Dissertation in Medical Humanities

• Credit value: 60 credits at Level 7
• Convenors: Dr Grace Halden and Dr Sarah Marks
• Tutors: Dr Anna Hartnell, Professor Esther Leslie, Professor Roger Luckhurst, Dr Grace Halden, Dr Sarah Marks, Professor Joe Brooker, and more
• Assessment: a 15,000-word dissertation (100%)

The dissertation will give you the opportunity to produce an extended piece of work of your own devising, honing your research and writing skills. You will work closely with a supervisor (or supervisors) on a medical-humanities topic that reflects your interests and your new critical skills. After submitting a draft project outline for approval in the spring term, you will begin the summer term with a short series of seminars on undertaking such an extended project. These sessions will focus on scope, research, writing and editing. You will use the summer vacation to complete your dissertation.

You will join students from across a diverse range of modern and contemporary MA studies to learn about how to write extended projects. You will be taught by experts from across the College and benefit from supervisors who are engaged with the Birkbeck Centre for Medical and Health Humanities.

By the end of this module, you will have:

• critically engaged with cultural artefacts - texts, objects, art works, exhibitions, praxes - with a medical aspect
• employed analytical approaches suited to the field of medical humanities
• evaluated the existing scholarship and sources in your chosen field
• situated the project in its intellectual and cultural context.