Best Undergraduate Dissertations 2017

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	'Best dissertation' prize
Jacob Miron	More Monsters Than Men? Uncovering the Meanings of Piracy and Sodomy in Early Modern England 2017Miron (PDF, 929kB) Winner of the 'Best History dissertation of 2017' prize
Alice Adcock	English Influence of Irish Ambition? An Assessment of Irish Church Reform, c.1049-1169 2017 Adcock (PDF, 830kB)
Bethany Bourn Williams	Infidels and Insecurity: Religious Anxiety and Elizabethan Perceptions of Islam 2017 Bourn Williams (PDF, 689kB)
Hamish Bowman	Lost Among the Mountains: An Overlooked History of African Americans in Western North Carolina, 1865-1880 2017Bowman (PDF, 729kB)
Asa Dickinson	William Delafield Arnold’s Oakfield; Or Fellowship in the East and the Fragility of Britain’s Imperial Ideology, 1828-1856 2017Dickinson (PDF, 717kB)
Zofia Duffy	Our Lady of Cuapa: Reimagining Nicaraguan Revolutionary Politics through Faith
Tom Pearson	The Wills Family: An Insight into Victorian Business Ethics, 1850-1910‌‌ 2017Pearson (PDF, 625kB)