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
Lydia Prior	‘The Queene of Troubles’: Representations of Henrietta Maria in English politics, 1641-1644 Winner of the 'Best History dissertation of 2018' prize
Sarah Davies	‘The ghost of Jane Shore’: Cultural representations of the past in the Early Modern period 2018, Davies (PDF, 5,418kB)
Jonathan De Oliveira	The ‘Devil drug […] sprouting angel’s wings’? An analysis of the UK Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics’ use of patient identities to medicalise portrayals and perceptions of cannabis in the 1990s 2018 De Oliveira (PDF, 881kB)
Ben Gibbons	‘Cows, Pigs and ‘The City’: An Animal History of Bristol Through the Lens of Meat’ 2018, Gibbons (PDF, 833kB)
Hannah-Jane Headon	The End of ‘Sporting Apartheid’: Newspaper reporting on the development of rugby and nationalism in the Republic of Ireland, 2006-2010 2018, Headon (PDF, 647kB)
Charlotte Ingle	Ten Thousand Children: Rethinking Childhood Experiences of Family Life Among Kindertransportees 2018, Ingle (PDF, 635kB)
Ellen Jones	Conflict, community, and culture: an oral history of Sikh migrants in Birmingham, 1960-1979 2018, Jones (PDF, 518kB)
Toby Lane	‘Alas! alas! Well may men now weep and lament’: Discontent, Longing and Nostalgia in Late Fourteenth-Century England
Lottie Marsden	Irishman vs. The Irishman: Charles Stewart Parnell and Perceptions of Irish Masculinity in the English Comic Press (1880-91) 2018, Marsden (PDF, 3,701kB)
Annabelle Pemberton	‘Universally Sacrificed’? Sexual Violence Experienced by Light-Skinned Women in the Slaveholding Societies of Barbados and Louisiana 2018, Pemberton (PDF, 582kB)
Chessie Sheppardson	An assessment of the role of motherhood in the French Resistance movement, 1939-1945 2018, Sheppardson (PDF, 430kB)
Samuel Wood	Treating the ‘Southmead Syndrome’? Neoliberalism in a working-class area of north Bristol, 1983-1997.