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LaTeX II: Thesis Workflows, Bibliography, and Advanced Tools

Field Details
Date 17 June 2026
Time 14:00 - 15:30
Location House of Prominence, Attic (Top floor), Luxemburger Str. 299, Cologne
Speakers TBC
Prerequisites Basic familiarity with LaTeX document structure is recommended (Session 1).
Materials status Slides are available.
Slides / recording HTML slides are linked below; no recording is currently listed.

Overview

This follow-up session looks at how LaTeX scales to longer academic documents and collaborative writing. The focus is on practical workflows for theses, bibliographies, and modular document organization, as well as tools that integrate LaTeX with the broader research workflow.

Learning Objectives

  • Organize larger LaTeX projects for theses and dissertations using multi-file structure
  • Manage bibliographies with Zotero, BetterBibTeX, and biblatex/biber
  • Use Quarto for literate programming with PDF output via LaTeX
  • Create programmatic figures with TikZ
  • Start from journal and thesis templates
  • Read LaTeX error messages and debug common problems

Topics Covered

Document Structure for Longer Works

  • report and book document classes
  • Multi-file projects: \input and \include
  • Recommended folder structure for theses

Bibliography Management

  • How the LaTeX bibliography pipeline works: multiple compilation passes explained
  • biber vs BibTeX: differences, when to use each, how to configure TeXstudio
  • .bib file structure and entry types
  • Citation commands: \parencite, \textcite, \autocite

Zotero and BetterBibTeX

  • Building and organising a Zotero library
  • BetterBibTeX: cite key patterns and continuous auto-export
  • Keeping references in sync between Zotero and your LaTeX project

Quarto

  • Literate programming: combining R/Python code with prose in a single .qmd file
  • Quarto YAML options for PDF output via LaTeX
  • Using keep-tex: true for journal submission

TikZ

  • Programmatic figures: shapes, paths, and annotations
  • Flowcharts and process diagrams
  • Plots with PGFPlots
  • Syntax trees with tikz-qtree

Templates and Debugging

  • Journal templates from Overleaf, publisher websites, and CTAN
  • University thesis templates
  • Reading LaTeX error messages; common errors and fixes

Materials

Additional Resources