Research dissertation
You will undertake a research project and produce a dissertation which is submitted on an assigned date in mid-August.
The final element of the programme is a 15,000 word dissertation (60 credits), which students complete during the summer months. This is an independent, primary source-based research project supervised by one or more members of academic staff. Students have considerable freedom to define their own dissertation project — so long as it is a feasible project that one or more staff members have the expertise to supervise.
Example dissertation topics
Past dissertation topics have included:
- Isauria from 350–410
- Polemic in the Work of St Romanos the Melodist
- Episcopal Authority in Northern Gaul during the Firth to Eighth Centuries
- The Sources of Shi’ism
- Sicilian Calcitic Ware during the Eighth Century
- The First Historic Plague Pandemic (541–750 AD): A Re-Examination of the Late Antique Climatic Context
- The Late Byzantine Imperial Portrait in the Provinces and at Foreign Courts
- Monetary Exchanges at the Tenth Century Byzantine Court: Inflows and Outlows during Promotions and Appointments in De Cerimoniis
- Early Umayyad Seapower
- Decoration in the Aniconic Churches of Byzantine Naxos
- Byzantine–Chinese Relations in the Sixth Century
- Byzantium Seen through Western Chronicles of the Sixth and Seventh Century
- The Relationship between the Emperor and his Magistri Militum
- ‘Unmindful of what they were born’: Changing Conceptions of Homosexual Behaviour in Roman North Africa, c.200–c.430
- The 3rd Marquess of Bute – Byzantine Englightenment