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This course is compulsory on the MA in Modern History. This course is not available as an outside option.

The dissertation is an exercise in using primary sources to write on a precise topic in Modern History. Students will be required to write a 10,000-word dissertation based on their own research. This can be on any topic decided in consultation with a supervisor in the Department of International History, and include topics which are international, domestic, theoretical and historiographical. Candidates should aim to include an element of originality in the argument and/or the treatment of the evidence.

4 hours of workshops in the MT.

Teaching is provided through dissertation workshop sessions and through the individual supervision of dissertation projects by supervisors in the Department of International History. Students should use the Michaelmas Term to find, decide on, and develop a suitable dissertation topic and consider possible dissertation supervisors. Help with this process is available from the students' personal advisers. Students are then required to complete the Dissertation Proposal Form and to seek approval for their project from their dissertation supervisor. It is the students' responsibility to locate a supervisor. They should meet with the potential supervisor in late Michaelmas term (every member of staff has weekly office hours) to discuss their dissertation proposal, and then ask the supervisor to sign the Dissertation Proposal Form before the published deadline. It is the students' responsibility to contact their supervisor to arrange at least one but no more than three meetings in the Summer Term to discuss their dissertation. At this stage the supervisor will be prepared to read and give feedback on a draft table of contents and a draft chapter, or a section or a detailed plan of the dissertation of no more than 1,000 words. Students should note that if they submit a dissertation proposal after the deadline the Teacher Responsible for the course may need to allocate them to a non-subject-specialist supervisor, if no specialists are available.

Dissertation (100%, 10000 words) in September.

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