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Research Project

Overview

  • Credit value: 60 credits at Level 6
  • Convenor: to be confirmed
  • Assessment: a 8000-10,000-word research project (excluding bibliography)

Module description

The research project is your opportunity to generate some completely new research in a topic that interests you. It must set out either a hypothesis or specific research questions, which you then investigate and analyse using original, primary research and/or original statistical analysis of a large-scale data set. 

You will be allocated a supervisor who will give regular guidance and meet with you three times over the year to discuss your project. You may provide your supervisor with a detailed contents page and one draft chapter to look over and provide feedback during the autumn or spring terms.

Your project will be assessed on its:

  • research questions/hypothesis
  • depth and sophistication of the theoretical background
  • methodology (appropriate techniques, rigour, awareness of safety and ethical issues)
  • analysis (logical, drawing on the material)
  • conclusions
  • overall presentation (including diagrams, maps, photos, typing).

Field and laboratory experience 

If you choose, your research project can be based on data collected in the field and/or laboratory. We have a small research laboratory which undergraduate students can use. 

Learning objectives

Skills development

  • Research design and ethics 
  • Problem-solving 
  • Presentation and discussion of data (exact skills depend on data type) 
  • Critical analysis 
  • Literature searching and synthesis of sources 
  • Database use, referencing and citation management 
  • Developing and writing an extended argument