Best Undergraduate Dissertations 2024

Since 2009 the Department of History at the University of Bristol has published the best of the annual dissertations produced by our final-year undergraduates. We do so in recognition of the excellent research undertaken by our students, which is a cornerstone of our degree programme. As a department, we are committed to the advancement of historical knowledge and to research of the highest order. Our undergraduates are part of that endeavour.

Listed below are the the best of this year’s undergraduate history dissertations, with links to the dissertations themselves where these are available. Please note that these dissertations are published in the state they were submitted for examination. Thus the authors have not been able to correct errors and/or departures from departmental guidelines for the presentation of dissertations (eg in the formatting of footnotes and bibliographies). In each case, copyright resides with the author and all rights are reserved. 

Student

Title

Francesca Burke ‘One Ring to Rule Them All’: How was Tolkien Used in the Creation of a New Neo-Fascist Culture? 
Amelie Chaplin How did the portrayal of Turkish Gastarbeiter in the German news media evolve in response to their changing demographic and social status in Germany from the 1960s to the 1970s? Amelie Chaplin, 2024 (PDF, 718kB)
Florence Fisher-Neye ‘the bastions of ignorance, mediocrity and control’(Loaded): British Punk fanzines, 1976-1984 Florence Fisher-Nye, 2024 (PDF, 1,770kB)
Joanne Hill A ‘Vacuous Clotheshorse’?: A Re-evaluation of Mary Brunel 
Edith Mitchell “Still I Rebelled, from Inside of Me”: A Study of Slave Disability and Resistance in the United States Edith Mitchell (PDF, 443kB)
Liam Murphy-Parry ‘It Had to Happen Sometime’: Mass Observing the Everyday Responses to Chernobyl Liam Murphy-Parry, 2024 (PDF, 616kB)
Lilly O'Riordan Jude Unravelling Dublin’s Memoryscape: The Legacy of Slavery in the Contemporary City Lilly O'Riordan Jude, 2024 (PDF, 1,171kB)
Freddie Osborne-Fardon Night-Time Imperialism? Hunting, Exploring, and Power in Nocturnal Africa, 1850-1899 Freddie Osborne-Fardon, 2024 (PDF, 1,490kB)
Maisie Stephens ‘Wild flowers of minstrelsy’ and ‘noxious weeds’: the Folk and the Masses as an imagined binary Maisie Stephens, 2024 (PDF, 468kB)
Isabelle Tommony Hidden in the Margins: The Function of Monsters in the Luttrell Psalter
Alice Webster ‘We were not your average American girl’: The Donut Dollies and Female Agency in the Vietnam War Alice Webster, 2024 (PDF, 1,329kB)
Emma Wilkins Subversive Sisterhood: Female Detainees’ Resistance in Apartheid’s Carceral Spaces Emma Wilkins, 2024 (PDF, 546kB)
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