Draft a full thesis chapter in four days
Join 25 other late-stage PhD students for a structured, intensive writing weekend — guided by two doctoral writing experts.
You’ll plan your chapter, write thousands of words, and leave with a complete first draft.
The average word count is 13,500. The highest is 39,000.
Runs Quarterly | Online via Zoom | £195
You’ve been trying to write this chapter for months
You sit down, open the document, stare at it for an hour, write a paragraph, delete it, check your email, feel guilty, close the laptop. Repeat tomorrow. The chapter doesn’t get written. The submission date gets further away. And the longer it takes, the harder it feels to start.
It’s easy to think there’s something wrong with you. There isn’t. It’s the environment you’re in and conditions you’re working under. You’re trying to do the hardest writing of your life completely alone, with no structure, no accountability, and no one to tell you that what you’re producing is good enough to keep going.
The Thesis Bootcamp changes that environment and provides the ideal conditions to help you write.
Four days. A structured programme. Two expert facilitators. Twenty-five other PhD students writing alongside you. And a format that’s been proven, over years, to produce thousands of words of usable first-draft material.
You don’t need more willpower. You need the right environment in which to write.
How It Works
Stage One: Plan Your Chapter
Weeks 1-2 (before the writing weekend)
Map your chapter structure with expert guidance through a group workshop and optional one-to-one consultation. By the time the writing weekend starts, you’ll know exactly what you’re writing and now it Tits together. No staring at a blank page.
Stage Two: Write Your Chapter
The writing weekend (4 days)
Four days of structured, intensive writing alongside 25 other PhD students. Two expert facilitators in the room. Short goal-setting sessions, focused writing blocks, micro check-ins, and breaks designed to sustain momentum. Write first, edit later.
Stage Three: Edit Your Chapter
Week 3 (after the writing weekend)
Reunite with your cohort for an editing workshop. Learn how to turn your raw draft into something submission-ready. You wrote the hard part. Now make it good.
What You’ll Leave With
A complete first draft of your chapter or paper
A detailed chapter plan you’ll use long after the bootcamp
The confidence that you can actually do this.
Don’t Take Our Word For It
205
Five Star Reviews
25
Students Per Cohort
4.8/5
Average Rating
13,500
Average Word Count Per Participant
Is this for you?
The Thesis Bootcamp is designed for late-stage doctoral students who have a chapter or paper to write. You don’t need to be mid-draft — you might be staring at a blank document, stuck on a chapter you’ve been avoiding, or ready to push through the final stretch before submission.
You need to be ready to write. If you’re still in the early stages of your PhD — still reading, still planning, not yet sure what your chapters will look like — this isn’t the right fit yet. The Common Room, with its weekly planning workshops and ongoing guidance, is a better starting point.
Any discipline. Any university. Any subject. The format works because the principles of generative writing are universal. You don’t need to be a confident writer – you just need a chapter that needs writing.
You’ll be guided by two people who’ve spent their careers helping PhD students write.
Professor Jane Creaton
Professor Jane Creaton is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education and has published on professional doctorates and the mental health and wellbeing of postgraduate researcher students and was awarded a National Teaching Fellowship in 2019 for her work on doctoral education.
Dr. Max Lemprière
Dr. Max Lemprière is the founder of The PhD People. Since his PhD he has supervised and coached over 100 students. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Royal Society of Arts. He is driven by a conviction that progress in a thesis comes iteratively and is often messy. Much of the work he does is in showing students that this is normal.
Question you might have
If you complete a Bootcamp and don’t think it was worthwhile, we’ll give you twice your money back.
Come to all the sessions. Do all the prep. And if you still don’t think your writing is in better shape let us know within 14 days for a double refund. No other terms. No other conditions.
Choose Your Bootcamp
Not ready for an intensive?
The Monday Focus Session is four hours of structured PhD work every Monday, for £14.
Also From The PhD People…
The PhD Common Room
Daily writing sessions, expert mentors, and 150+ PhD students working through their PhDs together. Monday Focus Sessions are included — plus everything else you need to actually finish. From £30/month.
Monday Focus Session
Not ready for an intensive yet? Every Monday, 9am UK time, 30+ PhD students work together for four hours. Same structure, same accountability, same feeling of actually getting somewhere. £14 a session.