  The purpose of this work is to investigate the consequences of quantum
gravity for the singularity problem. We study the higher-derivative terms that
invariably appear in any quantum field theoretical model of gravity, handling
them both non-perturbatively and perturbatively. In the former case, by
computing the contributions of the additional degrees of freedom to a
congruence of geodesics, we show that the appearance of singularities is no
longer a necessity. In the latter, which corresponds to treating the quantised
general relativity as an effective field theory, we generalise the
Hawking-Penrose theorems to include one-loop corrections of both massless
matter and graviton fluctuations.
