- Department: Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: H
- Academic year of delivery: 2023-24
- See module specification for other years: 2024-25
This module is designed to develop your research skills further and to support you as you prepare to write a substantial extended essay in the final semester of your studies. Through taught sessions, group and independent work, you will build your skills and produce a thorough research proposal and plan that can form the basis of your extended essay. The module is driven by your own research interests in theatre and performance, and is the opportunity for you to pursue a new or past topic from the course that you would like to explore in greater detail.
This module prepares students for Independent Research Project: Extended Essay
Occurrence | Teaching period |
---|---|
A | Semester 1 2023-24 |
The aims of this module are:
Upon completion of this module, you are expected to be able to:
This module consists of five weeks of group seminars, supported by lectures and other materials which you will be able to work through in your own time and keep to refer back to. Each taught session will involve practical work on your own choice of research topic, and will require preparation in advance as well as active engagement during the sessions. There will also be opportunities for one-to-one feedback on a draft plan (formative feedback).
Sessions will involve short research tasks working towards your own project (such as planning a literature review or summarising key arguments from an article), as well as discussions and debates around your and your colleagues’ developing research. The lectures will provide guidance and suggestions on key areas such as surveying and scoping research areas, finding and annotating relevant literature, developing a possible structure for an analytical piece of writing, building an argument, assessing theoretical frameworks, and establishing your own research methodology.
Your work on the module will be assessed by a 3000-word document, in the form of a research proposal for an investigation into an area of your choice. Your research proposal will demonstrate your capacity to conceptualise and plan a formal piece of research which can then form the basis of your extended essay. Research proposals are written by academics at all stages of their careers, and so the assessment is a ‘real world’ challenge for academic writers, as well as work that will contribute towards developing your own research interests and skills. Your proposal may look into any topic which is grounded in any of the disciplines you have studied on the course, including one that involves a dialogue between disciplines, e.g. acting techniques. This project thus affords you the opportunity to devise and plan your own project from scratch.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
None
You will receive formative oral feedback in one-to-one supervision sessions, with the last of these provisionally to be held in Weeks 9 or 10.
Task | % of module mark |
---|---|
Essay/coursework | 100 |
You will receive written feedback in line with standard University turnaround times.
Chia, R. (2002). Writing an Academic Thesis, Dissertation or Essay. Exeter: University of Exeter.
Cottrell, S. (2011). Critical Thinking Skills: Developing Effective Analysis and Argument. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cottrell, S. (2019). The Study Skills Handbook, 5th ed. London: Red Globe Press.
Feak, C. and Swales, J. (2009). Telling a Research Story: Writing a Literature Review. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Fortier, M. (2016). Theory/Theatre: An Introduction, 3rd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.
Greetham, B. (2014). How to Write Your Undergraduate Dissertation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Kershaw, B. and Nicholson, H. (2011). Research Methods in Theatre and Performance. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Murray, N. and David B. (2009). Inside Track: Writing Dissertations and Theses. Harlow: Pearson Education.
Richer, S. (2013). Writing a Dissertation: The Essential Guide. Peterborough: Need2Know.
Silvia, P. (2019). How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Productive Academic Writing, 2nd ed. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Taylor, G. (1989). The Student’s Writing Guide for the Arts and Social Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wisker, G. (2018). The Undergraduate Research Handbook. London: Macmillan Education.