MyST TU Delft Thesis template

A MyST markdown template for PhD dissertations at Delft University of Technology, based on this Latex template.

Features

• Choose between fourier, roboto and arial fonts
• Choose between digital and print versions
• Export propositions page or the thesis
• Support for dedication, nomenclature, preface, summary, title page, acknowledgements, cv, epilogue and publication list.
• Option to add custom styling

Usage

The template can use all the styles available in the standard tex build. You can add your preferred style using the export options. Where you define your export (myst.yml or page frontmatter), you may also set these options, e.g.

exports:
    - format: tex+pdf
      template: tudelft_dissertation
      options:
        font_style: fourier # fourier, roboto, usearial
        build_type: thesis # thesis, propositions
        print: true # Generates a print-ready version
        extra_bibliography: example.bib # Adds non-referenced bibliography entries
        defense_date: "Wednesday 9 July 2026 at 13:00 o'clock"
        # Double space to ensure newline
        author_initials: "S." # Required for emphasis on author in reference lists
        academic_title: |
          Master of Science in Applied Physics,
          
          Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands
        birthplace: "Delft, The Netherlands"
        preface_date: true # Whether to add a right-aligned date to the preface
        isbn: 000-00-0000-000-0
        printed_by: "TBD" # Credits to your printing company
        custom_style: custom_style.sty

Most functionality which should be placed at specific position is handled by defining the right parts, for example:

+++ {"part": "preface"}
This will be the preface
+++

Parts may be placed anywhere in your MyST build, and will be placed correctly in the latex build by the template. A full list of parts can be found in template.yml.

The sharp bits

Headings show up as sections instead of chapters

By default, MyST translates headings to (sub)section commands in Latex, but we want the top heading to be the \chapter command. To achieve this, you must add level = 0 in the articles list of the export. See example/myst.yml.

Because of how the parser works, this also means that any top-level headings inside of a part will be rendered as a section. Therefore, the titles for parts have been 'hardcoded' into the template. These titles can still be adjusted using the part_title options (e.g. summary_english_title) in the export definition.

Per chapter references

Most theses will have a separate references / bibliography section for each chapter. This requires wrapping the latex content of the thesis:

\begin{refsection} 
\begingroup

% Content here
% References will be printed here
\printreferences
\endgroup
\end{refsection}

This cannot be done by the template, since it does not know where your chapters are. Instead, you can solve this by using the {raw:latex} directive at the top and at the bottom of each chapter. See example/chapter_1/chapter_1.md for an example.

Separating appendix chapters

Along a similar vein, the template does not know where the appendix starts either. As such, the tex \appendix command must be placed in your source files before the title of the first appendix chapter. In the example, this was handled by adding a switch_to_appendix.md file in the toc, which contains just a single raw tex node to place the appendix command.

Doctoral committee & CV part

It is difficult to style some parts dynamically using markdown syntax, so it is advisable to have these parts simply output raw tex. I recommend using the default parts in example/frontmatter/title.md and example/backmatter/cv.md as a starting point. This does mean that this part will not be displayed in any non-latex exports.