Postgraduate Dissertation Bootcamp: Structuring your dissertation
When:
—
Venue:
Online
This workshop gives an overview of dissertation structure, with particular focus on the major dissertation 'literature review' and 'discussion' sections, before considering how we might organise our ideas in the planning and drafting stages. Finally the workshop will introduce a helpful method called 'the synthesis matrix', a way of combining ideas from other writers to support and clarify your own argument.
An earlier workshop in the series focuses on preparation and planning for your dissertation, including a focus on time and project management and formulating your research question. It will be more relevant to students who have not already begun their dissertation research process and and are at the earlier stages of considering their dissertation research. Later workshops consider the writing-up stage, being productive in the writing process, and a more detailed look at the literature review.
Although the workshop may be helpful for dissertation writers from any discipline, these workshops will particularly focus on empirical research dissertations. Empirical research is usually found in scientific, social science and vocational subjects, and such dissertations use questionnaires, surveys, lab experiments and other methods to gather original data, and follow a formal report structure, rather than primarily researching from secondary literature, books and journals.
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This workshop is part of the Postgraduate Dissertation Bootcamp 2026 series of Study Skills workshops, the full listing of which may be viewed at this link. These workshops are aimed at those who will be addressing a dissertation at postgraduate level, but undergraduate researchers might also find it helpful. The resources and a recording of this workshop are available from the Birkbeck Study Skills Moodle module, in the Writing Skills Resources/Dissertations section at this link (student login required).
This online workshop is delivered via Microsoft Teams. You will receive a confirmation in your email inbox after you register for the workshop, and the Teams link will be available about an hour before the start of the workshop. It's intended for enrolled Birkbeck students only.
The full listing of Study Skills workshops for this term can be viewed here. For 1-to-1 study support, find out more about the helpdesk via this link, or about school-specific tutors and resources via this link. For support finding resources (books, eBooks, articles, etc.) you may find out more about the Academic Services Librarians at this link.
Contact name: Ray Rose Raymond
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