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).

Something around workplace injuries could be good if that's something you're still interested in? You could pick a town / industry local to you and look at how workplace safety / perceptions of safety shifted over time, maybe the role of trade unions in improving conditions?

Undergrad. I want to progress at work and it's going to be difficult without a relevant degree which is why I'm now hanging out with 19-20 year olds all day 😂

My history of injuries favourite (if you can have favourites of such a gory subject) is the rise of industrial accidents and sudden mass injury/death on a scale that had never really been dealt with before, not to mention all the problems of rapid urbanisation. As a society having to collectively say "well all this coal is great and I like the electricity but we should probably do something about all this cholera and dead miners". Arguably, their responses laid the early foundations for collective responsibility towards public healthcare and social care services.

This is intriguing. I wrote an essay last year on the role of trauma in relation to identity amongst subsequent generations of diasporic populations.

Have you tried ChatGPT? Tell it what you like, that you need a topic that isn’t overly trodden, see what it can come with?

You could also think back to front, think about what historical collections or archives are of interest to you and easily accessible to you and if you can draw any questions from those?

I have disabilities and wonder how I would have survived in times past. I was reasonably active until peri menopause but could never do as much as others even then.

Good luck deciding. Pick something that won't make your life too difficult to research.

Usually your idea will be narrowed down to something more niche by your dissertation supervisor. So if you wanted to do the history of foundings in the 19th century, it would be foundlings in X town from the years Y to Z and how legislation changed their lived experience.

I mean, we can give you ideas but you really need to talk to your supervisor.

What about....how the Factory Acts limited women's earning opportunities by limiting their hours and the impact this might have on families etc.

I am going to speak to my supervisor, I'm just brainstorming ideas and this is really helping me to start connecting my ideas by getting me in the mindset. Thank you all.

The idea for mine came to me during a seminar - we were discussing a government paper that set a policy at a really pivotal moment in time, and someone off-handedly said, “That’s the worst timing ever! Why on earth did they do that?” And that became my dissertation.

Violations of the dead in 19th and early 20th century science - think Egyptian (and other) mummies, corpses of people with illnesses or deformities (Merrick, Byrne), deformed unborn children (definitely a trip to the Hunterian museum), public anatomical dissections, grave robbing (Burke and Hare) etc.

DD did something on Mysogny and Witch trials/purges which I found pretty interesting

I love the knitting/coding idea and that would be so interesting to look at across cultures (which might be more anthropology).

Also violations of the dead if you're not too squeamish.

Attitudes to infant and child mortality would be another dark but interesting one. In the young V&A I remember seeing a horrific stat about the % of kids dying under 5 in dense industrial areas, and I read the book 'round about a pound a week' which talked about funeral insurance for children being a major household expense.

But I'd also think about what you want to do next - if you want to go into a specific area or role, is there something relevant to that which you could focus on to enhance your CV beyond just having the degree?

I find it interesting how important crafts were to supplement household income. I read about women in Switzerland who would spend the long dark winters making lace. It was a social activity that could be done indoors, they could share the source of light (candles were very expensive) and the finished products would be sold when everything thawed out in the spring.

The other thing was professional wet nurses. In Bordeaux there are houses that were built by money earned by women who went to Paris to wet nurse the offspring of the well off. When they had enough they would come back and the family could build a house.

Both these examples are from a book called The Story of France, by Graham Robb, but there might be similar examples in British history.

As a society having to collectively say "well all this coal is great and I like the electricity but we should probably do something about all this cholera and dead miners"

I think coal production was ramped up long before the appearance of that. They were using serious quantities of it to run steam powered machines etc probably 100 years before it was used for say modern electric lighting.

I find the era of gas lighting really interesting, especially since there are some places still running it, quite a few gas lamps still in London.

Don't know how much this has been researched before but how about the history of attitudes towards and treatment of disabled people, including the ever changing language used around disability.

I love a history thread. Please don't use ChatGPT, will you? Obvious I guess but I'm amazed someone suggested it!

I don't know if this is useful, but I'm a historian and what strikes me is that you are listing a mixture of topics and methodologies, and maybe it's helpful to separate them out?

So, using literature as a historical source is a methodology. It's not a topic in itself. Public history and environmental history are types of history (with attendant methodologies); they're not topics.

I would key ino to the things that are topics in their own right - eg. workplace accidents, or the history of sleep, or race riots.

Then you need to set a chronological and geographical period.

Maybe try to explain why you are interested in these topics - what is it that grabs you? Do you think the way you've been taught about it had some kind of omission? Or is there something you've always wanted to understand better?

Don't worry too much about it being 'original research'. Originality is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of a dissertation - you don't want to choose something too 'done,' of course, but any subject you pick will have a ton of scholarship attached, even if it's relatively 'obscure'. Originality comes from your approach; the way you grapple with the existing scholarship; the way you draw things together.

Depending on whether you want to discuss infanticide or infant mortality - there would be an interesting line of research looking at when herbal contraceptives and arbortifacients stopped being useful. (I did some research into this is early modern London and people seemed to have a decent grasp on where to go and what they'd "prescribe".)

If you want to look at female criminals then there is a fascinating book by Natalie Zemon Davies called Fiction in the Archives where she looks at a series of convicted criminals' pleas for mercy to the French crown and the gender differences in the way the criminals present themselves.

The aesthetic dress movement.

Maybe base it on who your dissertation tutor would be , choose a topic that you like that would be under their remit.
You start off with vague ideas anyway and then tighten it up as you work through the research.

I would love you to do it on women's general life things such as infant feeding before formula, childcare after the agricultural revolution and women's had to go out to work, or cosleeping with younger children. I can't imagine that would be easy to research though, as history was written by men.

I love the idea of local history that a previous poster mentioned. I live in an area that was industrial until the 60's and is now increasingly gentrified suburbia. I am raging at the cultural vandalism of erasing place names and buildings. An old coal yard has had had high end flats built there and been rebranded along the lines of swanky place mews.

Do let us know what you decide.

Another history nut here. My current research is the history of childbirth (if you’re interested check out The Birth Historian on Instagram)

Picking a dissertation topic is hard. I found for both mine inspiration hit from unexpected sources. My undergrad started as interest in jewellery and led me to mummy portraits. My postgrad was inspired by the film Downfall. Interested in how ancient architecture was used in the 20th Century.

That was a great book, thanks for reminding me - I will reread it.