POL30870

This two-term module gives advanced and outstanding undergraduate students the background and supervision needed to engage in substantial academic research by writing a thesis.

In the first term, a number of members of staff of the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe) from various subfields of political research will give presentations on their work, along with seminars on various aspects of the research process – from developing an initial idea to writing up the paper.

Students will then produce a 4,000-word research proposal under the supervision of a SPIRe faculty member, receiving feedback on it and defending it in an in-class peer-review setting. The research proposal must include a clear research question building on an extensive literature review, provisional arguments/hypotheses to be advanced/tested, as well as an indicative research design (including potential data and methods to be used).

In the second term, students will write and submit an 8,000-word thesis under individual supervision. This is the standard length of research articles in many Political Science journals and beyond. The goal of the thesis project is to draft research that could be developed into a publishable piece through the route of academic peer review. To this end, the final thesis will be evaluated by an assessor independent from the supervisor – much like the standard academic peer review process and similar to thesis evaluations at the graduate level.

The research proposal development and thesis drafting are supervised. The weekly readings and seminars are designed to provide you with guidance on the research process. But participation in this module involves a lot of independent work, as well as the self-discipline and initiative required to do substantial research.

This module must be taken in conjunction with POL30860.