SO302      One Unit
The Sociological Dissertation

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

Requisites

Additional requisites:

Students undertaking this course need to have completed the first two years of the BSc in Sociology.

The dissertation takes the form of an independent research project of 10,000 words on a sociological topic of the students’ choosing, developed in consultation with their Academic Mentor. The dissertation process includes reviewing relevant literature on the topic of study, formulating a viable and sociologically-relevant research problem, collecting and analysing primary and/or secondary data (such as a case study, data set, fieldwork observations, corpus of texts, survey results or interviews), and writing up an independent analysis based on this research.
Students’ work on the dissertation is supervised in small-group and individual tutorials with their Academic Mentor over AT and WT.
The Dissertation process is supported by a series of compulsory group workshops in the AT and WT which focus on research project design. The workshops cover topics such as identifying a sociological problem for investigation, constructing a bibliography, research ethics, research access, data collection, data analysis and writing up.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

7 hours and 30 minutes of seminars in the AT. 6 hours of seminars in the WT.

In addition, Academic Mentors will hold small-group tutorials in the AT and individual supervisions in the WT.

Annotated bibliography

Annotated bibliography to be completed in the AT.

Proposal (10%, 2000 words) in December

Dissertation (90%, 10000 words) in May