A dissertation is one of the most useful sources you can cite, and one of the easiest to get wrong. Unlike a book or a journal article, it may never have been formally published. It might sit in a university repository with a DOI, or it might exist only as a PDF on a departmental website, or as a bound copy in a library that nobody has digitised. Harvard style handles all three cases with the same core pattern, and the differences come down to a handful of extra details. This guide works through that pattern step by step, with examples for published, online and unpublished dissertations, so you can build a correct reference whatever version you found.
The first thing to settle is what you are actually citing. In the UK, the words dissertation and thesis are often used interchangeably, and your reference should use the label the awarding institution uses. A PhD thesis stays a PhD thesis, a master’s dissertation stays a master’s dissertation, and an MPhil or EdD thesis keeps its own label. Do not upgrade a master’s dissertation to a thesis, or downgrade a doctoral thesis to a dissertation, just because one word feels more natural. Your marker checks the reference against the source, and the award label is part of how they find it.
It is also worth being clear about why dissertations are worth citing at all. A recent doctoral thesis often contains the fullest account of a study, including methods and data that a later journal article had to cut for length. A master’s dissertation may be the only recent work on a very narrow topic. Citing them shows you have searched beyond textbooks and the first page of journal results. The trade-off is that a dissertation has not usually been through the same peer review as a journal article, so you should weigh its claims carefully and, where possible, support a key point with a published source as well.
The basic Harvard pattern for a dissertation
Most UK Harvard guides, including the Cite Them Right version used by many universities, build a dissertation reference from the same elements in the same order: author, year, title, award, institution, and then the retrieval details if the work was read online. The standard pattern for a published or repository dissertation looks like this: Author surname, Initial(s). (Year) Title of dissertation in italics. Award, Institution.
Example: Hartley, J. (2021) Reading engagement in the early years of primary school. PhD thesis, University of Leeds.
Several details in that example are worth noticing. Only the surname and initials appear, never the author’s full first name. The year is the year the dissertation was completed or awarded, which is normally the year on the title page or the repository record, not the year you downloaded it. The title is italicised and written in sentence case, so only the first word and any proper nouns take a capital letter, even if the title page uses capitals throughout. The award and the institution come last, separated by a comma, and the institution is given in full rather than abbreviated.
The in-text citation follows the ordinary Harvard author-date pattern. A general mention of the work takes the surname and year in brackets, while a quotation or a specific claim also needs a page number. For example, you might write that Hartley (2021) found a strong link between daily reading time and vocabulary growth, or that one classroom intervention produced “a measurable gain within a single term” (Hartley, 2021, p. 87). If the dissertation has two or three authors, which occasionally happens with jointly awarded work, list all of them in the text on first mention; with four or more, use the first surname followed by et al. from the start.
Referencing a dissertation you found online
Most dissertations you cite today will come from a university repository, a national collection such as EThOS, or a database such as ProQuest. The reference keeps the same core and adds where you found it. If the record gives a DOI, use that, because a DOI is a permanent identifier that keeps working even if the repository moves its web address. If there is no DOI, give the URL and the date you accessed it, because repository pages can change.
Example with a DOI: Hartley, J. (2021) Reading engagement in the early years of primary school. PhD thesis, University of Leeds. Available at: https://doi.org/10.5518/example (Accessed: 28 October 2026).
Example with a URL and no DOI: Okafor, N. (2023) Community nursing and hospital discharge planning in urban settings. Master’s dissertation, University of Manchester. Available at: https://repository.example.ac.uk/okafor-2023 (Accessed: 28 October 2026).
When you copy a URL, use the stable repository address, not the address of a search results page and not a link that only works while you are logged in through your university library. Open the record page itself, check that the author, year, title and award on that page match what you have written, and copy the link from there. If the repository offers a “cite this” button, treat it as a starting point and check it against your own university guide rather than pasting it blindly, because repository citation buttons do not always follow your institution’s Harvard variant.
One common question is whether to include the place of publication for an online dissertation. Older Harvard guides asked for the city, while the newest Cite Them Right guidance has dropped it for most sources. This is exactly the kind of small difference that varies between universities, so follow your own guide. Whichever version you choose, apply it consistently to every reference in your list rather than mixing two styles.
Referencing an unpublished dissertation
Some dissertations have never been deposited in a repository. They may be held in a departmental archive, supplied to you directly by the author, or read as a bound copy in a library. Harvard handles this by marking the work as unpublished in the award statement, which tells your reader why there is no URL or DOI to follow.
Example: Ahmed, S. (2019) Parental involvement in homework support among Year 6 pupils. Unpublished master’s dissertation, University of Birmingham.
The word “unpublished” goes before the award, and everything else stays the same. If you read a physical copy, you may add the location of the holding library or archive if your guide asks for it, but do not invent a URL for a document that is not online. If the author later deposits the same dissertation in a repository, cite the deposited version instead, because that is the version your reader can actually check.
A related case is a dissertation that is still in progress, sometimes cited when a researcher has shared early findings. Here you should be cautious. Cite it only if the material is genuinely needed and cannot be found elsewhere, label it clearly as unpublished work in progress if your guide allows that wording, and be aware that its findings may change before submission. In most undergraduate essays you will not need to cite work in progress at all, and a published source will serve you better.
What to do when details are missing
Dissertation records are not always complete, and guessing is the one mistake that reliably costs marks. If there is no named author, which is rare for a dissertation but happens with some institutional reports bound alongside theses, use the institution as the author. If there is no clear year, use the year of award shown on the repository record; if even that is missing, write (no date) where the year would go and make sure the access date is present for an online source. If the award level is unclear, describe what the record actually says rather than assuming a PhD or a master’s, and check the repository’s metadata page, which usually states the qualification in full.
Another frequent problem is a dissertation with a very long title, or a title that includes a subtitle separated by a colon. Keep the full title including the subtitle, because shortening it can make the work hard to find. Keep the colon and the capitalisation of the subtitle as they appear in sentence case, and do not add words of your own. The same care applies to hyphenated names and names with apostrophes: copy them exactly as the repository spells them.
Finally, remember that the reference list entry is only half the job. Every dissertation in your reference list must be cited somewhere in your text, and every in-text citation of a dissertation must have a matching full entry. A reference list padded with dissertations you never mentioned is easy for a marker to spot, and it weakens the impression made by the sources you did use properly. If you read a dissertation but decided not to rely on it, leave it out of the list entirely.
Dissertations in your own writing: using them well
Because dissertations are long, students often cite them vaguely, pointing at the whole document for a claim that appears on one page. That wastes the source’s value. Wherever you make a specific claim, give the page number, and where the dissertation is read as a PDF, use the page numbers printed on the document rather than the PDF viewer’s count, which can differ because of front matter. If you are paraphrasing a whole chapter’s argument, say so, for example by writing that Hartley (2021, ch. 4) develops the argument across a chapter, rather than attaching a single page number to an idea that took twenty pages to build.
It is also good practice to say what kind of source you are using when it matters to your argument. A sentence such as “In a doctoral study of twelve primary schools, Hartley (2021) found…” tells your reader why the claim carries weight, and it shows you have actually read the work rather than copied its title from a search result. The same honesty applies in the other direction: if a dissertation’s sample was small or its method unusual, say so, and do not present its findings as if they came from a large published trial.
When you have the details right, formatting the entry itself is straightforward, and if you want to check your punctuation and italics as you go, use the Harvard Referencing Generator to build the reference from the author, year, title, award and institution before you paste it into your list.
Frequently asked questions
Can I cite a dissertation in Harvard style? Yes. Dissertations and theses are legitimate academic sources in Harvard style. Cite them with the author, year, title, award and institution, adding a DOI or URL and access date when you read them online, and marking them unpublished when they have never been deposited.
Do I use the year of submission or the year I read it? Use the year the dissertation was completed or awarded, as shown on the title page or repository record. The date you accessed it only appears at the end of an online entry, in the “Accessed” note, and never replaces the publication year.
Should the dissertation title be in italics or quotation marks? In the Cite Them Right Harvard pattern used by most UK universities, the dissertation title is italicised, like a book title. Some institutional variants put the title in single quotation marks instead, so follow your own university guide and stay consistent throughout your list.
What if the dissertation has no DOI? Give the stable repository URL and the date you accessed it instead. A DOI is preferred when one exists because it is permanent, but a repository URL with an access date is a complete and correct alternative.
How do I cite a dissertation in the text? Use the ordinary author-date pattern: (Hartley, 2021) for a general mention, or (Hartley, 2021, p. 87) when you quote or draw on a specific page. The reference list entry then gives the full details in alphabetical order by surname.
Is my own dissertation cited the same way? When you refer to your own earlier dissertation in later work, cite it like any other dissertation, with your name, the award year, the title, the award and the institution. Do not leave it out of the reference list, and check your university’s rules on self-citation and reusing your own earlier writing before you reuse any of its text.