What was your dissertation about?

[Rdacsm]

What was YOUR dissertation on? Did you enjoy doing it? Did it make any significant impact in the field?

I did like doing it. It was on electricity generation and supply across borders within the European Union. It was looking at European competition law, rules on energy generation and infrastructure and OECD treaty. It was only for undergraduate degree so made no impact in the field.

Mine was about liquid crystals. The exact specifics of it evade me now, and I don't actually understand my actual thesis anymore....
I remember spending a lot of time in a basement with ice and heating baths. And making slides with extremely smelly chemicals. And microscopes
It's all irrelevant now.... they aren't used nearly as much anymore!

Regulation and financial controls over the European investment funds industry.

Had no impact on the field and has absolutely no relevance to my current career, or life - or indeed anyone’s life or career.

Name changed for this.

I was doing a masters in European law and graduated in the summer of 2016.

After the UK voted to leave the EU I changed my dissertation topic at the last minute to write about Brexit. Specifically about the way Article 50 was supposed to work and the legal mechanics of triggering it.

It was probably a unique dissertation topic due to the timing, and a lot of it was speculation due to the fact that it was a legal mechanism which had never been used before.

My dissertation supervisor was part of the team who advised Gina Miller in the Article 50 litigation and he used some of the arguments I had made in my dissertation. So it might actually have made a small difference to something. (Not to the eventual outcome though.)

My contribution had to remain strictly anonymous because I was actually a civil servant working for the Government Legal Department at the time and they had contributed to my tuition fees, so there was a bit of a conflict of interest going on. My employers approved my dissertation topic but asked me not to come to the conclusion that the government was breaking the law.

Composition of aviation fuels. Lots of time in the lab which was fun. However I had no interest in the subject then and have no interest now.

I did economics. I looked at innovation spending in the healthcare sector and if it helped boost health outcomes

Russian and Latvian inflation following the independence of Latvia in 1990 (Hyperinflation). I enjoyed writing it and studying the countries. Just for an BA degree so no impact in field. I did go on to work in that area (macro/international economics/overseas economic development), not in Russia thankfully.

Do you guys still have a copy of your dissertation?

Not sure if I do or not. I don't remember throwing it out but no idea where it would be if I have it.

My MA dissertation was about how Shakespeare's cultural status ('the Shakespeare myth') affects the teaching of his works and the way they're received. No it didn't make any impact in the field, lol.

How the 3 stage PIP application process causes discrimination and poverty in other areas of a disabled person's life.

I know that mine would be somewhere in my university's servers.

Mine was only last year, as I was a mature student. It was about young children's perceptions of Forest School. I really loved doing it. Not sure if it had any impact in the wider world but it was published in a student journal earlier this year which I felt really proud of!

Would love to do a Masters but that will have to wait a year or two due to life getting in the way.

Dementia and music

Ooh! What's your take on the cause of that massive blackout in Spain and Portugal??

Mine was on stone circles, contemporary landscape art and the enduring human compulsion to interact with the landscape. I took myself off on a field trip to Callanish for research. Fine art is great, you can do whatever the hell you want and no one cares.

Euthanasia. Quite enjoyed it.

A missing medieval priory (undergrad level). Recent as I was a mature student. Has won two prizes as I proved the existence of the priory which had been lost for several centuries.

Impact - enabled me to get my job; not sure of wider, that’s something that will be seen I suppose but I know it’s been referenced by my former tutor when teaching a module in the two years since I graduated.

I’m still pinching myself as I have severe anxiety so to manage to do the research and writing was a major achievement for me.

I wrote mine while I was studying in France as part of my degree. It was something to do with the history and development of "Les Halles" in the town where I lived, and how it supported the countryside all around the town.

Transgressive women in 19th century literature (undergraduate). I did contribute a chapter based on it to a book of essays commissioned by a literary society but it was only sold in their bookshop so hardly a bestseller!

Very impressive and 😮at the last bit

My undergraduate dissertation was on Tumour necrosis factor alpha and angiogenesis in breast cancer

It was my first publication.

In itself, it didn’t lead to a change to the management of breast cancer, but coincidentally enough, a few years later, the use of TNF alpha blockade was paradigm-changing in the field that I went on to specialise in. It lead to an explosion of the use of biologic therapies not just in my specialty but across many others.

Seems that I was looking at the right molecule in the wrong organ!

Interestingly, a quick search suggests that our original paper is still well cited now, some 20 plus years later. There are also a couple of recent studies looking at adding TNF alpha blockade to treatment for breast cancer. Perhaps things will come full circle (though unlikely, I think).

The UN role in a post Cold War world. I wrote it in 1993 (I think).

For my BA music degree, I wrote a dissertation on Debussy's piano music, discussing influences of gamelan orchestra and Oriental/Eastern music upon its harmonic language!
It made no impact whatsoever as it wouldn't have been published, and was unlikely to have said anything particularly novel!
My Mmus was all performance based, with only minimal written work.

Medical women on the Western Front 1914- 1918.

Yes, I enjoyed doing it and there's probably a copy kicking around somewhere although it was over 30 years ago. I looked at the all female Scottish suffragette hospital at Royaumont and others such as the two women of Pervyse and the effect this had post war on both women's role in medicine and women's rights. Sadly very little.

Mine too!
lots and lots of maths 😂