: see a published article based on my dissertation (free download).
  
  
• Communications Dissertation Acknowledgment: This one is longer (and there is no dedication) but is nicely written.
  
  
• Information Studies Acknowledgement
  
  
• Finance Dissertation Acknowledgement Sample
  
  
• Environmental Science Dissertation Acknowledgement Sample

If you want to see more dissertation acknowledgments examples your best bet is to search for your institution's name and the term "dissertation repository" in Google. That way you can see what has been done recently at your institution or even by your advisor's former doctoral candidates.

Finally, if you want to see what a dissertation looks like after it's been written up and published as an article, take a look at my recent article based on my dissertation (free for download).