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The Joy of Writing an MA Thesis Friday , 8 October 2010 4:30 PM UNESCO Ampitheater

The Joy of Writing an MA Thesis Friday , 8 October 2010 4:30 PM UNESCO Ampitheater. by Craig Webster. Educational Levels: What They Mean. BA—understands the basics of the academic field (a novice consumer of academic production)

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The Joy of Writing an MA Thesis Friday , 8 October 2010 4:30 PM UNESCO Ampitheater

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  1. The Joy of Writing an MA ThesisFriday , 8 October 20104:30 PMUNESCO Ampitheater by Craig Webster

  2. Educational Levels: What They Mean • BA—understands the basics of the academic field (a novice consumer of academic production) • MA—understands and can critically analyze research in the academic field (a mature consumer of academic production) • PhD—creates original academic work (a producer of academic material)

  3. The Research Process • Selection of topic • Focus question • Design study • Collect data • Analyze data interpret data • Inform others

  4. The Major Issues • What is the topic? • Choose a topic that is interesting to you • Choose a topic that will sustain your interest • What is the research question? • What specific question do you want to answer? • What are the methods to be used? • (qualitative/quantitative data, primary/secondary data…) • Who is the advisor? • Who is interested in working with you? • Who do you want to avoid? • Who has expertise you can use?

  5. Bibliography and Referencing • An important part of the process, showing proper academic discipline • Shows the reader the source of the ideas and information, making it a transparent process • Illustrates that the writer’s sources are respectable • Enables the data to be reproduced/checked for accuracy • Either the Harvard System or the Chicago Style System are to be used • More is available on these in the booklet on your MA Thesis

  6. Where to find Research Literature • Periodicals (Time, Newsweek, Spiegel, the Economist…) • Scholarly journals (a particular type of periodical rarely found outside of university/college libraries • Books • Dissertations • Government Documents • Policy Reports and Presented Papers

  7. Citations: the Stylistic Choices • Endnotes/Footnotes • Parenthetical • For the Department, only parenthetical citations are used for Theses

  8. But Footnotes Have Their Place • Footnotes may be used to add additional information worth noting, although the information in a footnote is generally peripheral to the topic at hand[1]. [1] For example, the organizer of this series of seminars (Giorgos Kentas) is also my officemate.

  9. About Parenthetical Citation Systems • Many of the systems are quite similar • For your MA Thesis, the Department specifies that you use one of two stems of citation • The Harvard Referencing System • The Chicago Referencing System

  10. How to Cite? (Harvard System) • The first component of the system is that the author's last name and date of publication are given at the reference point in the main text, enclosed in brackets: (Rawls, 1971) • If an author has more than one cited publication for this year, add a,b, c etc to the date. Denote pages by p. and pp., and spell out the pagination for any chapter cited rather than using Ch: (Rawls, 1992b, pp. 47-48) • Where two or three works are referenced at the same time they are enclosed within the same brackets and separated by a semi-colon: (Rawls, 1971; Smith 1979, p. 24)

  11. What does it Look Like in the Text? There is a voluminous amount of literature written about the politics of Cyprus and the Cyprus Problem (see for example, Attalides, 1979; Hutchence and Georgiades, 1999; Joseph, 1997, 1999; Kyriakou, 2000; O’Malley and Craig, 1999; Peristianis, 1998; Richmond, 1999, 2001, 2002; Stravrinides, 1975; Theophanous, 1996, 2000). What is notable about the vast majority of the literature is that it largely reflects what has been referred to as a “positioned approach” to the Cyprus Problem (Demetriou, 2004). The positioned approach starts with the notion that the major ethnicities on the island have a particular position in the Cyprus Problem. Most of these approaches thus view strategic political decisions as being largely a reflection of the particular ethnicity’s position in the Cyprus Problem. Each ethnicity, therefore, tends more or less to be viewed as a monolith with political figures and institutions merely reflecting the desires of the constituent ethnicity. There are a number of recent works that have broken with this tradition although the vast majority of the works written on the topic of the Cyprus Problem tend to view the conflict through the narrative of “ethnicities as rational actors”, thus simplifying the social and political diversity of the societies on each side of the Green Line.

  12. The Bibliography (Harvard System) • Book Harmer, H. T. (1999) The Longman Companion to the Labour Party 1900-1998. London: Longman. Inglehart, R. (ed.) (1990) Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Societies. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press. Holliday, I., Gamble, A. and Parry, G. (eds.) (1999) Fundamentals in British Politics, second edition. Basingstoke: Palgrave. • Chapter in a book Allen, D. (1988) 'British Foreign Policy and West European Co-operation', in P. Byrd (ed.), British Foreign Policy under Thatcher. Deddington: Philip Allen, pp. 210-8. • Journal article Abrahams, P. (1998) 'Notes on the Difficulty of Studying the State', Journal of Historical Sociology, 1 (1), 15-21. Fontana, B. (2001) 'Gramsci on Politics and State', Journal of Classical Sociology, 2 (July), 157-78. • Paper presented Reid, M. (2004) 'The Turbulent Emergence of Mass Democracies in Latin America'. Paper presented at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, London, 20 October.

  13. The Bibliography--continued (Harvard System) • Proceedings Kowalik, T. (1992) 'Trade Unions' Attitude to Privatisation' in 'Privatisation and Transformation in Eastern Europe', proceedings of a conference held in Warsaw, 15-20 November 1992, pp. 123-34. • Electronic journal article Auers, D. (2005) 'European Elections in Eight New EU Member States', Electoral Studies [online], 24 (4), 747-54. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2005.03.005 [Accessed 18 November 2005]. • Web page Conservative Party (2005) Conservative Election Manifesto 2005 [online]. The Conservative Party. Available from: http://www.conservatives.com/getfile.cfm?file=manifesto2005&ref=POLICYDOCUMENT/1664&type=pdf [Accessed 18 November 2005]. • The author of a web page can be an individual or a corporate body. The publisher is the organisation responsible for maintaining the website. • PhD thesis (unpublished) Lavelle, A. (2003) 'The Wilderness Years: Federal Labor in Opposition'. Unpublished PhD thesis, Department of Politics and Public Policy, Griffith University, November. • Newspapers Klein, J. (2002) 'How the Solidarity Dream Turned Sour', Guardian, 12 June, G2, p. 7.

  14. Dishonesty/Plagiarism • Plagiarism is representing others’ ideas/words as your own • It is theft of intellectual property • This is an unacceptable practice • Sometimes accidental, • Stemming from inappropriate referencing or • Unintentional representation of ideas or phrases that have been memorized • Sometimes deliberate, an act of fraud

  15. Don’t Get it Right, Get it Written! • Thank You

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