Choosing a Topic
By Dr Peter Foot
The excitement in James Bond films begins only after 007 has been equipped by Q’s whiz-bangs. Indeed, the story is built around the gadgets Q supplies. Choosing a topic for a dissertation is just like that – it is to be equipped for an intellectual adventure. And it will involve all the usual components of an adventure: uncertainty as to the eventual outcome; acquisition of knowledge about terrain, data and context; acceptance of danger to established habits and expectations; the application of thinking to resolve crises; testing skills and methods in new circumstances; and the need to achieve results within a set time before returning to normality. Like all good adventures, progress and success are largely determined by the degree of preparation made before setting out. Choosing a topic is about thinking ahead and shaping the future. How well you do it will have significant consequences. Here, as elsewhere, “well begun is half done”.
Above all, you must want to take part and be able to sustain the effort to the end. Choosing the topic that is best for you and your talents is central to the wanting and the sustaining. Choosing your topic is about discovering or harnessing energy and enthusiasm. Dissertations that are not the product of disciplined commitment and passion are rarely worth a damn. So, your topic will best emerge from yourself, from your intellectual interests and priorities. This is not to say that you necessarily have to do all the hard work of choosing; topics can come from any source. Your tutor may suggest something; archivists are full of ideas; a friend might awaken a new area of interest for you; the Internet has discoveries galore. But the “test” should be yours, not someone else’s. Are you excited by the possibilities of this inquiry? Can you live with it comfortably – for a year or more? Are you proud of the choice? Are you confident that, given the work to be done, you can convince others about it? Is it, in a word, ‘you’? In a narrow sense, these questions are important because the topic you choose will have a powerful bearing on the quality of degree you are awarded. In a wider sense, how you conduct the research, the way you think it through, and the care with which you write it up, will have a deeper impact on you than you realise. Choosing a topic for a major dissertation, undergraduate or postgraduate, is therefore enormously, personally significant.
1. Express your topic as a question. This is not so much ‘Why Napoleon?’ as (and there is an infinite number of possibilities here) ‘Why did Napoleon …?’ Less ‘Why deterrence?’ than ‘Since 1989, what legacies of deterrence thinking …?’ The technical term for this is ‘adding a second (or third) variable’ which narrows down the focus of the first. But do not stop at that point. Is the question clear to others? Remember that this is not a standard assignment question, drawn up with the needs of a particular course component or option subject; now, you get to choose – which is itself both perilous and liberating. So ask yourself how strongly you feel about answering the topic question now emerging from the general subject. Does it matter to you? Really? Why?
2. Is the question actually researchable? What are the primary research sources like? Too big or not big enough? Are there sufficient secondary sources in libraries and on the Net? Does the Department have the right kind of academic expertise in this area? Will you need to conduct interviews – and are you comfortable with that? Is travel involved? Does it require sampling or numeracy skills that are readily to hand? Do not give up too soon but never be afraid to drop or amend a topic where the research resource base is thin.
3. Where does your question fit within the literature on the subject? The existing literature in your area of choice, for all its interest, depth, gaps, faults, brevity or complexity, represents the relevant tradition of scholarly enquiry against which your own contribution will be measured. That body of data, received opinion and methodology will normally go beyond the limits of your own knowledge. The issue you have to determine is whether you are contributing to that body of scholarship. Are you going to add something of value? Does the question you are formulating have the capacity to generate original answers? This will be more important for a doctorate than an undergraduate essay but originality is always an element in work of this kind. Strike the right balance between a ‘narrow’ question and the wider implications that derive from ‘newness’.
4. How will you tackle the topic? Do you have a method of approach which really suits the subject? Does it conform to the Department’s general approach? Can it be broken down into workable chunks? Are there any Black Holes in it? (Certainly make sure your topic is not one great big Black Hole!) Is there a bit on which everything depends but that needs more work before deciding and proceeding further? This set of issues does not need to be fully resolved right at the start but it is as well to embark on a project with some notion of how you are going to proceed.
5. How do you make the task as easy as possible? The answer returns to the previous but more general point: by being quite clear about methodology from the start. Methodology determines the approach; disciplines the research; makes note taking and record keeping efficient; helps to keep you focused; shapes the dissertation’s final form; and, by no means to be forgotten, even at the start, structures the intellectual defence of your argument or thesis. Choosing the right method of approach is therefore every bit as important as developing your topic question. So use the same kinds of straightforward ‘test’ point to guide you. What do you feel comfortable with? Do you have a social science bias or an historical one? Is it, say, a particular school with IR theory; is it comparative or some other kind of history. Will it depend on case studies? Is the topic question suited to an interdisciplinary approach? What approach does the possible or intended supervisor favour? What guidance can you get from your Tutor? Consult as widely as you need. Reassure yourself that the topic suits the methodology and vice versa. If there is no natural fit between them, amend the question constructively or chuck it out and find another.
What you must not do, however, is use the opportunity to opt for a real “biggie” that has been intellectually bothering you. Avoid being over-ambitious. The academic world is littered with the intellectual corpses of students who failed to define their topic in such a way as to make a subject capable of being addressed, researched and analysed. The topic must be do-able. There is no point in setting out to work on ‘Napoleon’ or ‘deterrence’, for example; these subjects are simply too big for the purposes of producing a graduate or undergraduate dissertation. But there are a host of smaller topics within those subjects that are do-able. So what do you need to look out for – apart from ensuring that you have the enthusiasm for the subject to take it on and carry it through to the end? How do you turn an interesting idea into a researchable topic? How do you, for example, stay with ‘Napoleon’ or ‘deterrence’ but not get overwhelmed by too much or too little data?
These are five basic things to bear in mind at this point. These are not exhaustive but suggest a sequence of considerations that you can usefully apply to your own situation.
It will help greatly if, at the outset, you recognise the point of the whole exercise. Inevitably, you will be assessed on your topic choice and subsequent efforts. You are part of a formal, University system of intellectual education and evaluation. Have you chosen a topic that ensures that you personally are not disadvantaged? Does it capitalise on your academic strengths? Can the research topic give you the opportunity for proper reflection and fair-minded deliberation? Don’t be content with the promise of just being busy, reading and writing. Those two things should come relatively easily by now; much more strenuous and taxing is the third dimension of researching a topic – thinking about it. This is not an academic platitude. It is the quality of thought that raises academic effort onto a different plane from merely working hard at something. It is the quality of thinking on show that your examiners are interested in. Have you chosen something that will allow you to display your own unique gifts and demonstrate your own contribution to scholarship?
None of these issues need to be considered in a solitary way: ask those you know, respect, trust and depend upon. Expect – and demand – a major shaping contribution, right from the start, of the University staff allocated to you. They are there to encourage, warn and advise – so use them. Of course this is not always easy – which comes first: topic or supervisor? Like the chicken-and-egg argument, the trick is not to be intimidated. Again, consult others, test alternatives. But, through it all, always remember the Japanese proverb: no one will find the best way to a thing unless the thing to be done is loved.
There is no better way to begin your topic that to define it properly. Equally, do not be overwhelmed by this. Don’t fall into the trap of feeling you are falling short because all the work is not yet clear. There is work still to be done — actually, quite a lot of it. Mischievously, there is a kind of Catch 22 operating here: how can I know if it’s worth it until after I have done the research? If I’ve done the research, it’s too late. Like all Catch 22s, the logic is circular and unhelpful. It is better to see things as an intellectual process in which your own judgement and confidence in what ‘belongs’, and what does not, matures with familiarity. You will begin to see your topic as yours. That sense of ownership will accompany you all along the way. But, like the characters in a novel, topics have a life of their own. Just as you have extracted one from a large body of academic endeavour, so that topic will try to re-submerge itself from time to time back into the vast mass of data, ideas, authors, arguments and methods from which it emerged and was defined. Having both a working question and a method of analysis to which you return again and again will help keep you focused on the essentials. In that sense, choosing a topic is not a one-off matter, done at the start and then dispensed with. You will not have finally defined your topic until you have reached, and proof-read, your last full stop.
But you have to start somewhere. Choose well. Believe in the value of answering the question. Know that you cannot predict where the research will lead you intellectually — there would be no point in research at all if you did know. Keep the question open and in front of you. It may not be the most sophisticated of Q’s gadgets but it is like all of his — it will not let you down.
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