The Brief:
It consists of two parts, a Research Proposal and a Literature Review (I have attached a draft document with tutor feedback along with a short presentation on the general topic).
A. Research Proposal
This part of the submission should be no longer than 1000 words on two sides of A4 including any illustrations. The text should address the following points:
* Scope and focus: The research area and subjects that your proposal is concerned with, how you define its limits, the central issue to be investigated.
* Aims and objectives: what you are hoping to explore and discover. Objectives are the outcomes that your work will seek to achieve in pursuit of its overall aim. This should also include a presentation of the particular phenomena you wish to study (events/case-studies/places/buildings/examples etc)
* Research questions: problems posed, expressed as questions for investigation. Your dissertation has to be imagined as a response to these questions.
* Methods: How the research will be carried out to meet the objectives and answer the research questions. The more precise you can be, the more you can identify foreseeable hurdles and issues, the tighter the outcome will be.
B. Literature Review
A Literature Review serves two purposes. These are:
* To summarise your understanding of the current state of knowledge related to your chosen topic. This could be a critical review of definitions of a key-concept for your dissertation, a parallel examination of existing relevant research with the same scope. A critical examination of the application of a method to a number of case-studies/experiments/phenomena.
* To explain your specific focus and critical approach in the light of what work has already been done on that particular area.
The Literature Review component for Research Preparation should have the form of an essay . The review should be written as a critical evaluation of relevant publications and not merely a brief description of different accounts. You should try to explain the research context for your work. You will need to show genuine understanding of what you have read. Do not ‘isolate’ single sources in separate sections but intertwine them. If possible and suitable, let an argument structure the piece and provide the impetus. You can also structure your discussion in terms of different categories of literature, and/or in terms of particular themes, arguments or approaches.
The first task is to identify the relevant literature. The section below on ‘Finding Research Literature’ lists ways of accessing publications including books, journals, government publications, bibliographies, web sites, and the like. The list should demonstrate an editorial capacity to identify key works, which will help to make the review authoritative, while excluding irrelevant or less significant material. Discriminate between trivia and key works: work published in scholarly journals carries far greater authority than popular journalism and the unverified content of web sites. Some literature may supply needed evidence (news articles in newspapers, interviews with architects in magazines) while other literature (more academic) may supply the theoretical framing, the analysis etc.
A bibliography of all the works consulted must accompany your Literature Review. MHRA/HARVARD Footnote references should be used. The MHRA system is recommended, particularly for history and theory research (see section 10). The HARVARD system is more usual for social science and architectural science dissertations.
The review should be typed at 1.5 line spacing, and should be no more than 2000 words in length, excluding title, notes, bibliography and image captions (in addition to the Research Proposal).
Include the Proposal and Review in one single file.
The General Topic:
I have attached below the draft research proposal and literature review in one document. I also attached another document with the tutor feeedback. My topic is too general so I will need the research to be more detailed and specific.
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