Dissertations

Whether you are studying on campus or by distance learning, your final year dissertation gives you a chance to investigate a topic in depth, supported by an academic supervisor. Here are just a handful of our recent successful undergraduate dissertations:

2017: Gill, Archaeology BA (distance learning)

Male Identities in the Roman Provinces of Britain and Germany in the 1st – 3rd Centuries CE: A Comparative Analysis (supervised by Professor Simon James)

"I analysed evidence from monuments and items of personal appearance, such as belt-plates, weapons and armour, to identify the male identities visible in Roman Britain and Germany. Men's identities as husbands, fathers and sons were visible on many tombstones."

Read more about Gill's dissertation.

2016: Anna-Sophie, Ancient History and Archaeology BA

The Representation and Transformation of Lucretia from Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita in Sixteenth-Century Italian Renaissance Paintings (supervised by Dr Sarah Scott)

"After having done Dr Sarah Scott's third year module on Greek and Roman Art in Ancient and Modern Contexts, I became interested in past approaches to the classical past. I especially wanted to look at how we have transformed stories from ancient literary texts into visual representations, such as Lucretia's rape, and how different social and political contexts affect representations and viewer interpretations."

Read more about Anna-Sophie's dissertation.

2016: Claire, Ancient History and History BA

Sanitized City, Sanitized History: A study into how the Fascist regime engineered the city centre of Rome in order to create a particular narrative of antiquity (supervised by Dr Andy Merrills)

"The archaeological activities of Mussolini's regime were first introduced to me in a first-year lecture and ever since then I wanted to explore the subject further. The use of space to construct narratives and deliberate distortions of history by political regimes had long interested me, and this topic proved to be the perfect combination of these two concepts."

Read more about Claire's dissertation.

2013: Nick, Archaeology BA

Can the understanding of Iron Age people's perception of space help us to understand the location of Burrough Hill?

Nick's dissertation on prehistoric perceptions of space won him the Prehistoric Society prize for 2013 for the undergraduate dissertation that made the greatest contribution to the study of prehistory, an award open to students from any university in Britain and Ireland.

Read more about Nick's dissertation.