Away MAVE

The Distance Mode of MA in Values and the Environment at Lancaster University

Dissertation Home

|Home|Supervisors|Reading|Resources|

In all of the Institutes MAs the dissertation is an extended study that constitutes the culmination of your academic work at the Master's level. The dissertation should be an in-depth study and counts for 40% of the whole course (44% as of 2005/6). It is completed over a period of study but mainly in the summer with individual supervision from a member of the Institute. The notes on these pages are particularly directed to AwayMAVE, Mave and MA Philosophy students and are compliled in this format for the benefit of the AwayMAVE students.

What is a dissertation?

An answer to the question, 'what is a dissertation?' is hard to formulate. In one sense it draws on similar skills to those of essay writing but calls for a lot more. The main differences are: length, scope, depth, and independence. The dissertation is really where you can use the knowledge and skills you have gained during more structured study of modules and go further by demonstrating, in a piece of independent work, that you can address a specific, well formulated and circumscribed topic, and develop a substantial, coherent and well argued piece of writing. The dissertation is best focused on a question that is part of a wider discussion in the relevant field.

How do I choose a topic?

Think about what interests you. Researching and writing a dissertation takes time and energy and if you lose interest half way through it is incredibly hard to keep motivated. However, the topic does need to be firmly situated within an academic context. One way of checking for this is to make sure you can find journal articles and books/book chapters that are addressing the same area. Obviously it is excellent if you can say something original, but make sure it does relate to a current (or past, but for some reason unresolved) debate within the literature. If you think you have a great idea that does not fit this description discuss it with members of the teaching staff; new themes and streams of debate all start somewhere and we would not want to stifle originality, but it makes your task much harder and a second opinion early on could save you a lot of work.

A good way of getting a feel for the types of topics you could think about is to look at past dissertations. These are available in Christine's office and the more recent ones are available on the web (click on resources above) (when looking at past dissertations do note that the regulations have changed and older dissertations will only be 10,000 words long).

Past topics in MAVE have included:

Local Distinctiveness
The Ethics of Genetic Engineering
Unnatural Selection
Environmentalism and Existentialism
Are native species always best?

Past topics in MA Philosophy have included:

Science, Technology and Becoming
A Phenomenology of Romantic Love
Other Minds: Analogy as argument or instrument
Satre’s Concept of Authenticity and the Fundamental Project

If you are completely stuck for an idea you could ask a potential supervisor to direct you towards a piece of research that s/he think needs doing (but note the point about motivation above).

Who will supervise me?

Once you have an idea of the kind of area that you want to study and write on you could have a look at the interests of the teaching staff on the web, in the handbook, but also by looking in the tutor details at the tutor link above, to see if there is an obvious candidate. It could be that the most obvious person is not able to take on more students or will not be here over the period that you will be writing, but could make recommendations. You will already have been taught by several people and met others at seminars/ exchanged emails etc. so don't worry about approaching anyone for advice. This works best if you can work up your initial idea into a paragraph or two that explains what you want to do. It is always easier to reply to a request in writing as it gives the potential supervisor time to think about your idea, but do sound people out in general conversation and 'brainstorm' your ideas with other students as well.

The supervision contract

When you are reasonably sure what you are doing you need to fill out a dissertation supervision contract available here. Send a draft to your supervisor to get the ball rolling and then, through negotiation, work up a final version. Your supervisor will then send a copy to the convenor of your scheme (Cain Todd for MAVE, Isis Brook for AwayMAVE and Rachel Cooper for MA Philosophy). It is recommended that you do start this process as early as possible - middle of the Summer term (of your final year) would be the latest. The Convener should get back to you swiftly with either an 'OK go ahead' or some suggested modifications. If your study changes focus dramatically from the proposal it is helpful to us if you send a letter/E-mail stating the change and if necessary complete a new contract. Changes like this are common and come about through the process of studying it is just helpful to the Institute that we don't get any sudden shocks around the submission date. Also note that the contract is available to the external examiner.

How the ongoing supervision works

This part of the process varies from student to student and from supervisor to supervisor. You will see that the contract has areas for setting down certain expectations on both parts and this is where both parties need to make clear what is reasonable and the best ways for you both to manage the process.

That said I guess a few examples of different practices might help. Some students and supervisors like to maintain pretty regular contact throughout the whole period with regular (fortnightly) email exchanges even if they sometimes only amout to, "read the article you suggested and yes it could be useful but only if i take X to mean ...". Or even just, "all fine, still reading but will have a section for you next month". Other students like a lot of guidance at the beginning, e.g., face to face meetings or phone contact, a reading list and help with formulating a question and then they disappear and only come back near the deadline with a draft of the whole dissertation. Some students opt for a problem based exchange and only seek help when they hit a problem, others might like to send regular bits of writing for a response.

As a really general rule of thumb I would say that the supervision period should include:

at least 4 meetings/phone calls or extensive email exchanges;
a regular (fortnightly over the summer) checking in type email contact;
reading and responding to a plan of the whole, and two early draft sections.

Some students like to send a full draft prior to submission, but this is really rather too late for the supervisor to make any constructive comments. In general I would recommend you use your supervisor's expertise early on in the process rather than later. With any draft sections please remember to allow time for a response; your supervisor might have drafts from several dissertations as well as PhD students in the same week.

The key thing is to work out with your supervisor the best way of communicating around the subject of the dissertation in order that you feel supported and intellectually challenged, the supervisor feels that their time is being well used, and the final dissertation is the student's own work, but with a quality that has been enhanced by the opportunity to engage in discussion and debate with a supervisor and of course other students.

Structuring dissertations

There are certain expectations about the structure of a dissertation and the parts it should contain. Exactly how the whole piece hangs together will be very much dependent on the topic and the aims of the dissertation. In general the dissertation needs to be structured around its central argument and this should drive the placement and timing of the material. The formal aspects that all dissertations should contain are given in sections below.

Contents page
If you use various levels of headings when constructing your document, then the automatic contents page facility on your word processor will put together and easily update your contents page.

Abstract
This is a short piece of writing that encapsulates the main argument of the dissertation. I would aim for 150-200 words and try to make it the kind of piece that anyone could read and would then know what the dissertaion is about and what conclusions it reaches. For examples of abstracts look at them on papers in journals.

Introduction
This is where you tell the reader what you are doing in the dissertation. You could give an overview of the argument and just explain in more detail what you have condensed into the abstract and perhaps explain the order in which the material is presented and why. Some people like to include in the introduction the definition they will be adopting of a contensted term or they set out of the problem to be addressed although this could follow as the first section of the main body.

The main body of the dissertation
There are many ways of structuring the main body of the dissertation, but the key word here is 'structuring'. Do not just launch in and stop when you think it is done. Do use headings and sub-headings to indicate the structure of your argument and to signal to the reader what each section is about and also signpost when a specific point has been established to your satisfaction.

The kinds of things that do need to be done in the main body are things like outlining the problem to be addressed, demonstrating awareness of current contributions to the debate you are engaging with, setting out the reasons for your preferred answer, and entertaining alternative interpretations or possible counter arguments.

The conclusion
The conclusion of the dissertation must pull together what has been said and present in final form the conclusion to your extended argument. Never present new material in a conclusion.

Notes and references
A dissertation is a demonstration of scholarship at masters level and must be properly referenced throughout. You are welcome to use any recognised referencing system: MHRA, Chicago, Harvard etc, but you must be consistent. All citation of sources must be fully and accurately referenced even if it is not quoted directly. All quotation and reference to key parts of texts must be given a page number as well as the publication details.

Bibliography
A bibliography should contain all sources cited AND all sources used to inform your position. Please give full bibliographic details: author(s), date, title, place of publication and publishers.

Do I have to include a literature review?

You will see from the discussion of structure that I did not list a heading 'Literature Review' this is because in philosophy a seperate section that outlines the literature is not always the best way to approach the purpose/aim of a literature review. The thing to avoid is a catalogue of all the various positions and arguments to date on your particular topic. What you want to aim for is showing that your position is informed by an awareness of the field and then explicitly discuss only those people or papers that are directly relevant to your specific argument. This could mean you focus on just two or three writers or that you pick out just a few key articles for indepth analysis and comment. In terms of structuring your dissertation around your argument this will always be more effective that an overview of the whole field. However, do make sure that the pieces you choose to focus on are a) directly relevant and b) strong, well argued and well respected contributions.

Can I overlap with the subject of my essays?

This is a difficult area and one that must be carefully thought through. For many students it is the work on a particular module that brings them to a specific area or question so of course it cannot be the case that you would be prevented from covering similar material in your dissertation. However, it is absolutely forbidden to use the text of an essay in a dissertation, or another essay for that matter, as this amounts to self-plagiarism. Any concerns you have in this area need to be discussed with your supervisor or the convenor.

Ways in which an essay and dissertation can work together without infringing any rules.

If for example you wanted to write on animal rights for your dissertation it would be perfectly acceptable to write your 503 essay on Singer's utilitarian approach for the essay in order to really know your way around that position. When you write the dissertation your focus could be Regan and so you are bound to mention an opposing position such as Singer's but you would write new material that is informed by your study for the essay. An alternative approach is to write an essay that does the groundwork of the dissertation and indeed this could well be where you identify the problem that is the focus for the dissertation. An example here might be a critical overview of phenomenological approaches to environmental planning for a 505 essay and then a dissertation on a specific idea that you identified as a problem such as authenticity or the role of the body-subject.

Ethical issues

Concerns about the ethics of research tend to arise more when undertaking fieldwork, particularly where you are using the words or actions of respondents as your data, do give due regard to any ethical issues there might be. For example: confidentiality, non-deception, representation of others etc. If your supervisor doesn't raise this you can take the initiative and ask for guidance on any potential problems.

The other area that crops up from time to time in environmental work is when the critical demands of philosophical work call on you to question deeply held beliefs. There can be problems with maintaining both your intergrity as a scholar and a belief that turns out on investigation to be an assumption that does not stand up to philosophical anaysis. This can be upsetting at times and really the best initial coping strategy is to discuss it with your supervisor. There are a number of quite sophisticated ways of dealing with this life issue that can enrich both the philosophy and the belief, but the way to those is, I think, best sought via philosophy itself. One norm of the dissertation that is relevant and needs to be kept in mind here is that it must not be polemical.

A note on word length

The dissertation should be no longer than 15,000 words in total. The same penalty system for essays applies to dissertations on IEPPP MAs: a dissertation that is more than 10% over-length will incur a 5-mark penalty, and one more than 50% over-length will not be marked. In philosophical writing it is possible to be quite concise and nevertheless demonstrate the right scope and depth and so there are no penalties for being underlength, but in general a target of 14,000 -15,000 words would be the thing to aim for.

Presentation

The dissertation must have a front page with the following details: Title, Students Name, supervisor's name, IEPPP. It should then have a statement to the effect of 'submitted in part completion of the MA in Values and Environment (or MA in Philosophy), Lancaster University, date (September 2005).

The text should be one and a half line spaced with a font size of (at least equivalent to times new roman) 12 and do ensure that the pages are numbered. It does need to be bound in some way, but this need not be fancy and a slip on spine with card front and back can look very smart with the added virtue that a forgotten page can be added at the last minute. You need to hand in two copies and a disk-copy for our web-archive. Distance students can email their dissertations as attachments and we do a basic binding job here. All dissertations, like essays, also need a coversheet.

When to start thinking about your dissertation

NOW!
Full time students write their dissertations over the summer after completing their five modules at the end of June. However, you should be thinking about what sort of area it will be after your first term. Most students find the reading, note-taking and rough formulation of arguments takes much longer than they anticipated. Also you will need time to follow up leads to unanticipated areas. Knowing what you will be writing on can also help with choosing essay assignments for the modules. You don't want to cover the same ground and yet some preparatory investigation of an area can usefully take place in an essay for one of the modules.
For part time students we strongly recommend that you set in train finding an area of interest and reading around the subject in the summer of your first year to ensure you have enough time to research your topic to the required depth the following summer. This can be difficult to manage as you have three more modules to complete and it could be that one of those will be crucial in your dissertation work or may set you off on a different focus of interest. Nevertheless, many students do know roughly what they want to write their dissertations on, indeed for some it will be something directly related to their professional work.

Submission date

In 2006-07 the submission date for MAVE dissertations will be September 10th. Do remember that your supervisor could well be taking their summer holiday at some point over the period possibly around this time so do make sure you have a schedule worked out early on in case of any last minute problems. Please note that deadline extensions are rarely given for dissertations. It is more likely to be possible for an extention of your study period to be arranged with the university, but this is not an entirely happy option as it is very likely that you would then have to wait a year (for the next exam board) before graduating. Also an extension of study period often involves an additional financial cost to the student.

Assessment

Dissertation assessment uses the same criteria as essays. All dissertations are second marked within IEPPP and they are all read by an external examiner. No marks are confirmed until after the exam board in mid-to-late October although your supervisor might be open to the idea of giving you a rough idea of the mark they have recommended.

Back to AwayMAVE / or IEPPP home page