History Dissertation Topics

Research Aim: The Partition of India displaced millions of people, and many families in Britain carry memories of it.

Through oral history interviews with two or three generations of British South Asian families, this study will examine what is remembered, what is kept silent and how family stories compare with school history and public commemoration.

Research Aim: Many Commonwealth citizens who settled in Britain after the Second World War had the right to live here but no documents to prove it.

This study will trace how successive immigration acts, Home Office record-keeping and later hostile environment policies affected them, using legislation, parliamentary debates and the published Windrush Lessons Learned Review.

Research Aim: After the United States took control of the Philippines, American teachers known as the Thomasites helped build a public school system taught in English.

This study will analyse colonial education reports, teachers’ memoirs and Filipino writing on education, including Renato Constantino’s essay The Miseducation of the Filipino, to assess whose aims schooling served.

Research Aim: British governments prepared civil defence advice for nuclear attack, including the Protect and Survive booklet and public information films.

Using government files at The National Archives, the published materials and responses in the press and from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, this study will examine what officials expected of the public and why the advice was criticised.

Research Aim: This study will reassess responsibility for the war between France and Prussia by examining Bismarck’s diplomacy, the edited Ems Dispatch, the crisis over the Spanish throne and pressure from French public opinion on the government of Napoleon III.

It will compare historians’ interpretations using published diplomatic documents and contemporary newspapers.

Research Aim: This study identifies various socioeconomic discontents of the Second Industrial Revolution through the Marx-Engels communist lens. It will analyse how the second industrial revolution brought undesirable socio-economic changes in Europe and the rest of the world.

It will develop a socio-economic framework by using Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s critique of capitalism and social class theory to show the second industrial revolution divided the entire world into two classes. Moreover, it will show how imperialist powers used the Second Industrial Revolution to change the world order.

Research Aim: The Mongol capture of Baghdad ended Abbasid rule there and has long been described as a turning point for the Islamic world.

This study will test that view by examining chronicles, later historical writing and evidence on scholarship, trade and urban life, asking how far recovery and continuity followed the destruction.

Research Aim: This comparative study will analyse presidential speeches, congressional debates and United Nations records to compare how US leaders justified military intervention in Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq.

It will examine appeals to security, international law, democracy and economic interests, and how the justifications changed as each conflict continued.

Research Aim: This study sheds light on the life and work of William Shakespeare by analysing his role in modern theatre. It will try to highlight his contribution to the field of literature and theatre but through the approach of Dr Johnson.

Johnson’s works will be evaluated to see whether William Shakespeare has done something significant for modern theatre or it is just a one-sided view of William Shakespeare’s followers. It will analyse various works of William Shakespeare from Johnson’s critical lens to provide an objective assessment.

Research Aim: Repeated cholera epidemics struck British cities in the Victorian period, alongside major sanitary reforms.

Using parliamentary papers, medical reports and newspapers, this study will examine how outbreaks, the investigations of John Snow and the campaigns of reformers such as Edwin Chadwick influenced public health legislation and investment in sewers and clean water.

Research Aim: The influenza outbreak often called Spanish flu killed many people in Britain as the First World War ended.

This study will compare how medical officers of health, local councils and newspapers in several British cities responded, using official reports and press coverage to examine advice on closures, crowding and care of the sick.

Research Aim: Compulsory smallpox vaccination of infants in Victorian England provoked organised opposition, most famously in Leicester.

This study will examine the vaccination laws, the arguments and tactics of anti-vaccination campaigners, and the eventual exemption for conscientious objectors, using parliamentary debates, campaign literature and local newspapers.

Research Aim: The introduction of uniform penny postage made sending letters far cheaper across Britain.

Using Post Office records, surviving letters and newspapers, this study will examine how cheaper post changed personal correspondence, commercial communication and literacy, and who benefited most from the reform championed by Rowland Hill.

Research Aim: Anarchist and Fenian bombing campaigns in late nineteenth-century Europe and Britain prompted new forms of political policing.

This study will examine how Special Branch and the Home Office responded, using police files, trial reports and press coverage, and how fears of foreign radicals shaped debates about immigration.

Research Aim: The Treaty of Lausanne replaced the earlier Treaty of Sèvres and secured international recognition for the new Turkish state.

This study will examine the negotiations, the compulsory exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey and the treaty’s legacy for minorities, using diplomatic documents, conference records and later historical scholarship.

Research Aim: Victorian and Edwardian schoolbooks often presented legends, such as King Alfred and the cakes, alongside documented history.

This study will analyse a sample of school history textbooks to examine how legend and myth were used to teach patriotism, morality and national identity to children.

Research Aim: After independence, Colombian liberals confiscated much of the Catholic Church’s property, a central issue in conflict with conservatives.

This study will examine how the redefinition of Church property rights in the middle decades of the nineteenth century related to political violence, using legal records, regional data on confiscated property and accounts of civil conflict.

Research Aim: The city of Chicago in the United States is known to be the centre of modern refrigeration development due to it being the hub of the meatpacking industry. The proposed research will analyse Chicago’s meatpacking sector’s development and its significant role in developing critical technologies such as refrigeration.

The study will examine the development of refrigerated transport and cold storage units to comprehend the city’s meatpacking industry’s local and later global success throughout the nineteenth century.

Research Aim: The research uses document analysis to examine the influence of the invention of the telegraph in the United States of America. Specifically, the study will analyse how the telegraph revolutionised communication and news broadcasting to newspapers over national and international networks.

Research Aim: Employers, trade unions and the state disagreed over who should train young industrial workers in Victorian England.

This study will examine how technological change and industrial conflict, including the engineering lockout at the end of the century, shaped apprenticeships and technical education, using employers’ records, union sources and government reports.

Research Aim: The research will look to comprehend the changes in childbearing patterns using a sequence analysis approach. The study will also try to understand the association between gender relations, historical fertility records, and women’s reproductive patterns in the nineteenth-century Netherlands.

Research Aim: The research will analyse the nineteenth century, a period of transition in Japanese foreign policy. The study will mainly focus on Russo-Japanese relations using document analysis to assess the four stages of shift that led Japan from an ethnocentric foreign policymaker to the Western type without colonisation and defeat in war.

Research Aim: American evangelicals both criticised and adopted popular culture, creating Christian rock, films and television ministries.

Using magazines, sermons and media output, this study will examine how engagement with popular culture from the counterculture era to the close of the twentieth century shaped evangelical thought and helped evangelicalism grow as a middle-class movement.

Research Aim: The research using document analysis, analyses the impact of the American Revolution on declining birth rates in the colonies and the increase of family limitation among white free women.

The research will investigate the intentions of founding American women in their rejection of abundant fertility and a patriarchal family and the existent or non-existent role that colonial Christians played.

Research Aim: Historians have long debated why belief in magic, charms and cunning folk changed in early modern England.

This study will examine how the Protestant Reformation and changing religious teaching under the Tudors affected popular magical practices, using church court records, sermons and printed pamphlets, and assess Keith Thomas’s argument in Religion and the Decline of Magic.

Research Aim: Francis Bacon’s essay Of Innovations weighs the benefits and dangers of change, calling time the greatest innovator and advising caution about experiments in states.

This study will analyse the essay alongside his wider writings and the religious debates of the early Stuart period, examining how Bacon reconciled innovation with scripture and how he related to the Church of England.

Research Aim: The research looks to examine the role of churches in Europe during WWII. The study will also analyse their religious ideologies and their deeds as institutions to impact the perceptions of World War II. The research will be conducted using document analysis.

Research Aim: The closure of local shops and the growth of out-of-town supermarkets changed how residents of poorer neighbourhoods buy food.

Using census data, historical trade directories and supermarket location records, this quantitative study will map changes in food access across Cardiff since the decline of heavy industry, comparing neighbourhoods by deprivation and ethnic composition.

Research Aim: Rationing by the Ministry of Food during and after the Second World War limited and reshaped what British households ate.

Using cookbooks, Ministry of Food leaflets, oral histories and survey data, this study will examine whether wartime diets left lasting changes in British cuisine, comparing social classes and regions.

Research Aim: White Christian denominations in the American North and South responded differently to the civil rights movement.

This study will combine analysis of denominational statements with published survey data to examine how racial attitudes among members of different denominations have changed since the civil rights era, and how far theology explains the differences.

Research Aim: Shanghai grew rapidly after it was opened to foreign trade as a treaty port.

This study will analyse how rickshaws, trams and buses shaped the city’s urban landscape before the Japanese invasion, using municipal records, maps and press sources to examine tradition and modernity, state and society, and technology.

Research Aim: The purpose of the dissertation is to examine the origins of water-related issues in Atlanta by discovering the challenges that public officials, activists, and engineers faced in the area in terms of planning and enacting an effective environmental policy after World War II in the metropolitan area of Atlanta.

The research will use historical document analysis as its methodology.

Research Aim: The research examines the network of friends and colleagues of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill on how they influenced the primer’s reputation after his retirement and death. The study will analyse the history of the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, and the influence that Sir John Colville had on shaping Churchill’s image.

Research Aim: The relationship between conservative powerhouses Margaret Thatcher and Mary Whitehouse was well known to the public for its traditional undertones. The research will examine the relationship between the two women using document analysis, particularly the public presentation relationship, to better understand the importance of conservative women in Britain.

The research will analyse the twentieth-century political and cultural contexts that gave rise to these two women.

Research Aim: The research will study the transfer of power in South Africa by focusing on the cooperative leadership strategies, policies, and personal characteristics of leaders such as Nelson Mandela and F. W. de Klerk. The research will examine how these two leaders could bring systematic revolution through democratic and peaceful means.

Research Aim: The research will analyse the history of paintings of people suffering from the convulsion of war, explicitly focusing on Goya. The paper will examine the factors and influences on Pablo Picasso that led to the development of “Guernica.”

The research will analyse how Picasso depicted real history snatches with symbolism that resonated with people.

Research Aim: The research examines women’s contribution to the Crusades and its impact on propaganda, recruitment, organisation of the crusades, and financing of the campaigns. The study will also survey their roles in looking after families and properties while also giving liturgical support at home for those on the crusade campaigns.

Research Aim: The movement of African Americans from the rural South to northern cities transformed neighbourhoods such as Harlem.

This study will examine how the Great Migration shaped the Harlem Renaissance, analysing poetry by Langston Hughes, fiction by Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison’s later novel Jazz and records of Harlem’s music venues.

Research Aim: After the failed Bay of Pigs landing, Kennedy sought to show American resolve in South-East Asia.

This study will analyse his administration’s policy towards South Vietnam, focusing on counterinsurgency, credibility and commitment, using presidential papers and published government records to examine why the number of US military advisers grew during his presidency.

Research Aim: Italy gained Venetia after the Austro-Prussian War, but Rome remained outside the kingdom and the new state was financially and politically weak.

This study will examine the following years through Anglo-Italian diplomatic relations, assessing how a change of government in Britain affected support for Italian unity.

Research Aim: The research will analyse the rise of Italian fascism with the premise that it rose from the failures of previous liberal governments. The study particularly examines the first Liberal period after unification, which led to the explosion of civil war in the South of Italy.

The study will analyse the racial and colonial factors that influenced the competition with Western European nations for imperialistic endeavours.

Research Aim: The research analyses accounting practices in prisons using documentation analysis of the prison management system of major Italian States in the early nineteenth century. The study aims to use various accounting methods to uncover the potentially socially damaging tools of accounting in prison reforms to discipline individuals of lesser status.

Research Aim: The Sicilian mafia came to official and public attention in the decades after the island became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

Using historical municipal data on schools, literacy and mafia presence, this quantitative study will examine whether areas with stronger mafia activity saw slower growth in schooling and literacy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Research Aim: The German Empire combined a Reichstag elected by universal male suffrage with a chancellor answerable to the Kaiser rather than to parliament.

Using parliamentary debates and party records, this study will examine how parties such as the Centre Party and the Social Democrats worked within this system and why it proved hard to govern.

Research Aim: The German Democratic Republic collapsed within a year of the opening of the Berlin Wall, leading to reunification with the Federal Republic.

This study will analyse political, economic and international factors in the collapse, focusing on East and West German business elites and relations with the Soviet Union, using archival and published sources.

Research Aim: After Prussia’s victory over Austria, many liberals who had opposed Bismarck backed his policy of unification under Prussian leadership.

This study will examine the founding of the National Liberal Party, the vote on the Indemnity Bill and the role of Realpolitik, asking whether liberals abandoned their principles or achieved their goals.

Research Aim: The research will examine the factors that gave rise to the radicalisation of the German right under the politics of Otto von Bismarck. The study looks to find evidence of German fascism prior to World War II. To conduct the research, a thorough document analysis will be done with an extensive literature review.

Research Aim: Anti-German hostility grew sharply in the United States after it entered the First World War.

Using records of children’s first names and petitions for naturalisation, this empirical study will examine whether German immigrants and their families increased efforts to assimilate, and whether responses differed between states with more or less hostility.

Research Aim: The research will examine the factors of communal emotion and mass emotion during the outbreak of WWI to demonstrate the political significance of widespread sentiment. The research looks to study the factors with regard to contemporary populism.

Research Aim: The United States used a national draft to raise its army for the First World War.

This study will use census records and draft registration data to compare the incomes, occupations and home ownership of men who served with similar men who did not, examining effects shortly after the war and in later life.

Research Aim: The Royal Engineers formed specialist quarrying companies to supply stone for roads and defences behind the Western Front.

This study will examine their organisation, work and contribution to supplying the British Expeditionary Force until they were disbanded after the war, using unit war diaries held at The National Archives and published histories.

Research Aim: The Great Depression brought sharp falls in output and employment across British industry.

Using historical data on hours worked, real output and employment, this empirical study will test whether output per hour in UK manufacturing rose or fell in the slump that followed the Wall Street Crash, and what explains the pattern.

Research Aim: The research will use document analysis and text analysis to examine the rhetoric of British newspapers when unemployment rises. The study will accurately analyse the Great Depression in Britain by determining how the stigmatisation of poverty changes in the rhetoric of newspapers when discussing unemployment.

Research Aim: Between the wars, organisations encouraged single British women to emigrate to the dominions as domestic servants and settlers.

This study will use the records of the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women to examine how the Depression affected recruitment, training and destinations, and whether its training programmes improved women’s employment prospects.

Research Aim: The research will analyse the British deceleration of industrial growth and the percentage rate of growth as the cause of the Great Depression in Britain. The research will examine the contribution of the Industrial Revolution and its initial rapid percentage of rate of growth causing ‘retardation.’

The study will be empirical and analyse historical patterns of Britain’s national economy.

Research Aim: The research will analyse the extent to which Brazilians were actively engaged in combat on the Brazilian coast and in the European theatre. The study will primarily focus on the global conflict through the Forca Aerea Brasileira, FAB, or the Brazilian Air Force development before participation in the Second World War.

Research Aim: The research will examine the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent secrecy orders which put over 11,000 US patent applications given secrecy orders. The study will analyse how this policy impacted keeping technology from the public during the war effort, specifically radar, electronics, and synthetic materials.

Research Aim: During the Second World War, Allied photographic interpreters at RAF Medmenham studied aerial images to assess enemy defences and terrain.

This study will examine how geologists used aerial photographs and beach samples to judge ground conditions for the Normandy landings, using official records, memoirs and published histories of the Central Interpretation Unit.

Research Aim: The research will analyse the strategies that British propagandists used to understand the American opinion of WWII during the war and for post-war relationships. The study will investigate the policies and factors that contributed to keeping the wartime alliance and creating an acceptable political climate in the United States for post-war cooperation.

Research Aim: The research will examine the large-scale increase in discrimination in Nazi Germany to cause the dismissal of qualified Jewish managers in large firms. The study will analyse the persistent stock prices of firms, dividend payments, and return on assets after the discriminatory removal of Jewish managers.

Research Aim: Under National Socialist rule, children’s books and school readers were used to spread the regime’s ideas about race, nation and the national community.

This study will analyse a sample of children’s books published under the regime, examining themes such as the Nordic ideal, heroism and antisemitism, and how traditional German stories were adapted.

Research Aim: The research will examine education reform that the National Socialist government implemented in elementary education. The research will look to accumulate personal accounts of families and students who experienced the era to better comprehend the educational reforms. The study seems to under how these educational reforms moulded student ideologies.

Research Aim: The research will explore the themes of antisemitism in film comedy produced during the reign of the Nazi party in Germany. The research will study how themes impacted the perceptions of people living in Germany post-war. The research will use document analysis and empirical analysis to document and examine the themes and attitudes.

Research Aim: Indian popular cinema competed successfully with Hollywood imports and became one of the world’s largest film industries.

This study will trace its development from the arrival of sound films to the decades after independence, analysing how market conditions and nationalist ideas shaped production and the social views expressed in Hindi films.

Research Aim: Feature films have strongly shaped how audiences understand the Spanish Civil War.

This study will compare fiction films made in Spain under Franco, in Spain after the transition to democracy and in Hollywood, examining how they portray the Republic, the Nationalists and the war’s violence, and how portrayals changed with political context.

Research Aim: Korean filmmaking began under Japanese colonial rule, when films were subject to strict censorship.

This study will examine the characteristics of Korean films made during the colonial period, how censorship shaped their themes and how filmmakers expressed or concealed Korean identity, using surviving films, censorship records and film histories.

Research Aim: Films were first shown to paying audiences in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, and purpose-built cinemas spread rapidly before the First World War.

This study will examine why cinema-going grew so fast, considering venues, ticket prices, efforts to make cinema respectable and the first Cinematograph Act.

Research Aim: The research will explore the complicated history of racism in the United States. It will analyse how racism has become embedded throughout American society, from land ownership, education, healthcare, employment, and the criminal justice system. The research will use a mixed-methods research approach to gather data.

Research Aim: Minority communities in the United States have often lived closest to waste sites, factories and polluted land.

This study will examine the history of the environmental justice movement, from protests against a toxic waste landfill in Warren County, North Carolina, to the national studies that documented unequal exposure, using campaign records, government reports and press coverage.

Research Aim: The research will use qualitative design to analyse the experience of racism faced by students of Eastern European descent. The research will use the framework proposed by the Critical Race Theory and Critical Conceptions of Whiteness to conduct the study.

The research will focus on the racism experienced by these students as marginal whiteness for their various linguistic accents.

Research Aim: The research will use qualitative data to analyse the participation of Afro-Italian women entrepreneurs in start-ups relating to beauty, style, and hair care lines.

The study explores the obstacles that young black women entrepreneurs face in Italian due to racism and how their inclusion in small economies changes the perception of Blackness and Black womanhood related to Italian material culture.

Research Aim: The research will use document analysis, primarily memoirs, to explore the life and work of international nurse participation during the Spanish Civil War. The study will examine their role with regard to contributions made to Spanish nursing during the war.

Research Aim: Both sides in the Spanish Civil War invested heavily in propaganda to win support at home and abroad.

This study will examine propaganda produced for the Republic, analysing posters, newspapers, films and songs, and assess how effectively it carried Republican messages to soldiers, civilians and foreign audiences.

Research Aim: The research will examine the role, experiences, and contributions of British volunteers to the Spanish Republic through the British Battalion of the 15th International Brigade. The study will accurately analyse the motivations of the volunteers to join the International Brigades and participate in the Spanish Civil War.

Research Aim: The Spanish Civil War divided British opinion and drew writers, artists and volunteers to Spain.

This study will examine British cultural responses during the war, including George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, newsreels and fundraising campaigns, to assess how culture shaped and reflected political understanding of the conflict.

Research Aim: The research explores the idea of ‘manifest destiny, its connection to the American frontier, and its impact on imperialism. The study focuses on how the American perception of savagery and civilisation is related to expanding the American frontier.

Research Aim: The research uses empirical data to analyse the American public attitude with regard to the Vietnam War. The data will be analysed using demographic groups and perception studies. The study will investigate how these perceptions eventually shaped government policy preferences during the Vietnam War.

Research Aim: The research identifies, analyses, and assesses the use of individual style in inaugural speeches of re-elected US presidents since WWII. The research will be conducted using document analysis of lexical and semantic levels. The study will assess how the inaugural addresses are shaped to reflect the public policy of re-elected presidents.

Research Aim: The research analyses the rise and expansion of white nationalists and racist far-right groups using government publications, journalistic accounts, and archival records. The research focuses on the failure in Vietnam, giving rise to white power movements.

The study will examine various events to assess the factors and significance that caused an increase in paramilitary groups in the United States.

Research Aim: The research will use data acquired from speeches, books, and internet sources written by white nationalists to assess the shift of white nationalist ideas of oppression of other races to a view of victimhood of white nationalists.

The research will use an extensive literature review to document the development of white nationalism in American history while also considering the development of social media.

Research Aim: The research explores the changes in American classical music, shifting from its traditional European origins to a more defined American sound. The study will contend that historical events such as the upheaval and shifts of society during the American Civil War were the main factors in the creation of new American classical music.

Research Aim: The research will analyse institutional reforms of party-state relations, including constitutions, electoral laws, and party laws in France and Italy during the twentieth century. The study will examine the impact of party entanglement on contributing to democratisation in Europe.

Research Aim: The research will use inductive-qualitative analysis to examine the journalistic narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To do so, the factors of suspicion of information sources, awareness of being under suspicion, and distrust of peer journalists are used to examine the trust of journalists and the dilemmas they face in hostile environments.

Start with sources you can reach: a local record office, a digitised collection such as Old Bailey Online or the British Newspaper Archive, or The National Archives catalogue.

Then read the historiography to find a debate those sources can test, and narrow the topic to one place, period and group of people.

A good question asks why or how something happened, invites argument and can be answered from sources you can read in the time available.

For example, asking why Victorian Leicester resisted compulsory vaccination is stronger than asking what happened to vaccination in the Victorian period.

Yes. Many primary sources are online, including parliamentary debates in Hansard, digitised newspapers, Old Bailey Online, census records and published government papers.

Check early that the collection is large enough to support an argument, and note any gaps in what has been digitised.

Yes. Interviewing living people needs approval through your university’s research ethics process, informed consent and an agreement about how recordings will be stored or archived.

Take particular care with painful memories such as war, Partition or migration, and follow the Oral History Society’s guidance on ethics.

An undergraduate dissertation usually answers a focused question from a manageable set of primary sources.

A master’s dissertation is normally longer and expects deeper engagement with historiography, more original archival work and a clearer contribution to a debate. Word limits vary, so check your course handbook.

Yes. Complete the free topic form at the end of this page, or on our free dissertation topics page, and a subject specialist will send you a custom topic with an aim and justification.

If you also need a plan, our dissertation topics and outline service starts from £45.