History fans, I need some help and advice

[Goldeh]

I need to start working on my history dissertation proposal and I've had various seminar support on how to choose a topic but nothing about actually selecting one. Everyone I've spoken to have said to choose what I love but I love so many things. I've also been told that it must be an original piece of research and all my ideas feel like I'm re-treading old ground.

Some papers I've written over the course of my studies include topics like:

• social history of industrial revolution era workplace accidents and their impact
• using literature as a historical source
• the history of sleep
• race riots
• commemorations, who we commemorate, who we don't, and why
• the history of aesthetic landscapes
• public history
• environmental history

My areas of interest are the industrial revolution, the Victorians, museums and their role/museum collections, the history of crafts and their stories (especially gendered crafts like knitting, proggy mats, etc and functions the serve in things like identity, remembrance, generational skill sharing, etc), the cultural significance and contextualisation of myths and fairytales, the history of disease.

I cannot think of new research angles on any of these. I know I will eventually and that the reason I'm currently blocked is because I'm overthinking it.

In the meantime, inspire me with your unanswered historical questions, wonderings, musings, and crack theories (my personal crack theory is that vikings wore wooden helmets).

I always wonder how women coped with the loss of their babies. Thankfully it's not so common now, but it's absolutely devastating when it happens. How did multiple losses affect women? My own grandparents lost 3 to TB and my husband's lost 2 to polio.

the reason I'm currently blocked is because I'm overthinking it.

Probably.

When I was doing my MA, the HoD kept telling us to think of the dissertation as an exercise to demonstrate we could use historical records and write up our research.

Think of it in practical terms:
How many words do you need to write?
What sources do you have access to either online or in person?
How easily can you get to record offices?
Are you willing or able to pay for a short term subscription to somewhere like Find My Past to give you access to sources?

Victorian social history is a wide field. You could do something like a study of X in town Y 1851-1901 using sources such as census, trade directories, local newspapers.

How did craft, knitting, quilting, dressmaking, move from being a necessity before mass production to a necessary economy to a leisure activity?
How did industrial revolution change our concept of childhood and teenage years?
Portrayal of industrial revolution in literature?
Were Judy O’Grady and the colonals lady really sisters under their skin?

How childhood changed pre and post Industrial Revolution.

How about something along the lines of the introduction of pain relief when giving birth or something contraceptive related?

Best advice I can give is don’t try and find a totally new, undiscovered unique thing to research. If you try that, you won’t be able to do a literature review and you certainly can’t do a big topic justice within the undergrad word count. 90% of academic history papers are retreading old ground by applying a theoretical standpoint that hasn’t been applied to that specific query, very few are the ones where new primary evidence was discovered (these are vanishingly unlikely unless you’re joint with archaeology where gathering new data is more routine). For example, has anyone applied feminist theory of any colour to accounts of women in cotton mills? Has anyone looked at the post-phenomenology of early Victorian coal mining? You’re not doing post-doc, you shouldn’t be looking for some great new discovery that’s totally original. Just fresh eyes/theory on well-researched ground. Also if you’re looking to do an MA later, pick a trendy topic with possible grad funding so you can further specialise later. A degree is a stepping stone not a buffet.

The impact of the modern novel on female emancipation.
When, why and how environmental concerns emerged during the Industrial Revolution.

Anything that focuses on women’s history and working-class history is going to be valuable in redressing the balance. women’s experience of child loss sounds really important!

I’d love more people to be researching on workhouses in the 19th century; how they changed society and the trauma - possibly multi-generational - they caused.

I’ve discovered several children in our family who were brought up in workhouses after one parent died and the other buggered off. I’m not sure anyone has ever investigated the impact on their children and grandchildren.

I’m happy to PM you exacts but my history dissertation was…niche. Definitely if you know me you know that my history of xxx was a thing! Pm me if you want to know.

I approached it differently to you. I looked at what archives I could have easy access to, and then planned a dissertation around that. It aligned with something I had some interest in from my courses rather than something completely new.

but I’ll give you what was my second choice idea… to look at infanticide in the 19th century n my local city. It was an idea of a tutor’s (rather than my first idea which was All Mine :)). Would have involved perusing local newspapers then court records at the archives office. More stuff is available online now than in 2002 too…

I kind of like the one about commemorations. You could look into Empire soldiers etc, concentrate on a country, why they fought, how they were seen in the UK, development of the attitudes post war etc. Im not the one doing the research though! Id be the same as you!
Edit: ive realised this is not the era you were interested in, but you could look at it in relation to empire ' heroes' women etc.

Something more recent, like WW1for example. Topics could include women on the home front, conscientious objectors. How about Hitler? Was he a meglamaniac or a frustrated artist? Good luck anyway 😏

How about something about the hidden work of women in history, how their contributions weren’t recorded on census returns. Most of this work would have been working at home including crafting etc.

All very well suggesting all these possible topics, but how would OP go about researching them? What sources would she use?

And she probably has a few weeks to do it, and around 10,000-15,000 words to write it up.

You will be able to find a niche/angle/approach that hasn’t been covered yet in any of those topics I should think when you’ve started doing some more serious research. It will just come to you one day, that’s what I found anyway. My topic was both very obscure (I’ve never met anyone who’d even heard of it) and unexpectedly well covered by historians!

Typically you get a year to do a dissertation. OP just needs to have a decent idea of subject matter at this point.

I find local history fascinating wherever I am. The local high street, local markets etc. For instance where I am now, there is an old charity that started giving out coal to the poor people in the vicinity, they are still going and now help people in other ways. Maybe you have a local museum, library, charity who have interesting archives.

For both my undergraduate and MA dissertations I had a meeting with my supervisor to chat through this sort of thing - so we looked at areas I was particularly interested in and they suggested topics within those areas that could do with more research and we came up with something between us.

I'm fascinated to know how family life worked for working class people in Industrial revolution Britain. How did homes function when women spent 12 hour shifts, seven days a week pulling carts out of mines. How were children cared for in those homes, laundry done, food brought to the table.

Fellow history buff here:
I'd go with your intrest in Museums and their collections. How display of objects changed through time from curiosities to cultural representation....looking at how private collections were made available for public viewing in the 18th & 19th century. Plenty of social history there! And I think reaserch into the role of the Museum is often shallow and a bit boring... yet they are places of great importance. You could also muse about the future of the Museum.... especially once all the robbed and pilfered items have been returned. 😁

When I was teaching women to program (write computer code) I noticed that knitters were usually the best students, or progressed the most quickly. There's some kind of deep connection between coding and knitting. I'm aware that weaving and knitting patterns were the first punched card programs before the transistor computer was invented, but I'd love to know who developed these fundamental approaches -- because it seems like they were probably women and their contributions have been lost.

This is really boring advice compared to what you’ve had so far, but I think you just need to set yourself a time limit for identifying an area of interest, stick to it and then ruthlessly exclude everything else.

I’m going through this too right now and I take great comfort from the fact that it is fully expected that the research question will change over the course of the literature review and beyond.

But you can’t start that until you’ve narrowed down. So period, broad area of interest, ideas as to methodology at least. The end of this weekend seems reasonable as a limit for deciding.

My area is ancient Rome so I completely get the anxiety about it all having been done before…

These are all brilliant suggestions and I'm well down the rabbit hole looking into some of them just for fun.

The knitting and coding is interesting and reminds me of visual crochet patterns which are almost like a language, impossible to understand unless you 'speak' it and again, likely the lost work of women.

Also intrigued about the 19th century infanticide and what angle you'd approach that from? Underlying reasons? Trends? The way in which it was tried? And the emotional toll of infant loss. My own grandmother lost two pregnancies, one quite late on, and also lost a child at around age 10 but no one ever talked about it. It must have impacted them.

I do have a bit of an interest in gendered justice and the ways in which women would frequently receive harsher sentences then men for the same or lesser crimes. The language around reporting it is really interesting too, the idea that they've commited a crime against nature because they've gone against gendered expectations. Lots of primary sources there.

Shifting use of museum collections too. I work for a heritage trust so I can get access to collections and some local buildings at a level that the general public maybe can't which is why I considered something to do with that. We seem to have evolved from focusing on the preservation of history/historical buildings to "come have a scone and a cup of tea..."

Typically you get a year to do a dissertation.

not necessarily. I had around four months - from end of exams to 30th Sept. And op hasn't said whether this is undergrad or postgrad.

I don't know OP, but I'm sure you're a fantastic person to have a drink with!
I'm a history fan myself with a specific interest for disease, and all the ways people used to injure themselves or die (through accidents, environmental hazard etc...)
I recently read a book about how WW1 led to fantastic evolutions in surgery and how heavy artillerie changed the very nature of injuries.
Not helping you here though, just wanted to give you some appreciation!

I'd find a niche local angle. I was at a tiny local history museum in a village in Kent and there was a whole display in Victorian foundlings from London being raised there as a bit of a cottage industry. Apparently they had a better than usual survival rate so it would be interesting and probably researchable to look at a comparison with an other place (more institutional) of raising them.