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.

Students	Titles	'Best dissertations of the year' prize
Joseph Beveridge	An assessment of the political stance of Bristol merchants during the constitutional struggles of the late-1620s (PDF)	Joint winner
Charlotte Britton	Entertaining the Queen: Queen Anne's royal progress to Bristol in 1613 (PDF)	Joint winner
Matthew Howles	'The soul is the prison of the body': John Addington Symonds and the challenges of sexual self-definition in Victorian society (PDF)	Joint winner
James Munro	To be a king: changing conceptions of kingship during the reign of Henry VI, 1422-1461 (PDF)
Francesco Leoni	'How happy would be Blackburn': Mrs Lewis' teetotal mission and the decline of the Temperance movement - a local study, c.1880-c.1930
Matthew Smith	'The ready made nucleus of degradation and disorder': an examination of Irish criminality in Victorian Bristol in 1881 (PDF)
Lisa Elkins-Jarrett	Looking for love: the representation of women in East Germany's DEFA films, 1972-1982 (PDF)
Robert Cohen	Gascony under Edward II (PDF)
Clementine Vandeleur	Post-conflict Serbia: coming to terms with the 1990s?
Richard Barr	In the dark: North Korea's presentation of itself in the outside world since 1997
Isabel Marler	Embracing modern Berlin: representations of time and space in Menschen am Sonntag (PDF)