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).

Sure but one will be at best pointless and at worst actively misleading

This sounds amazing!

I’ll be honest (and I say this as a lecturer), unless this is a research masters you will not be covering unique ground. Almost every undergrad and taught masters dissertation has been done in some way before. It’s 10k words, we are not looking for a breathtaking fresh piece of research. Save that for your PhD which has to be groundbreaking in some way.

This is just a test of your writing, research and analysis skills. Pick your absolute favourite topic, the thing you can really imagine reading about for the next few months and enjoy it. I did my undergrad diss on Charles Bukowski because he was my favourite writer and it meant I loved writing it. If you choose a topic you’re not 100% passionate about, it will be a drag.

Exactly. Which is why outsourcing any aspect of it to ChatGPT defeats the purpose.

I am not particularly intelligent and half of what has been discussed on this thread has passed me by and I have no knowledge of but just due to a love of history has made me want to look up and read about so much of what of has been mentioned. So thank you OP 😀

I would 💯 agree with this. I recently did a dissertation for a taught masters ( not history). I did no primary research and my originality was in looking at two areas of research re a certain commodity foodstuff and linking up global supply, trade and demand implications- ie who grows it, who buys it, and looking at implications for food security. Most of my data was publicly and freely available. My uni let us refine our question post literature review which was v helpful because it made me realise where the possible gaps were that were also manageable for my time and intelligence quota 🤣

Well, this reminds me of a computing conference I went to at the (then) headquarters of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London. They had a small museum of instruments and implements I had to walk through to get to the ladies. Quite terrifying.

Have you been to the Old Operating Theatre across the road from Guy's Hospital?

This is just a test of your writing, research and analysis skills.

Yes, as I said above, our HoD kept saying 'it's just an exercise' when some people were agonising over their choice of subject.

I just Googled my specific MA dissertation subject, just to see what was there online. The AI overview knew bugger all about it, because my dissertation has never been published in any form. Other sites that mention the topic in more general terms are still repeating an error made by an 18th or 19th century writer on the subject - confusing a father and son of the same name.

When I was an undergraduate we had a small museum attached to the department. They had just been donated yet another collection of items that they didn't have space to exhibit, and my supervisor suggested I might like to research them for my dissertation. I think this worked out quite well, in that I got to do some original research and the person who had donated the items got to feel valued.

I would bet that practically every museum in the country is in a similar position and would love to have someone shine a light on some of the more obscure things in their archives.

I've got a retired friend who does this sort of thing for the local museum - reviewing stuff in storage, are they catalogued, is the record digitised, is it accurate and complete as it can be?