The MA Dissertation offers students the option of undertaking and completing a sustained research project (approximately 16,000 words) on a topic of special interest.  If you wish to do a dissertation, you should already have identified the broad area of interest before you arrive at Warwick.  Students are asked in September to indicate their intention to do a dissertation along with their provisional option choices and to submit 1-2 sentence descriptions of their general area of interest.   Students intending to apply for AHRC funding for doctoral work are strongly advised to apply to do a dissertation.

The topic of the dissertation does not have to be directly related to any of the taught modules.  However, topics must fall within the competence and interests of one member of the teaching staff and must be feasible in terms of resources to be accepted.  During the Autumn Term a series of workshops will be held to help students shape their general ideas ideas into an appropriate and feasible proposal.  Attendance at these workshops is mandatory for any student who wishes to write a dissertation.  Students will also be expected to meet once with their potential supervisor.  Full proposals will be submitted by Week 6 of Term 1 and students will be notified of the result by the end of Term 1.

Students wishing to apply to write a dissertation should choose 2 options for Term 1 and 2 additional ‘fallback’ options for Term 2 in case their proposal is not accepted.  It is expected, however, that most proposals submitted after full workshop attendance will be accepted.  Students writing a dissertation can choose to take either two or three taught modules.

Students whose proposal is accepted are strongly advised to begin work on their dissertation research in the Spring Term.  It can take time to work out exactly how to focus the work and decide on what you need to look at and read.  The Dissertation Plan must be given to your supervisor by the end of Week 7 of the Spring Term (AT THE LATEST).