M3CS PhD Thesis Template

A LaTeX template for PhD theses produced at the Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (M3CS), Monash University. Configured for the Monash thesis-by-publication format and tested on a thesis submitted in 2026.

If this template helped you, consider opening a pull request with improvements so future M3CS students benefit too.

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What you get

• A complete, compilable-out-of-the-box thesis skeleton
• Monash-compliant frontmatter: title page, copyright, abstract, publications-during-enrolment, thesis-including-published-works declaration, acknowledgements (with the required generative-AI disclosure template)
• Thesis-by-publication chapter structure with linking-text scaffolding between paper-chapters
• A pre-tuned bibliography setup (biblatex + biber, APA style with sensible thesis-friendly defaults)
• A table-of-contents style that's cleaner than the default book class TOC (via tocloft)
• A pre-set chapter heading style, page geometry (with binding offset), and one-and-a-half line spacing per Monash convention
• Sensible .gitignore for LaTeX projects

Getting started

Do not work on this repo directly. Make your own copy first, write your thesis there, and only come back to this repo to contribute template improvements via pull request. See Contributing back below.

Step 1: Make your own thesis repo

Two routes — pick whichever you prefer:

Option A — "Use this template" (recommended for most students)

1. Go to the repo page.
2. Click the green "Use this template" button (top right) → Create a new repository.
3. Name it something like my-phd-thesis, choose Private if you want it private, click Create repository.

You now have your own independent repo with the template content as the initial commit. It is not a fork — there is no upstream relationship to clutter PRs, and you can keep it private without touching the template.

Option B — Fork

Use this if you want to easily contribute template improvements back later (forks make PR workflow simpler), and you don't mind the upstream relationship being visible. Click Fork instead of Use this template.

Step 2: Pull it down locally and compile

git clone https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/my-phd-thesis.git
cd my-phd-thesis
latexmk -pdf main.tex

You should get a compiled main.pdf with placeholder content. Then:

1. Edit main.tex — update \thesistitle, \thesisauthor, \thesisyear, etc. (in the "Custom macros" block)
2. Replace frontmatter placeholders in frontmatter/*.tex
3. Replace chapter skeletons with your own content in chapters/
4. Add your bib entries to thesis.bib
5. Drop figures into figures/

Using your thesis repo with Overleaf

Importing from GitHub

Overleaf can clone a public (or private, with a paid plan) GitHub repo into a new project in one click:

1. Sign in to Overleaf.
2. From the project list page, click New Project → Import from GitHub.
3. Paste your own repo's URL (e.g. https://github.com/YOUR-USERNAME/my-phd-thesis), not this template's URL.
4. Click Import to Overleaf. Your thesis appears as a new Overleaf project.

Overleaf keeps the link to GitHub. You can push and pull from Menu → GitHub → Push to / Pull from GitHub. This is the cleanest setup: write in Overleaf, version-control on GitHub.

Alternative — upload a zip

If you don't want GitHub in the loop:

1. From your repo page, click Code → Download ZIP.
2. On Overleaf, click New Project → Upload Project and select the zip.

Overleaf project settings

Once the project is in Overleaf, set:

• Menu → Compiler → LaTeX (default) or pdfLaTeX
• Menu → Main document → main.tex
• Menu → TeX Live version → 2023 or later (for biblatex-apa to work)

The bibliography uses biber (not bibtex). Overleaf auto-detects this from the biblatex package call in main.tex — no manual setting needed.

Compiling

Click Recompile in the top toolbar. The first compile will be slow (it has to run biber and re-pdflatex twice). Subsequent compiles are faster.

If citations show up as [?] after a first compile, click the arrow next to Recompile and select Recompile from scratch.

Tips

• Sharing with supervisors: from Menu → Share, invite collaborators by email. Free Overleaf accounts allow one collaborator per project; paid accounts allow more.
• Backups: even on Overleaf, periodically push to your GitHub repo. Overleaf's history feature is limited on free accounts.
• Track changes: Overleaf's track changes is paid-only. If you want free track changes, use the GitHub workflow and review changes via pull requests on your own repo.

Contributing back: improvements to the template

If you spot something the template should do better, or discover a workflow worth sharing with future M3CS students, please send a pull request to this repo:

1. Fork lars-sandved/m3cs-thesis-template.
2. Make your improvement on a branch in your fork.
3. Open a PR against main of this template repo.

Please don't push your thesis content here. This repo is meant to stay a clean, generic template. Bugfixes, better defaults, new sections of the README, additional comments explaining a tricky bit of LaTeX — all welcome. Specific thesis content — not.

File layout

m3cs-thesis-template/
├── main.tex                   # preamble + document structure
├── thesis.bib                 # bibliography database
├── README.md                  # this file
├── .gitignore                 # LaTeX build artefacts
│
├── frontmatter/
│   ├── titlepage.tex
│   ├── copyright.tex
│   ├── abstract.tex
│   ├── publications.tex       # publications during enrolment
│   ├── declaration.tex        # thesis-by-publication declaration form
│   └── acknowledgements.tex   # personal thanks + AI-use disclosure
│
├── chapters/
│   ├── 01_introduction.tex
│   ├── 02_chapter_template.tex   # template for paper-chapters
│   └── 99_conclusion.tex
│
└── figures/
    └── monash_logo.png        # used on the title page

Conventions

Citations

Citation style is APA via biblatex with these thesis-friendly options set in main.tex:

• maxcitenames=2 — papers with 3+ authors render as Smith et al. in-text
• uniquename=false — no disambiguating initials when surnames collide (last names only)
• uniquelist=false — no expansion of author lists past maxcitenames to disambiguate against other entries
• maxbibnames=99 — full author lists in the bibliography

In-text citation commands (from natbib via biblatex):

Command	Output
\citet{key}	Author (Year)
\citep{key}	(Author, Year)
\citep[p.~42]{key}	(Author, Year, p. 42)
\citep[see][]{key}	(see Author, Year)
\citep{key1,key2}	(Author1, Year; Author2, Year)
\citeauthor{key}	Author
\citeyear{key}	Year

Cross-references

Use \Cref{...} (capitalised) and \cref{...} (lowercase) from the cleveref package — they auto-detect whether you're referring to a chapter, section, figure, table, or equation.

See \Cref{ch:introduction} for context, \Cref{fig:results} for the data,
and \Cref{sec:methods} for the analysis details.

Figures

Place all images in figures/. Reference by filename (the \graphicspath{{figures/}} directive in main.tex handles the path):

\begin{figure}[htbp]
    \centering
    \includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{my_figure.png}
    \caption{A self-explanatory caption.}
    \label{fig:my-figure}
\end{figure}

The float specifier [htbp] lets LaTeX place the figure flexibly (here, top, bottom, page). Use [H] from the float package only if you really need the figure exactly where it's source-positioned.

For figures spanning a full page or wider than text width: width=\textwidth. For most thesis figures, width=0.7\linewidth reads well without overpowering the text.

Tables

Use booktabs rules (\toprule, \midrule, \bottomrule) — never \hline — for publication-quality tables.

For tables that need flexible column widths (e.g., the contributions table in declaration.tex), use tabularx with X columns:

\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{@{}c >{\raggedright\arraybackslash}X l r@{}}
    ...
\end{tabularx}

X columns share the leftover width after fixed-width columns are sized.

Lists

Use enumitem options for fine control:

\begin{itemize}[label={},leftmargin=0pt,itemsep=0.8em]
    % no bullet markers, flush left, generous spacing
\end{itemize}

Monash thesis requirements (2026, check current)

The following are required as of 2026 — confirm against current Monash policy before submission:

1. Originality declaration — boilerplate paragraph at the top of declaration.tex. Do not edit.
2. Thesis-including-published-works statement — second paragraph of declaration.tex. Edit to describe your thesis theme.
3. Per-chapter contributions table — list each paper-chapter, its publication status, and your % contribution.
4. Student signature + date — handwritten, scanned. Save as figures/student_signature.jpg and uncomment the \includegraphics line in declaration.tex.
5. Supervisor signature + date — same arrangement, in figures/supervisor_signature.png.
6. Generative AI disclosure — if you used AI tools in preparing the thesis, the disclosure goes in the acknowledgements (template provided in acknowledgements.tex).

Customisation tips

Change the TOC look

Open main.tex and look for the "Table of contents styling" block. The current settings:

• Roman (non-bold) chapter entries
• Generous vertical spacing between chapters (1.2em)
• Dotted leader to right-aligned page numbers
• Heading: \Huge\bfseries, left-aligned

To restore the default book class TOC, comment out the \usepackage{tocloft} line and the redefinitions below it.

Change the chapter heading style

Open main.tex and edit the \titleformat{\chapter} block. The current style is "display" with the chapter number on its own line above the title.

Switch citation style

Replace style=apa in the \usepackage[...]{biblatex} call with another biblatex style (e.g. numeric, nature, chicago-authordate).

Change the page margins

Edit the \usepackage[...]{geometry} line in main.tex. The current values (margin=2.5cm,bindingoffset=1cm) follow Monash binding requirements.

Compilation

The thesis uses biber as the bibliography backend (not bibtex). latexmk -pdf will handle this automatically. Manual compilation:

pdflatex main
biber main
pdflatex main
pdflatex main

In Overleaf: project settings → "Latexmk" compiler, "Biber" bibliography compiler.

Acknowledgements

This template was extracted from the thesis "A physics of contemplative phenomenology" by Lars Sandved-Smith (Monash, 2026), supervised by Professor Jakob Hohwy. Improvements and contributions from future M3CS students are welcome via pull request.

License

CC0 1.0 Universal — public domain dedication. Use freely, no attribution required.