Writing the Past: Dissertation

• Credit value: 60 credits at Level 6
• Convenor and tutor: to be confirmed
• Assessment: a 10,000-word dissertation (100%)

Your final-year dissertation is the crowning piece of scholarship in a history, classics or archaeology degree. It is your opportunity to explore a topic in sustained detail and produce a 10,000-word study based on your own primary research and embedded in secondary scholarship. It will draw on skills you have learned throughout your degree.

Writing the Past is designed to provide support and shape to your writing experience. From getting started with your proposal to producing a plan and draft material and receiving and acting on feedback, you will be guided by your module tutor and your dissertation supervisor. Step by step, we will guide you through the process of producing a piece of original scholarship that shows your accomplishment as a scholar.

Indicative syllabus

• Researching to find a topic
• Producing a plan and bibliography
• Beginning research
• Using feedback

By the end of the module, you should be able to:

• use in your own work an appropriate range of historical debates
• evaluate evidence and arguments presented by other scholars in literature relevant to your dissertation
• identify and access a suitable range of sources for your dissertation
• write an extended piece semi-independently
• reference and create a bibliography suitable to the scale of the dissertation work
• plan your time and stages of work to complete a lengthy piece of research writing on time.