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The architectural history report requires students to submit a 10,000-word dissertation on a subject agreed with the teaching staff. Students choose a subject lying within the scope of the syllabus, making use of techniques and methods taught in the Programme.

Individual Reports should reflect the aims and objectives of the MA Architectural History

Programme in the following ways:

1. Show original definition of subject matter and unusually ambitious definition of research questions, demonstrating outstanding imaginative research.
2. Demonstrate skills in the selection and insightful understanding of relevant sources and contexts.
3. Demonstrate informed use of existing and/or creation of new research methods.
4. Provide analytical demonstration, and coherence of argument and high quality of writing.
5. Present critical and imaginative synthesis of research that significantly inform the research questions.
6. Contribute to the existing state of knowledge in the field, and be of a standard for consideration of future publication.

In addition, it should:

• combine ‘theory’ with the study of specific objects - we expect both elements to figure in your report.
• not be a purely speculative investigation. It should engage with an object in the phenomenal world. Even if you develop a theoretical idea, or speculate about a general philosophical category – e.g. ‘the sublime’ or ‘geometry’- we expect you to test it against a specific historical object, with an existence in historical time. One of our most recurrent measures of the success of a report is whether or not it makes you see an object in a new way. Many excellent reports have been based upon archival or archaeological discoveries - but generally the best reports of this type have been successful because they have turned the empirical evidence so as to question critical or theoretical constructs.