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

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