Politics and International Relations Dissertation module (PO40006)

The Politics Dissertation is an extended piece of work (10,000 words) where you will focus on a specific topic. You'll get personal guidance from our staff who are experts in your area of interest.

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

It will not be a simple account of a particular issue or phenomenon (i.e. purely descriptive research). Your dissertation will have a clearly defined scope that focuses on specific issues.

In addition to subject-specific knowledge, a dissertation also requires demonstration of skills in methods of social inquiry. In other words, knowing a lot of stuff about a topic is not enough on its own. You need to know what to do with that information and say something meaningful about it. Dissertations require original research – by this, we do not mean something that nobody has ever done before but rather something that you undertake yourself.

What you will learn

In this module, you will:

• tackle a particular problem that you have identified
• answer a specific research question on your chosen issue
• read very broadly around your subject
• provide high-quality analysis in your writing, while demonstrating your breadth of research and knowledge

On completion of this dissertation, you will be able to:

• identify a 'research question' in a given area of political studies
• plan, in detail, lines of investigation 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

Assignments / assessment

• 5 multiple choice quizzes (5%)
  • Please note that you will only be marked for attempting all questions on all quizzes; the marks you get on each quiz will NOT count towards the grade.
• research Proposal (5%) (1000 words)
• dissertation (90%) (10,000 words)

This module does not have a final exam.

Teaching methods / timetable

• periodic meetings with your advisor over the course of this module to guide you and give you feedback
  • each student will receive up to 8 meetings with their supervisor between September and March
  • you will also be able to contact your advisor by email (this does not count towards the 8 meetings)
• written feedback from your supervisor on three pieces of work prior to the submission of the dissertation

Timetable