Politics and International Relations Dissertation module (PO40006)

Module Details

The Politics Dissertation consists of an extended piece of work (around 10,000 words) written on a specialist topic within subject areas close to the research specialisms of members of staff who provide one-to-one supervision throughout the year.

The aim of the dissertation is to give students, in the last phase of their honours degree, the opportunity to exercise and develop a range of skills they have acquired in the earlier levels of their programme in an extended piece of written work.

Dissertation topics are selected by students from a range of 'special subject' areas indicated by individual members of staff, reflecting their research interests (see below).  The undertaking is phased - from initial idea to planning to draft to final submission.

Assessment

Your dissertation (around 10,000 words) counts for 100% of the final mark.

Teaching

An initial discussion takes place at the end of the second semester of your third year.  Once you have been accepted by a supervisor a series of meetings will be arranged for ongoing evaluation of your progress during the final year of your degree.

Intended Learning Outcomes

On completion of the dissertation, you will have developed abilities to:

• Identify a 'research question' in a given area of political studies.
• Plan in detail the pursuit of the necessary lines of investigation towards the solving of that question.
• Determine appropriate methodologies.
• Locate, evaluate and assimilate relevant source materials.
• Construct a sustained piece of concise and lucid analysis in the form of an extended paper.