HH7000 Dissertation
- Module Organiser:
- Programme co-ordinator
- Teaching Staff:
- Students will be assigned a member of TCD staff to supervise their research. Supervisors will be selected as appropriate to the subject of the dissertation.
The dissertation may act as a springboard for your further research. Many of our PhD students have chosen to develop a subject for their thesis that they began to study in their MPhil dissertation. It can offer you a route into museum and curatorial studies, as students are encouraged to research collections and work closely with curators throughout the MPhil programme. Our students have gone on to work in a wide variety of fields including as museum curators, academics, in arts policy and management, museum outreach and education and in gallery and commercial contexts. The experience of researching and writing a dissertation is invaluable for identifying your research interests, developing your writing skills and demonstrating your ability to complete a sustained piece of independent research to a high standard.
While the dissertation process serves both developmental and scholarly purposes, the completed work will be assessed in terms of its scholarly rigour and its contribution to knowledge. Students must satisfy all of the requirements of their programme to proceed to the dissertation module. Dissertations of 15,000 words in length must be submitted at the end of August. The dissertation mark is an important part of your MPhil that represents the culmination of your research, as such in the calculation of the overall M.Phil. mark the weighted average mark for the taught components carries 40% and the mark for the dissertation carries 60%.
Learning Outcomes:
On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
- Devise, develop and complete a substantial, intellectually challenging and independent research project relating to their field of study
- Identify, access and interpret appropriate source materials, methods, concepts and terminology in the light of existing scholarship
- Develop a coherent and clearly structured argument that engages with original sources and interpretative issues in a critically informed and constructive manner
- Relate the specifics of their research topic to wider issues and debates within their discipline
- Demonstrate project management skills