How to write the acknowledgement for your PhD thesis

What should a PhD thesis acknowledgement include?

In most theses the page covers four groups. First the people who guided the research. Then the institutions that gave you a place to work and the facilities. Then whoever paid for it. And last, people outside the academic side, like participants, staff, friends and family, without whom it would not have got finished.

Keep it to that much. Research summary you already gave in the abstract, so skip it here. Leave out wedding guests who had no role in the PhD.

The custom is one page. Most scholars finish it in 250 to 400 words. A few universities have made this a rule. Anna University’s PhD Regulations R2025 list the acknowledgement as “one page only”, and our Anna University format guide notes that you sign it at the bottom right. Where your university says nothing, a page and a little extra will not get the thesis sent back. But if it runs to three pages, the examiners will notice and they will not like it.

Write this page at the very end. Only by then you know who helped you properly.

Whom should you thank, and in what order?

Most Indian theses go from the academic people to the personal ones, and inside the academic part, from the person nearest to the work outwards. Your guide is almost always the first name. Put any other name on top and readers start guessing what went wrong.

You will see two local variations quite often. Many scholars begin with a line thanking God or a guru. Others keep that line for the end, or skip it. Follow what you actually believe. Some departments also have the habit of thanking the Vice-Chancellor, Registrar and Principal before the guide. If every recent thesis in your department’s shelf does it that way, following the custom costs nothing.

Give designations for every academic person, for example “Dr. [Name], Professor and Head, Department of Chemistry”. Calling an Associate Professor a Professor, or thanking the old Head after a change, is embarrassing in the open viva. Any doubt about a title, discuss about it with your guide before printing.

How do you acknowledge a fellowship or funding agency in a thesis?

Write the full name of the agency and the exact scheme. Then the award or reference number, copied from sanction letter itself. A line like “UGC for financial support” is too weak. The proper version reads “The University Grants Commission, New Delhi, for the Junior and Senior Research Fellowships (Ref. No. [number])”.

With some funders this is written in the conditions of the award. When we checked in September 2026, the main national schemes said this:

• ICSSR Doctoral Fellowship: clause 7.6 of the 2025-26 guidelines says “the ICSSR must also be compulsorily acknowledged in the PhD thesis.”
• DST INSPIRE Fellowship: the implementation guidelines from DST give a list of duties for the fellow. In that list, the fellow “must acknowledge the support provided by DST in all publication(s)/patent(s) and Ph.D. Thesis.”
• CSIR JRF/SRF: as per CSIR’s guidelines, fellows have to acknowledge CSIR in their research publications, and an extension may not be granted if they don’t. The thesis is not mentioned there, but thank CSIR in the thesis also.
• UGC JRF/SRF: the UGC fellowship page does not state any such requirement. Still, acknowledge UGC in the thesis.

Agencies revise these guidelines, and the version for you is the one which came with your own award letter. Our fellowships guide has links to the page of each agency. If you had a project grant, travel grant or used a central instrument facility, thank each one separately with its own number. Journal papers work in a different way, because most journals ask for a separate funding statement. For that part, see our guide on writing a research paper.

Should you thank people who helped with editing, statistics or AI tools?

Yes, when the help was genuine and sizeable. Scholars go wrong on both sides. Some thank the statistician so warmly it reads like the statistician did the analysis, and some hide paid editing completely.

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) gives a useful yardstick, though it was written for journal papers. As per ICMJE, “writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading” don’t make someone an author, but should be acknowledged, saying what exactly they did. ICMJE also advises taking written permission from the people you name. In a thesis, the line can look like this:

I thank Dr. [Name], Department of Statistics, for advice on choosing multilevel models, and [Name] for language editing of the final draft.

The acknowledgement cannot cover for work another person did that the thesis shows as yours. You will sign a declaration saying the thesis is your own work, and in the viva the examiner will ask you to explain the analysis. Advice, training and checking are fine to take and to thank people for.

About AI tools, ICMJE says that using AI for writing assistance should be reported in the acknowledgements of a paper. For a thesis, your university’s rules decide what you disclose and in which place. Some universities want a separate declaration for it. What is generally acceptable is covered in our guide to AI tools in your PhD.

Where does the acknowledgement go, and what tone should it take?

The page goes in the front matter, after the title page, declaration and supervisor’s certificate. Before or after the abstract differs by university. Anna University’s R2025 order puts the abstract before it. In the VTU 2025 template it is the other way round. Scholars who copy the layout of a senior’s old thesis get caught by this, and our VTU format guide explains why. If the rules don’t say anything, go by the recent theses of your department.

The acknowledgement is not counted for similarity. Clause 7 of the UGC’s 2018 plagiarism regulations keeps “references, bibliography, table of content, preface and acknowledgements” out of the similarity check. Even so, copying a senior’s page word by word is not right.

Use sincere, plain words and say who did what. Formal English is what examiners want, and simple sentences are formal enough for them. Remove the stock phrases you find in every second thesis on Shodhganga, like “Words are not enough to express my gratitude”, “it gives me immense pleasure” and “last but not the least”. Compare “I thank my guide for his constant support” with “My guide read all four drafts of Chapter 3 and returned each within a week.”

Remembering a parent or grandparent who passed away before the thesis was finished is completely fine. Keep it to a sentence or two, or put it on a separate dedication page if your format allows that page.

What does a good PhD thesis acknowledgement look like? (samples)

Use these as templates only. Brackets are placeholders. Other details we made up, just to show how a specific line reads. Fill in every bracket, and delete any sentence which is not true in your case.

1. Science or engineering thesis (formal)

I express my sincere gratitude to my research supervisor, Dr. [Name], Professor, Department of Chemistry, [University], who suggested this problem and guided me in every stage of the work. Because he insisted that I repeat the kinetics experiments, Chapter 4 became much stronger.

I thank Dr. [Name] and Dr. [Name], members of my Doctoral Committee, for their suggestions in each review, and Dr. [Name], Professor and Head, for providing the Department’s laboratory facilities. I acknowledge the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, for the INSPIRE Fellowship (Award No. [number]). I am thankful to Mr. [Name], Technical Assistant, for patiently helping me with the XRD measurements.

My labmates [Name] and [Name] made the long hours in the lab easier. Finally, I thank my parents and my wife, [Name], for being patient with me all through.

[Place], [Date]    [YOUR NAME]

2. Humanities or social science thesis

Much of the shape of this thesis comes from my guide, Dr. [Name], who read my early chapters with more kindness than they deserved and kept asking me what the argument really was. I thank my co-guide, Dr. [Name], who opened up the archival sources used in Chapter 2, and my Research Advisory Committee for their careful comments.

I am grateful to the Indian Council of Social Science Research for the Doctoral Fellowship (Ref. No. [number]), which made two years of fieldwork possible. I also thank the staff of the [State] State Archives.

Above all I thank the women of [District] who shared their stories with me. As promised, their names are not given here, but this work belongs to them as much as to me. And to my late grandfather, [Name], who kept every newspaper cutting I posted to him, thank you.

3. A shorter version

I am grateful to my guide, Dr. [Name], Associate Professor, Department of Commerce, for her guidance and for reading so many drafts. I thank Dr. [Name] and Dr. [Name], members of my Doctoral Committee, and Dr. [Name], Head of the Department. I acknowledge the University Grants Commission for the Junior and Senior Research Fellowships (Ref. No. [number]). I also thank Dr. [Name] for advice on the statistical analysis, the teachers who filled the survey, and my family for their patience.

Read your finished page aloud once. Any sentence that could go into another scholar’s thesis unchanged needs a specific detail, or delete it.

What should you do and avoid in a thesis acknowledgement?

• First open your university’s thesis format. Some formats fix the length, and some fix where the page sits in the front matter.
• Take names and designations from official documents. Spell each person’s name the way that person spells it.
• Copy the funder’s scheme name and award number from the sanction letter, not from memory.
• Say what each person actually did. “For teaching me SPSS syntax” beats “for constant support”.
• If someone gave real help with editing, statistics or translation, thank them and mention what the help was.
• If your ethics approval promised anonymity, keep the participants anonymous here also.
• Keep any old fight with your guide or co-guide out of this page. Silence about a co-guide gets noticed, and the thesis stays on Shodhganga for years.
• Poems and quotations all over the page look odd. One short line which means something to you is more than enough.

Since the acknowledgement is the last page written, many times it goes for printing with typos still inside. Keep it in your checklist for the thesis submission process, and ask some other person to proofread it.