Creating a proposal

This degree requires you to carry out an advanced research project under supervision which has clear and specific aims and intentions informed by current issues or insights at the forefront of the relevant academic discipline and/or area of professional practice.

You'll need to undertake significant personal, independent research using a range of well justified and appropriately applied methods dependent upon the aims and focus of the dissertation/project. The resulting artefact is a 20,000 word dissertation.

In order to be placed with an appropriate supervisor for this project, we ask you to submit a written proposal (about 500 words) with your application materials. This proposal should have the following components:

1. Title
2. Project description
3. Project aims
4. Project methodology
5. Bibliography of works relevant to the proposal

To produce this, please consider the following questions:

1. What is the title? (this should be descriptive)

2. What is the subject area of this project? (e.g. History, Sociology, Education... etc.). What is the main aim and focus of the study?

3. What is the main question that you are asking in this study and what further questions will you need to ask to develop your response? What materials will you be using? Will these be texts (e.g. archives/novels, interviews, case studies, statistics, etc.?) Make sure that these are accessible in Portsmouth or another region to which you have easy access - students are not funded for research costs. Please be specific.

4. How do you intend to investigate them? Will you be using a particular method that has been used before or possibly a theoretical approach to the topic to guide your questions? Explain your approach and cite any studies that are inspiring your project.

5. Make sure that all the books that you have noted or books from which you have quoted are included in a bibliography. If you are quoting in your proposal, please remember to cite the reference for each quote in the main body of the text. You can use any recognised referencing system for this e.g. Harvard APA, Chicago, MLA.