1.    Famous Personalities

Famous personalities are also an interesting choice for a dissertation paper. Political figures such as Barrack Obama, the first Black American president or Silvio Berlusconi, an Italian media tycoon-cum-politician who is more famous for his playboy image, can be a good topic for a dissertation assignment. Or you can write about celebrities like “Princess of Wales” Lady Diana and her untimely death in a car accident or Michael Jackson, also referred to as “King of Pop”, and his eccentric personality and controversial life. You can also consider historical personalities such as Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Mohandas Gandhi and John F. Kennedy if you want to discover a historical personality.

2.    Current Affairs

Consider topics related with current affairs. If you are following timeline of a recent event, consider using it as your topic. Or you can explore a recent event through newspaper and follow it to use for your dissertation project. For events in the year 2012, you can find some interesting topics that have a global impact such as ‘reelection of Barack Obama as president of United States of America’ and ‘Hurricane Sandy’, one of the costliest tornado in the history of America, are two good examples.

3.    Historical Topics

Consider major events in history that changed the course of political and social system in a region. French revolution and American civil war are two examples of such topics. Or you can focus your paper on major conflicts in history that resulted in deadliest consequences. World War I and World War II are undoubtedly two of the most devastating conflicts of the history and are good choice for a history paper.

•    Check if your writing is focused on the objective of your research throughout the paper. Make sure that it is lively and engaging.

•    Check your thesis statement. Does it convey your message effectively? Make sure if it is clear and to the point.

•    Consider individual paragraphs of your paper. Make sure if each paragraph is focused on a specific point and the message is effectively put across. Check if you have provided ample examples, evidence and facts to strengthen your arguments.

•    Now reread your all paragraphs and check if there is something unnecessary or missing in them. Make sure if any of the paragraphs is not too short or too long. If it is too short then you should crop it from the paper. But if it is too long, then you should rewrite it or break it into a few more paragraphs.

•    Enumerate paragraphs in the order they should appear in a paper. Your paper should develop to a reasonable end.

•    After you have finished revising, go through your rough draft and check if it builds towards a sensible conclusion and your research objective is achieved.

•    Now reread your work and make sure if it is accurate in format and style. Get rid of spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes as well as remove run-on sentences.

•    Check if you have used proper transitional words between sentences and paragraphs. Be sure that each of your sentences and paragraphs make smooth transitions into each other. Join or break sentences wherever required.

•    Express your thoughts with variation of words. Use alternative words or synonyms for a word that has been used earlier.  Get a good thesaurus to help you out.

•    Be sure that you have that you have references all your sources properly in a ‘bibliography’.

Remember!

•    Use highlighter while revising your work so that you can easily locate and correct your mistakes.

•    After you have revised the body part of your rough draft, consider working on the ‘introductory’ and ‘concluding’ paragraphs in such a way that they complement each other.

•    Get someone to proofread your work after you have completed the final draft.

•    Dissertation topics are notoriously difficult to figure out, since the possibilities seem endless. Follow these steps to nail things down.

•    Start your topic hunt. Make it an organized task. Always note down interesting ideas while searching your topic. This will help you get back to an interesting idea when required.

•    Now get rid of irrelevant ideas to reduce your topics list. Consider each of the remaining ideas and check if it refers to any further research. Consider factors such as your level of interest (does it excite you?), viability (does it conforms to the requirements of your project?), and scope (what contribution will it make to your field of study?). This will allow you to shorten your list further.

•    After you have reduced the list into a few ideas, communicate with your mentor and advisors about the previous works done on each of them. They will guide you about the resources available for a topic. This will result in narrowing down your list into one or two ideas.

•    Now, you have to go through different resources and check which of your ideas has the most materials available.

•    Lastly, choose the most suitable topic among others. Remember! It might be possible that your chosen topic change as your progress in your project, so be open to other ideas that you have filtered out from your list.

Remember!

•    Always make sure about the practicality of your topic before finalising it. Broad topics tend to lack focus on a specific idea, while narrow topics does not have the required information to write on.

•    Set up an organised workplace for your project. Arrange files in proper filing system by labeling them.

•    Organise your project. Allocate yourself specific deadlines for each task. In this way, you will be able to complete your project on-time.

•    Conduct your search thoroughly. Go through different sources of information from print resources such as books, magazines, newspapers to online materials like encyclopedias, academic journals, article directories etc.

•    Consult with your seniors about a good topic. Since they have already done a dissertation, they will suggest you some interesting ideas.

1.    Finance and Accounting

Financing and accounting are two of the major parts of a business. People studying finance and accounting use different tools to gauge value of investments. Finance students deal with the evaluation of investments while those who are studying accountancy have to give accurate assessments of an organisation’s assets and liabilities. There are range of topics that come under financing and accounting such as investment and debt financing. Investment deals with capitalising on stocks and bonds to maximise returns. Debt financing tackles with the methods of raising money through borrowing.  Financial regulations are norms that aim to regulate financial activities of an organisation.

2.    Marketing

Marketing is an integral part of a business. It deals with the study of how certain elements of branding attract customers. Marketing professionals work alongside with team of product developers and advertisers to promote a product. Advertising is a good topic for a marketing paper. It uses print and electronic means to promote products/services of a business. SEM- Search Engine Marketing, is also an emerging industry on the internet scene. It implements ‘keyword optimisation’ tools to attract customers and generate traffic towards a website. In addition, it utilizes new media platform such as websites, blogs, and social media networking to advertise a product or service. All of the above mentioned ideas can make for a good topic of a marketing dissertation.

3.    Management

Management deals with the study of how employers utilise resources to achieve desired goals. Managers deal with planning, staffing, directing, leading, supervising and coordinating organizational activities as well as setting organisational goals. Students majoring in management have to study each of these activities through case studies and group activities. There are various topics to available for students majoring in management, organisational behaviour and leadership study are two good examples.

4.    Human Resources

Human resources deals with the study of utilising and managing ‘human capital’ to achieve organisational goals. The human resource department of an organisation involves evaluating and hiring job applicants as well as rewarding and disciplining staff. Human resources personnel are also responsible for promoting or firing workers. You may consider various topics for a dissertation from the role of human resources for employee development to reinforcing disciplinary policy in an organization.

To accomplish a dissertation project, you must consider it as a two-step task i.e. idea generation and writing. In the later part of the article, I will demonstrate you the skills necessary to accomplish these two tasks:

•    Idea Generation: After you have picked a topic, you need to produce interesting ideas for your project. At this step, you will go through two of the most effective tools for idea generation that are: (1) Free writing and (2) brainstorming:

•    Free Writing: Free writing is an idea generation technique that involves writing continuously for 5-10 without concerning about any grammar or punctuation errors. The sole aim of free writing is to bring into inner thoughts into a paper. Ultimately, you will have some vague thoughts that you can refine in the later part of idea generation. This also helps you overcome feeling of apathy and writer’s block preceding the writing phase.

•    Mind Mapping: Now that you have some vague thoughts available on a paper, you can easily develop them into clear and specific ideas through mind mapping. Write down your thoughts in the middle of a paper and stem out relevant ideas from them. Link ideas together to form a clear thought. This will help you develop raw ideas into logical thoughts.

Now, I will shed light on some of the effective skills for dissertation writing. Here they are:

•    Focus: A writing that lacks focus produces random expression of ideas. For example, if your theme is ‘What are The Implications of ‘War On Terror’ on American Foreign Policy?’ and you end up only discussing the American foreign policy, then you will not do justice with your topic. You have to interpret American foreign policy in the context of war on terror. So you must keep your focus on the theme so that you can truly convey the essence of your message.

•    Tone: Set your tone. It will be useless to employ a humorous tone for a paper that addresses a topic like ‘The Holocaust’. Similarly, your dissertation will not make an impact if you use aggressive tone for a theme on religion. Therefore, you must use an appropriate tone according to the nature of your project.

•    Tie Up Ideas: After you have completed your dissertation, you must make sure if it speaks as a whole. Your dissertation should give a collective interpretation of the findings of your research. Use proper transitional sentences between sentences and paragraphs to unite ideas into each other.

Given below are some interesting ideas for a journalism dissertation:

1.    Journalistic Photography

Photography has long been not a part of field of journalism. Discover the development of journalistic photography through the time. Analyse the elements that require photographic technology for reporting in newspapers and magazines. You can also explore the methods that made it possible to instantly publish pictures of recent events.

2.    Wartime Journalists

Focus your paper on war correspondents. Explore the risks that journalists have to face while performing their duty during a war. Shed light on their role during major wars such as World War I and World War II. Analyse the current safety measure for the journalists and look for loopholes that need to be rectified. Come up with relevant propositions that can further ensure the safety of reporters in wartime.

3.    Journalism in Different Regions

There different norms for journalism in different countries. Check out rules that regulate reporting field in a region and explore the ways information is reported. Compare and contrast journalistic standards of different countries with those in United Kingdom.

4.    Censorship

Discuss how censorship rules are regulated in UK and around the globe. Explore what censorship laws are imposed and how effective they are. Find out legal protections that journalists exploit to invade censorship restrictions. Come up with alternatives that can further reinforce censorship laws.

5.    History of Technological Advancements

Analyse the methods that have changed the way journalists report information. Look back into the evolution of technological advancement in journalism. Trace back the timeline of significant discoveries from printing press machine to the recent inventions like TV and internet. Compare and contrast the positive and negative aspects of these developments on journalism.

6.    Women in Journalism

Women have long been deprived of opportunities to work in the field of reporting. Analyse the reasons why women have been barred from journalism and how they paved their way into this male-dominated profession. Explore the role of women in journalism throughout history. Shed light on the role of people who supported women to seek a career in journalism.

Advertising has been an instrumental tool to promote a product through different mediums. With the emergence of new media-Facebook, Twitter, Blogging etc, there has been an increase in the outlook for the advertising and marketing graduates.

When choosing a topic for an advertising dissertation, you might find several appealing ideas. Consider a topic that you find interesting and narrow it down into a specific idea. Assess the viability of an idea by understanding how well it fits in the advertising field.

Given below are five potential ideas for an advertising dissertation:

1.    New Media

Explore the ways how new media has changed the way businesses advertise to communicate with their customers. Analyse how businesses use social media tools like Facebook and twitter to interact with their audience. Examine how advertisers attract the target audience through online product campaigns.

2.    Print Media

The opinion makers say that advertising through print media is not dead. Do you agree with this claim? Though newspapers, magazines, art journals are still read by a large number of people, the internet has changed the way we look at print media. Analyse how internet advertising influenced print media that are now using ads similar to web layouts. Anticipate what results these changes will produce in future.

3.    Vintage Advertising

Look back how vintage ads have evolved through the time and become louder with colourful images and then how the classic ads are now reviving with more attractive graphics and smart copywriting. Look into the elements used in popular magazines like Time magazine, The Economist and National Geographic and demonstrate how they have emulated news ways that are similar to web-ads to attract the readers.

4.    Web 2.0

Give an introduction to Web 2.0 and discuss how web 2.0 has brought about new changes in advertising through internet. Evaluate how it has generated more jobs in advertising industry. In addition, you can address issues faced by the businesses due to this new medium.

5.    Fine Art

Describe how the role of fine art fits in the mainstream advertising. Experts in fine arts such as director, script writer, actor and director of photography transform an idea into a real work of art. Shed light on how these specialists can further play a role in the industry of advertising and what advancements in this field can contribute in advertising.

Step#1: Create An Outline

Always make an outline of your proposal before writing it. This will give you a good idea of the contents to include in your paper. Here you will cover all important sections of your paper like abstract, methodology, literature review, results and conclusion. Make sure to include all the relevant information in each of these sections. In addition, you will add other important details such as calculations and statistics that will support your findings. Remember to include your thesis in the introductory paragraph.

Step#2: Create ‘Title page’

Now comes the second step, i.e. creating a ‘title page’. Here you will include your full name, institution name, your department, your advisor name and the date of submission. Be sure to follow other particulars required by your college.

Step#3: Write Abstract

The next step is to create an abstract. In this section, you will give a brief summary of your whole research work and state reasons why it is important to study in the concerned area. Here, you will also anticipate the outcome of your study. Keep your abstract short and concise.

Step#4: Create a ‘Table of Content’

Afterwards, you will formulate a ‘table of contents’ of your whole work. Here you will add the following elements:

•    Titles

•    Subheadings

•    Page numbers

•    The Next Steps

Step#5: Write Introduction

In the next step, you will write the introduction of your proposal. Here you will provide a bit more detail about the information that you have presented in the abstract while restricting within 1-2 pages. Write your introduction in an engaging way that can hold attention of the readers. Introduce your thesis statement in this section. A thesis statement condenses your whole research work in 1-2 sentences.

Step#6: Write ‘Body’ Section

Having done with the above mentioned steps, you should proceed with writing the ‘body part’ of your proposal. Here you will demonstrate the methods that you will use to carry out your research. You may also mention other elements here like specific tools, research materials, citations, calculations and statistics etc that to support your proposal.

Step#7: Write Conclusion

Having explained the central argument in detail, you should conclude your proposal by stating the possible results of your research work. You may also discuss any result that you have already acquired through your experiments. Wrap up your proposal by creating a ‘bibliography’ page where you will incorporate all the sources that you have used in your research.

1.    Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has change the way we communicate via internet. It has empowered people to interact with each other through web. In a marketing paper, you can define web 2.0 to the readers and the changes it has brought to the internet users. You can also discuss its role in the context of current affiliate marketing trend.

2.    Corporations And Social Media Marketing

Social media networking has become an integral part of many people. From an individual to multinational conglomerate, it has transformed the way people connect to each other. Analyse how effective it is and evaluate if it worth for businesses to employ staff for social media. Compare its benefits with overall costs.

3.    Direct Marketing

Internet and smart phones is now a trend of life for people. It has also made it easier for businesses to reach a wider audience. Now they can send emails to their customers, call them anytime and interact them through social media. In a marketing dissertation, you can give a background to how direct marketing started and analyse how effective it is.

4.    Role Of Content Creation In Marketing

With the emergence of new media, there is a growing competition among businesses to supersede each other. Businesses are now hiring writers to create contents for their blogs and websites. Though it has produced positive results for most of the online businesses, it has also lead to low-quality writing stuff. You can find many materials with plenty of spelling and grammatical mistakes. What might be the implications of this trend in future and what measures do the ‘Google’ must take to prevent these tricks?  These are some questions that you can address in your dissertation.

5.    SEO And ‘Keyword-Stuffing’ In Marketing

As I mentioned in the above paragraph, the online marketing trend is heading towards substandard stuff; it is further affected due to ‘keyword-stuffing’ phenomenon. Search engine optimisation is what most of the online businesses are betting on, but it is also responsible for producing materials with too many keywords. In a dissertation paper, you can examine whether this affect the marketing campaign of a company in a positive or negative way.

Geography is a broad subject. It just does not identify places and world capitals but also covers different aspects of life such as society, climate, culture and businesses.  There are plenty of topics that you can base your dissertation on. Following are some of the interesting topics that might relate to your interest:

1.    Geography and Economy

The physical location of a region plays an important role for its economic growth. A location rich with natural resources contribute a lot in the economy of a country through trade and export. A dissertation project on geography might compare the role of geography in the economy of different regions.

2.    Geography and Climate

Changing climate, such as global warming, can also make a good topic for a geography paper. Global warming is a universal phenomenon that has a direct connection with geography. You can analyse the factors responsible for global warning. Or you can analyse climate changes of different regions to determine how these changes are affecting the people. In UK, for example, there is a growing number of skin cancer cases due to the damage in ozone layer. You can discuss other such phenomenon(s) and suggest propositions and ideas to how such occurrences can be controlled.

3.    Geography and Culture

Every region has its specific features such as weather and landscapes that define its culture and people. The world is divided by an imaginary line called ‘Equator’. Countries that are located near the equator usually have hotter seasons. People who lie in the hotter regions tend to be more passionate than those who are situated in the colder places. Analysing these facts can constitute an interesting topic for a geography dissertation.

4.    Geographical Tools and Technology

Technology has significantly changed the way we use geographical tools. Today, there is a well-equipped navigational system in the cars and planes to locate its exact position. Now we can locate a friend or colleague. All these modifications are possible due to GPS-Global Positioning System. It has improved our transportation system in many ways. You can anticipate further what other changes might improve the way we transport.