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?

Amazing. I just read David Challen's book. Important subject.

How their father’s style of preaching contributed to the religious elements of the Brontë sisters novels. Made no difference to anyone ever, but made me good at quizzes where the sisters come up!

For my History BA it was an examination of changing social attitudes over the past 50 years to girls studying STEM subjects at schools (so lots of interviews with women who were at school in the 1940’s, 1950’s etc)

Masters level was research into how to engage service users in service design/unmet needs analysis when you are delivering “emergency services”. I was working for a global charity that provided humanitarian relief etc. Researched loads of places like ambulance trusts, A&E departments and even the RAC/AA.

Neither had any impact on the world 🫠

My MA was in a really minor episode in the Cold War after the death of Stalin. I was really chuffed that I picked an episode that lasted only three months. So arcane that I’m sure it had no influence or importance whatsoever. Did get to go to Russian archives and get documents stamped ‘top secret’ though.

Mine (Bachelor of Education (Hons)) focussed on four year olds in school. It was before the implemented Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum and Development Matters.

It was sparked by a teaching practice where, when I commented to the class teacher that ‘Billy can't do his Scottish Primary Maths’, she responded with ‘no, of course he can't, Billy is only just four’.

No support, no help, no planning of learning to match what Billy could do, no practical resources or play. Billy just sat and sat at his desk.

In fact, Billy was an August birthday, still three, a week before that full day in school.
Billy couldn't hold a pencil, nevermind complete his ‘Scottish Primary Maths’ text book!
Without any other planned learning or play, he was never going to be able to complete anything!

Thanks Noluthando, it should be viewable here:

Edit - having problems including a link. If you google ECSDN student publications it should come up

Feminist science fiction, a BA in English and Women's Studies, no impact. I got into family history a year later and sometimes wish I'd done a History degree. Loved being at uni.

Mine was about children's ability to make choices in their home environment.

Mine was on singing for health and wellbeing.

Over twenty years ago now but it was for a module 'Feminist Perspectives on Law' and was on the link between pornography and harm to women. Would love to revisit the data now given the emergence of social media in that time. I remember drafting this in the law library and taking breaks to look at Friends Reunited 🤣

Women's voice within theatre, for a theatre BA but included political and sociological elements.

Undergraduate - The architecture of Stansted Airport.

Postgraduate - The architecture of the Franciscan Order in 15th and 16th Century Italy.

No impact but some good research trips.

Some of these sounds so interesting.

Whether or not E-commerce would take off! Thankfully I concluded that it would or that could have been embarrassing.

“The De-Industrialusation (or re- industrialisation?) of South Wales. “ (can’t remember exact title)

No impact whatsoever so ever. I imagine there’s a copy at my parents house.

The clash between Buddhism and Christianity in South Korea. My parents were living there at the time, so I went to stay for a month to do my research. My lecturers admitted they knew nothing about it so I was actually education them! No surprise I got a first for it.

Not of my undergrad dissertation, but I have a copy of my PhD thesis and all those of the students I supervised. My PhD thesis was very unremarkable, though it was about the analysis of blood. It still infuriates me when medics try to explain to me in simple terms the tests they are going to run (when I probably know more about those tests than they do).

In hindsight though even getting a PhD was not a big deal. I don't consider myself an "expert" in many areas related to what my project was in.

@FallingIsLearning you did really well to get a publication from an undergrad project. Well done! As a previous academic I always kept my undergrad projects "safe", so stuff I knew would definitely work and they'd get sufficient data to analyse for a good discussion!

And my postgraduate dissertation was on MEAMS! Music-evoked Autobiographical Memories, a very interesting topic.

That does sound really interesting!

I wish they would apply this wisdom in healthcare today.

BSc Germ Theory and the development of medicine in the first world war
MSc The ethics of an opt out organ donation policy. Sadly unread and unquoted when the government changed the rules 10years after submission.

My first degree was English literature and my dissertation was on war poetry and the human condition.

My 2nd was building surveying and my dissertation was on building information modelling.

My masters was on building performance and sustainability.

And did it?

I did one at Lancaster Uni! Very different to this though… it was on one particular definition of ‘art’, with particular reference to Marcel Duchamp.

Well I pushed out a 10lb 11oz baby (after a previous 8lb 12oz first one!) and now can’t sneeze without tightly crossing my legs or go on a trampoline 😀

Mature student here-dissertation was about The Problems Faced by Lone Parents in Higher Education