Dissertation MRes Politics

• Credit value: 60 credits at Level 7
• Convenor: Professor Deborah Mabbett
• Assessment: a dissertation of 12,000-15,000 words (100%)

The dissertation counts for a third of your degree. It is structured with chapters which set out your research question, discuss relevant academic literature and present the results of empirical enquiry. Your dissertation supervisor will help you find and refine a research question, as well as guiding you towards relevant literature and advising you on appropriate research techniques. Alongside individual meetings with your supervisor, workshops are conducted to clarify expectations and enable you to learn from your fellow students’ ideas.

By the end of this module, you will be able to:

• formulate a hypothesis or argument and examine or pursue it with a sustained analysis
• synthesise specialised academic literature and demonstrate critical engagement with it
• search systematically for evidence and data, and present and evaluate them in the light of their limitations and contradictions
• convey the findings of research in a way that reflects the academic expectations of a master’s dissertation in terms of length, scope and style.