Remerciez-le!

Remerciez @Admin pour avoir partagé cet document gratuitement, de la manière la plus simple, en partageant sur les réseaux sociaux.

The The The The O O O Open U U U University D D D Department of H H H History G

The The The The O O O Open U U U University D D D Department of H H H History G G G Guide to P P P Presenting a T T T Thesis CONTENTS 1 What is a thesis? 1 2. Things to do before you start writing 3 3. Referencing 6 3.1 References using the note system 7 3.2 References using the author-date (Harvard) system 11 4. The Bibliography 13 Version June 2010 1 1 – WHAT IS A THESIS You have been accepted for doctoral level study. You have a topic you are passionate about. Now all you need to do is to plunge into the sources, and immerse yourself until the truth immanent in them makes itself manifest. Your thesis is the form in which you will write up your research. You will, with the help of your supervisors, be in the process of defining what you research will be. More than anything, it needs to be 1) a subject that excites your interest 2) a significant contribution to knowledge 3) worthy of publication 4) to give evidence of your ability to undertake further research without supervision. 5) has suitable sources to which you have sufficient access and ability to read Why even bother to ask: ‘what is a thesis?’. The answer is, because unless you intend to write a thesis solely for your own pleasure, not submit, and satisfy yourself with stashing it away in the attic, you need to bear in mind the various potential audiences for your work. Besides, by defining what ‘doing a thesis’ means from the outset, you may write a better thesis. So here are some answers to the question: ‘what is a thesis?’ together with some implications of each answer. 1.1 Doing a thesis is an ‘apprenticeship’ for people who want to do historical research, or to teach history at a higher level, with the final product or ‘thesis’ being analogous to a ‘driving test’. This means you should make your notes immediately accessible for checking (footnotes or the author-date system, and never endnotes). It means the examiners may be as interested in how you treat evidence, as in your conclusions. Above all, it means the thesis should demonstrate the widest possible range of relevant historical skills, for instance: source analysis, historiographical review and debate, and analysis and presentation of relevant statistical and illustrative material. 1.2 Doing a thesis is an exercise in dialectics. Many Open University students live at a distance from Milton Keynes. But you should remember that the main value of supervisors lies in your conversations with them, their ability to challenge your ideas, your skills, and to ask questions of you. Supervisions are not tests, they are Socratic dialogues where you bare your ideas and methods so that the resulting conversation will improve your work. 1.3 Doing a thesis is an induction into a community of scholarship. ‘Doing a thesis’ is an induction into a community, which means research and writing are just part of the process. Once you have found your feet, you need to network, to attend conferences, preferably to give a paper or papers. This activity is not only its own reward, but will feed back into the thesis by making you aware of current debates, conceptual shifts, and other cutting-edge developments. 1.4 Doing a thesis is preparation for writing scholarly papers and monographs. Hence below we set out in detail the conventions for referencing and bibliographies. As with publishers, examiners expect precision and consistency. 2 1.5 Doing a thesis is a training in skills. You will have to fill out a ‘skills audit’ regularly anyway. But do not regard that merely as form filling. You should quickly identify extra skills which are specific to your research, and possibly transferable as well. You may need to learn palaeography (how to decipher ancient writing), extra languages, how to use databases or spreadsheets, to acquire scanning and related software and learn how to draw up simple digital maps. Even activities such as networking, and delivering papers effectively are skills. You do not need to do everything at once, but do work with your supervisors to identify, and develop, these skills from early on. 1.6 Doing a thesis is basically doing a 3-4 year examination, for two top experts in your field, which culminates in the viva. At the same time, don’t be daunted. By the end of that time, you should know more about your specific field than your examiners. Indeed, one key skill is to remember to relate your research to the wider fields in which it rests. If you are writing on coracles (a type of water craft made by stretching an animal hide over a wooden framework), relate it to wider debates on transport or technology or the culture of the time. Be an expert, but relate to others in slightly broader fields to set your work in its context. 3 2 – BEFORE YOU START WRITING There are many things you can do from the beginning of your research, which may save you considerable time at the writing up stage. 2.1 Set up your documents to the specification to which you will be writing the thesis. This may save you a great deal of time standardising and sorting out problems later. Set up your page and document layout as far as possible. Decide on a suitable font, margins, etc: • Your font size must be 11 or 12 unless special needs dictate otherwise. • You must use a minimum of 1.5 spacing, and a maximum of double spacing, between lines • You should ensure adequate margins, avoiding overcrowding. • Look at other theses or books, decide on a structure of headings and sub-headings early on, and try and stick to this system. • Set your computer dictionary to UK English not US English or any other language, otherwise there is the danger your computer may change spellings incorrectly, especially if you use the spell-check. 2.2 Set up a system for capturing the bibliographic details of all sources you use, primary and secondary (see the following pages for acceptable forms of citation). This will save time later on. There are a number of ways of doing this o When you take notes, always start them by recording the full bibliographical details of the work at the top, including author, title, publisher, and date and place of publication. If it is an article or book chapter, you must also make a note of the page extent. o Set up the bibliography for your particular research topic on a computer file early on, entering details of new books and other sources as you find them. This is highly recommended. You will need to have separate sections for primary and secondary sources; you may want to subdivide them into different kinds of primary sources (manuscript and printed) and different kinds of secondary source (books, and articles) from the beginning. o Above all, start taking these full bibliographical details from the very start of your research. o It is possible to do a good deal of this work with a programme such as Refworks or Endnote, but be aware that for most primary sources, for some of the odder print items, and for some foreign language items automated systems don’t work satisfactorily and many historians working with a wide range of sources do not use them. The Library runs Endnote sessions for post-grads you can obtain Endnote at a reduced rate. For full bibliographical conventions, you should refer to the pages below. It is important to note from the outset, however, the difference between footnotes and bibliographic references. Footnotes always give the personal name first, as in ‘Raymond Betts’. Bibliographies give the surname first, as in ‘Betts, Raymond’. Thus for a bibliography: Glover, Edwin Maurice, In 70 days: the story of the Japanese campaign in British Malaya, London: F. Muller, 1949 edition. 4 Gough, Richard, SOE Singapore, 1941-42, London: W. Kimber, 1985. The obvious reason for this is that the footnote follows natural usage, but the bibliography is intended to help people look up works alphabetically, by surname. Note also that we italicise all titles of publications. Publishers used to ask for them to be underlined in the days before word processors, but this is now unnecessary. Now you have set up a system for capturing bibliographical details, you are ready to consider matters of style. 2:3 Matters of style We do not want to specify a style of writing or argument, except to insist that all chapters have substantive introductions and conclusions, which integrate each chapter into an overall argument or flow of developments. Nevertheless, we would like to highlight some issues. No matter how obvious some of these may seem, supervisors sometimes spend a lot of their early meetings correcting faults in these areas. So: • Precision: Avoid repetition of words, or of words with very similar meanings, in a sentence. Such repetition looks like shouting, rather than strengthening your argument by uploads/Litterature/ thesis-guide-v51.pdf