Dissertation
Describe the topic(s) or issue(s) you wish to investigate for your Dissertation.
These must relate to the subjects that comprise your programme of study, and must clearly indicate what your aims /objectives / research questions will be.
Aim:
What facts or information will you need to gather? How will you access these?
To which subject area(s) is this proposal - in your view - most strongly related?
Dissertation Guidance
Inform you of the Dissertation procedure including but not restricted to: the process for the proposal of the topic, the appointment of a supervisor and the on-going supervision, submission and examination processes. If you have questions, it is likely the answers are here, so consult here first before sending an e-mail or placing a forum post which might mean waiting a day or more for an answer.
Aims of the Module.
The dissertation module aims to enable you to provide a major piece of investigation and explanation as to your understanding of a topic selected from or allied to the topics taught on the International Commercial law degree together with evidence of critical and analytical evaluation. See p. 22 of the Handbook of the University of Salford, MSc courses and LLM International Commercial Law.
You may also expand the range of topic subjects to more general law and commercial law topics or include topics of international, european or national law but please try to maintain some link and relevance to international commercial law. It will thus provide an opportunity for you to demonstrate how you can synthesise your acquired knowledge and skills into an analytical or empirical study of a legal topic relevant to your degree.2.2 The Topic
Topics can be generated from a variety of sources, for example they may be of interest to you, they may be generated from work experience, they may result from a seminar discussion, newspaper articles, journal article or from a piece of coursework. Either myself or your supervisor will provide you with guidance about what is an acceptable topic.
The topic you choose should be of interest to you as otherwise there is a potential for boredom to set in as you progress with the research.
As this is an international commerciallaw degree, it needs to focus on more than just one jurisdiction or country, two as a bare minimum or on international laws or treaties or conventions, so just suggesting a topic which relates solely to your own or one jurisdiction is unlikely to find approval. Unless that is, you are making a highly unusual or unique suggestion. Here, it is difficult for me to give an example, due to the very nature of uniqueness or unusuality, but to involve just one jurisdiction, would have in some way to also involve international law. If you submit a proposal which involves just the law of one country, be prepared for that to be turned down.
You can also vary your topic choice by expanding the subject to a more general law or commercial law topic or include a topic on international or european law but please try to maintain some link and relevance to international commercial law.
It may be that at this early stage, if a topic appears viable / doable, a supervisor may be identified fairly quickly and appointed, but under the Salford administration you will not have direct access to her or him until you commence the actual 3 month dissertation writing stage, which as advised above, is only permissibleonce all the Salford criteria are satisfied.
The Formal Proposal
The formal proposal should be made after the approval of the draft proposal. It should consist of an introduction as to how and why the particular topic was chosen, a literature review of the subject area and a plan. In total, this should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words. This must be submitted on the appropriate form found in via the Thesis Repository pages, as above or via your home page.
The proposal should not be purely descriptive, but should outline conclusions and/or recommendations even though these may represent only a minor part of the work. The dissertation topic must have a theoretical outline which is supported in the literature review with references to that academic literature.
During your studies and the residency you may have already prepared a proposal for a dissertation. You may choose to further develop this proposal in terms of final dissertation or to start with a new topic area. In order to assist you in this discussion you may find the following structure useful:
- Proposed title
- Rationale for the study
- Context of the study
- Aim
- Objectives
- Proposed methodology
- Limitations of the study
- Proposed structure of the study
- References
Your formal proposal will then enable the Dissertation co-ordinator to set your proposal to ready which is one of the criteria to be able to proceed to the writing stage, noted following. The proposal will then also be ready for comment by the supervisor on the commencement of the writing stage.
Attachment:- Dissertation_Guidance.rar