Sometimes — and no national rule decides it. UK universities publish flatly opposite defaults. The University of Leeds tells students that academic arguments are “not usually presented in the first person”. The University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory tells its dissertation writers that “Writing in the first person singular is preferred.” Your department’s handbook is the tie-breaker, and this page explains how to read it.
Why do two UK universities give opposite answers?
Because the convention is genuinely moving, and different disciplines are at different points on the journey. This is not a case of one institution being out of date and another being current. Both statements are live guidance, published now, by named UK universities.
The University of Leeds, in its library guidance on tense and voice, states the traditional position and the reason behind it: “Academic arguments are not usually presented in the first person (using I, me or we), but use the third person (it is, they are, etc). This sounds more objective, using logic and reasoning to persuade, rather than using emotional or personal perspectives.”
The University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, in its guidance on writing a dissertation, states the opposite default just as plainly: “The general preference nowadays is to write in the first person, although there is still some debate.” It then commits: “Writing in the first person singular is preferred, but remember that you are writing a scientific document not a child’s diary.”
The University of Hull’s library guidance explains why both can be true at once, and gives the variable that actually predicts the answer: “There is considerable academic debate about whether the first or third person should be used in when writing up research projects. The move is towards more use of the first person — after all, the work, analysis and conclusions are your own and taking yourself out of those processes can sometimes make for awkward writing. This varies by discipline however, with the hard sciences mostly resisting the move to write in the first person and the humanities and social sciences being more accepting.”
Nor are these two outliers. The University of Reading tells students that “For most subject areas the writing is expected to be objective. For this the first person (I, we, me, my) should be avoided.” The University of Nottingham is more specific about the mechanism: “Try to avoid using the words ‘I/me’ or ‘we/us’. You can usually avoid these by using the passive voice rather than the active voice.” On the other side, the University of Aberdeen tells its students plainly that a blanket prohibition is a myth: “Some students are told (and we have also seen this advice on some websites): Never Ever Use the First Person. People who believe this categorically are probably unaware of the wide variety of academic writing styles that exist.” Aberdeen also cites the evidence — in Ken Hyland’s study of 240 published journal articles, “most of them used the first person – although there were differences in how various disciplines used it.”
So the honest answer to “can I use I?” is: your discipline has a default, your department may override it, and neither is a universal rule you can look up once.
What does your own department actually require?
Work through these in order and stop at the first one that gives you an answer.
- The dissertation module handbook. Not the general university writing guide — the handbook for the specific module the dissertation is assessed under. Where a rule exists, this is where it lives.
- The marking criteria for the module. Occasionally the band descriptors name a register expectation directly.
- Recent journals in your field. Open three articles from the journals your literature review cites most. Count how many use “I” or “we” in the introduction. This is the best proxy for your discipline’s default.
- Your supervisor, in writing. Leeds gives exactly this instruction about voice, and it applies equally to person: “Always check with your department to see what form of writing would be most appropriate for your subject area.” Ask by email so the answer is on record.
One warning. Guidance written for research degrees is not guidance for you — a thesis presentation policy and an undergraduate module handbook are different documents with different audiences, and the first is not evidence about the second.
Which sections normally take the first person, and which do not?
Even departments that discourage “I” across the dissertation usually carve out exceptions. Leeds states one explicitly: the third-person rule “may not apply, however, if you are asked to write a reflective report based on your own thoughts and experiences. This is a more personal style of writing and can usually be written using the first person.”
The practical pattern in UK undergraduate dissertations looks like this.
- Reflexivity and positionality statements — first person, nearly always. These sections exist to state who you are in relation to your participants, and they cannot be written impersonally without becoming absurd. If you are writing one, see our guidance on thematic analysis, which sets out what a positionality paragraph has to do beyond listing your identity.
- Methodology — passive by convention. This is covered below, and it is the strongest convention on this page.
- Results — impersonal, because the data is the subject. “Attendance declined across the three conditions” needs no pronoun. Our guide to the results chapter covers the reporting conventions in detail.
- Introduction and discussion — the contested ground. This is where “I argue” versus “it is argued” actually gets decided, and where your department’s default matters most.
- Abstract — follow the abstract’s own conventions, which are tighter than the rest of the document; see how to write a dissertation abstract.
If not “I”, then what?
Departments that forbid the first person rarely say what to use instead, and students fill the gap badly. There are three substitutes, and only two of them are any good.
The impersonal construction. “It is argued that…”, “This dissertation examines…”, “The analysis presented here suggests…”. The Academic Phrasebank models this directly with “In the section that follows, it will be argued that …”. Note the trick in the second and third examples: the document or the analysis becomes the grammatical subject, so the sentence stays active and readable without a pronoun.
The agentless passive. “Twelve interviews were conducted.” Correct, conventional in methods, and the subject of the next section.
“The researcher”, or “the present author”. Contested, and our advice is to avoid it — but you should know that some UK departments require exactly this. The University of Sunderland’s academic register guidance instructs students to “Use the 3rd person e.g. ‘the author’, ‘the student’, ‘the researcher’”. Against that, APA’s seventh edition rules it out in terms: “Do not refer to yourself or your coauthors in the third person as ‘the author(s)’ or ‘the researcher(s)’.”
So this is a third live disagreement, not a settled point of style. Where you have a free choice, prefer one of the first two constructions: “The researcher conducted twelve interviews” is a first-person act wearing a third-person costume, it adds two words, and it adds no objectivity. Where your department names “the researcher”, use it — a handbook instruction beats a style manual you are not being marked against.
Is the passive voice the same question as the first person?
No, and conflating them is the commonest confusion on this topic. Hull notes the correlation while treating them separately: “generally, 1st person = active, 3rd person = passive”. But “The data show a marked decline” is active and contains no pronoun at all, so the two decisions come apart.
Leeds gives the balanced position on voice: “Most verbs can be used in either an active or passive form. It is usually appropriate to use a mixture of passive and active forms within academic writing.” On why the passive persists: “The passive voice is more formal than the active voice. It is often used in academic writing as it is seen as more impersonal and therefore more objective. However, it is not always easy to read and it may add unnecessary words.” Hull is more directive: “our advice is to use the active voice whenever you can.”
The methodology chapter is the exception that everyone agrees on. The University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank gathers its methods material under the heading “Describing the process: verbs used in the passive”, and every model it gives is an agentless passive — “Data were collected using semi-structured interviews in …”, “Ethical approval was obtained from …”, “The procedures of this study were approved by …”. If you write your methods this way you are following the mainstream UK convention, whatever your department says about “I” elsewhere. Our methodology chapter guide works through the section in full.
What does the most-used UK phrase resource actually model?
Worth knowing, because it undercuts the idea that “I” is inherently unacademic. The University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank is the most widely recommended academic phrase resource in UK higher education, and its own signposting models are written in the first person: “In the following pages, I will present …” and “Having defined what is meant by X, I will now move on to discuss …”.
It offers impersonal alternatives alongside them — “In the section that follows, it will be argued that …” — but it does not treat the first person as an error. A resource that UK universities point their own students towards models both. That is the clearest available evidence that this is a convention question, not a correctness question.
How do you use “I” without sounding like a diary?
Cambridge’s warning — “you are writing a scientific document not a child’s diary” — is the real risk, and it is easy to manage. Three rules.
- Use “I” for research acts and argumentative moves, not for feelings. “I selected a purposive sample” and “I argue that the effect is confined to first-year students” are fine. “I was really surprised by the results” is not, unless you are in a reflective section that asks for it.
- Do not open every paragraph with it. A first-person dissertation should still have the data, the literature and the argument in subject position most of the time. If “I” is the first word of six consecutive paragraphs, the chapter has become a narrative of your process rather than an argument.
- Keep the hedging. First person does not license stronger claims. “I found that X causes Y” overclaims in exactly the way “It was found that X causes Y” does. The pronoun changes who is speaking, not how much the data supports.
And whichever you choose, be consistent. Switching between “I”, “we”, “the researcher” and the passive across five chapters is far more visible to a marker than any single choice among them, and it is one of the things a second marker picks up immediately — see who marks your dissertation and how it is moderated.
Fixing it across a whole draft
If you have written 9,000 words and then discovered your handbook rules one way or the other, the repair is a single deliberate pass, not a find-and-replace. Converting “I” into an impersonal construction changes sentence structure, and a careless conversion leaves sentences that are vague about who did what — which is worse than the pronoun ever was.
Draft and revise your dissertation in Tesify: keep one register decision applied across every chapter, run a consistency pass over person and voice before submission, and let the bibliography look after itself while you concentrate on the argument. The words stay 100% yours — Tesify handles the clerical layer, not the thinking. There is a free tier, so you can test the consistency pass on one chapter before committing.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use “I” in a UK dissertation?
Sometimes, and it depends on your department rather than on any national rule. UK universities publish opposite defaults: Leeds says academic arguments are “not usually presented in the first person”, while Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory says “Writing in the first person singular is preferred.” Your module handbook outranks both.
Is using “I” unprofessional or informal?
No. Formality lives in vocabulary, hedging and sentence structure, not in pronouns. “I argue that the effect is confined to first-year students” is more formal than “Basically the effect was only really there in first years.” A dissertation can be entirely first-person and entirely formal.
Should I write “the researcher” instead of “I”?
It depends on your department, and UK practice is split. Sunderland instructs students to “Use the 3rd person e.g. ‘the author’, ‘the student’, ‘the researcher’”, while APA’s seventh edition says “Do not refer to yourself or your coauthors in the third person as ‘the author(s)’ or ‘the researcher(s)’.” Where you have a free choice, an impersonal construction reads better than inventing a character.
Can I use “we” if I am the only author?
Avoid it. Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory is blunt: “The use of “we” by a single author is outrageously pretentious.” The exception is the inclusive “we” that means writer and reader together, which some disciplines accept in reasoning steps.
Which sections most often allow the first person?
Reflective and reflexive sections, wherever they appear. Leeds makes the exception explicit: the third-person rule “may not apply, however, if you are asked to write a reflective report based on your own thoughts and experiences.” Qualitative positionality statements are the commonest place a UK undergraduate is required to write as “I”.
Does the first person weaken objectivity?
That is the traditional argument, and Leeds states it: the third person “sounds more objective, using logic and reasoning to persuade.” The counter-argument is Hull’s: “the work, analysis and conclusions are your own and taking yourself out of those processes can sometimes make for awkward writing.” Both are published UK positions.
Is the first person the same question as the active voice?
No, though they are related. Hull notes the correlation — “generally, 1st person = active, 3rd person = passive” — but you can write actively without “I”: “The data show a decline” is active and impersonal. Treat them as two separate decisions.
Should my methodology chapter use the passive?
By convention, largely yes, and this is the one section where the passive is genuinely the norm. The Academic Phrasebank’s methods material is built on agentless passives under the heading “Describing the process: verbs used in the passive”, with models such as “Data were collected using semi-structured interviews in …” and “Ethical approval was obtained from …”.
Does my discipline decide this?
Largely. Hull records the pattern: the move towards the first person “varies by discipline however, with the hard sciences mostly resisting the move to write in the first person and the humanities and social sciences being more accepting.” Check published articles in your own field as well as your handbook.
What if my handbook says nothing at all?
Then follow your discipline’s journals and ask your supervisor in writing, so the answer is on record. Leeds gives the same instruction for voice: “Always check with your department to see what form of writing would be most appropriate for your subject area.” A one-line email prevents a whole-draft rewrite.
Will I lose marks for getting this wrong?
Rarely on its own, but inconsistency is penalised. Switching between “I”, “we”, “the researcher” and the passive across five chapters reads as carelessness, and it is the kind of thing a second marker notices immediately. Pick one and hold it.
Can I change my mind late in the draft?
Yes, but do it as a deliberate pass rather than chapter by chapter. Converting “I” to an impersonal construction changes sentence structure, not just pronouns, so budget an afternoon and re-read for sentences that have become vague about who did what.