Cambridge (Lua)LaTeX PhD Thesis Template

This repo contains a Cambridge University PhD thesis template using (Lua)LaTex and Biblatex with the biber backend and as far as I know fulfils all the University requirements. It would also be fairly easy to adapt for the guidelines of other universities if you wanted to. It is adapted from the setup I developed for my thesis, which I created based on the Memoir manual and taking inspiration from other templates (e.g. Engineering Template and EBI Template). Since most formatting is heavily based on Memoir it will be useful to get used to the basics of it if you want to modify things and refer to the manual when making more complex changes.

Usage

1. Create a local copy of this repo using git clone
2. Create a new private remote repo to use for version control for you thesis text/figures etc. and set it as the remote using git remote
3. Configure your details in thesis.tex by setting the \myname, \supervisor etc. group of macros.
4. Compile using Lualatexmk, which will run the correct commands. I used LuaTex 1.13.2 on TeX 3.141592653 based on TeX Live 2021. It is probably possible to use other LaTeX engines if they support Biber and Biblatex, but I haven't tested.
5. Add your own content, adapting the existing tex files and adding additional chapters where needed.

Template Guide

The main file for the template is thesis.tex, which uses \input{} to add the various other files. I have added comments to explain most of the layout, so if you are comfortable using LaTeX the fastest way to understand the template is probably reading through thesis.tex and looking at other files when referenced. The template is based around Memoir, so looking through it's manual will also be useful if you encounter anything you don't recognise.

The basic directory layout is:

• thesis.tex - Master file setting the overall document structure and containing author/title config. Use it to add chapters and make overall structure changes.
• config.tex - Control the page layout, header and footer, title formatting and similar settings as well as include the required packages. Adapt settings to customise formatting and add any necessary packages.
• macros.tex - Contains all the macros used for common terms, maths formatting and referencing. Add your own macros here
• thesis.bib - Bibliography file containing details of the references cited. You will probably want to replace it with one generated by your reference manager.
• thesis.pdf - The generated thesis PDF.
• front/
  • titlepage.tex - The front page will auto-fill with your details when you set them in thesis.tex. You can easily adjust the title page layout by changing the order of the different components.
  • declaration.tex - The university requires this declaration that the thesis contents are your own work.
  • abstract.tex - Add your abstract here
  • dedication.tex - Dedicate the thesis to someone important.
  • acknowledgements.tex - Acknowledge people who helped you along the way.
• main/
  • introduction.tex - Insert your introduction here.
  • chapter1.tex - Use this as a template for your results chapters. I gave each chapter file a descriptive name so I could change their order easily without creating odd names.
  • discussion.tex - Insert your discussion here.
• back/ - Includes various appendices. You can add additional ones if necessary.
  • published_works.tex - A list of publications from the thesis work.
  • supplementary_figures.tex - Figures that weren't important enough for the main text.
  • supplementary_tables.tex - Larger or additional tables that don't fit in the main text. This file arranges them but the tables themselves are included in their own files.
  • example_supp_table.tex - An example supplementary table. I used booktabs for my tables, but you don't have to.
• figures/ - Include your figures in this directory, which is set as the graphics root path. I used subdirectories for each chapter.

There are a few non-standard macros I used get the formatting I wanted. You can see their definitions in macros.tex

• \refer - General macro for internal references, which selects the correct word (chapter, figure etc.) and number using cleverref and uses italics.
• \chapcites - Adds a small paragraph under the chapter heading to put notes about that chapter, for example noting it is published or acknowledging people.
• \chapfigures/\chaptables - Adds a chapter heading to the table of figures/tables for this chapter. Add it at the start of chapters with figures or tables if you want separators in your contents tables.

Known issues

There are various issues that I never solved, since work arounds existed and I had more pressing things to do. If there are fixes for these I'd be happy to incorporate them.

• bm package does not work in my setup. When the \bm{} command is used the resulting text is not in bold face. I used \mathbf{} instead but it would be nice to use the more modern package.
• Unicode fonts do not render all glyphs correctly, leaving missing characters.