Thesis Writing

Thesis Topics

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Interesting Thesis Topics & Ideas To Get Started

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Thesis Topics

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If you’re a student who’s nearing graduation and wondering, “What is the best topic for your thesis?”, you’ve come to the perfect place!

It’s a well-established fact that thesis documents require extreme levels of research and dedication. But, when it comes to choosing a topic for your thesis, it is far from being an easy task as well!

If your supervisor hasn’t assigned you a thesis topic, you can get valuable help from this blog. With thesis ideas ranging from education to diverse fields of study, you can pick the topic perfect topic for thesis writing.  

So without further ado, let’s get started!

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  • 1. Thesis Topics for Students
  • 2. Thesis Topics for Multiple Fields
  • 3. How to Choose a Good Thesis Topic?

Thesis Topics for Students

We’ll start with a comprehensive list of thesis ideas for students, then move on to topics for multiple fields. 

Thesis Topics for College Students

  • Exploring the psychological effects of student loan debt on college graduates
  • The challenges and opportunities of globalization
  • The role of education and social mobility in reducing inequality
  • The impact of immigration on the economy and society
  • The potential of new technologies to improve healthcare outcomes
  • The impact of online learning on student engagement and achievement 
  • What is the role of artificial intelligence in business decision-making?
  • High school bullying and its long-term effects on mental health and social adjustment
  • The challenges and opportunities of diversity and inclusion in education
  • The impact of early childhood education on long-term success

Senior Thesis Topics

  • The industrial revolution has increased the gap between the rich and the poor. How?
  • What are the effects of global warming on the world’s population?
  • Feminism is becoming as bad as racism. How?
  • The relationship between social media usage and perceptions of loneliness
  • The long-term effects of income inequality on economic growth
  • Placement by age vs. placement by academic ability. Which should be preferred?
  • How have viruses such as HIV-AIDS, affected the African economy?
  • What are the common sleep disorders and their treatments?
  • Using animals for sports and entertainment: Is it legal or illegal?
  • Discuss Trump’s “America First” trade and foreign policy.

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Bachelor Thesis Topics

  • The impact of E-Sports on traditional sports and the future of competitive gaming
  • The economics of renewable energy transition: Case study of Germany
  • The influence of music on cognitive performance and productivity in the workplace
  • The influence of social media on political movements and activism
  • The ethical implications of gene editing technologies: A case study on CRISPR-Cas9
  • Urban green spaces and their impact on mental health: A case study of Singapore
  • The relationship between smartphone use and sleep quality in young adults
  • Investigating the psychological factors influencing consumer brand loyalty
  • Cybersecurity threats and mitigation strategies for small and medium-sized enterprises
  • The impact of video games on cognitive skills and problem-solving abilities in children

Masters Thesis Topics

  • Discuss the relationship between literature and the political climate in the 18th century
  • Explain the relationship between rational thinking and religion
  • The Civil War is the greatest inspiration for art. Discuss the concept
  • Gun violence in the USA during the 2010s: A comparative analysis
  • Cyberbullying can lead to suicides - A case study of Australia
  • Campus shootings in the USA: Discuss the causes and risk factors
  • Labor markets in China: An in-depth analysis
  • What are the impacts of global warming on weather conditions in Iceland?
  • Explain the women's empowerment in Saudi Arabia in the 2000s
  • Write a detailed comparison of the anti-nuclear movements in Germany and Japan

MBA Thesis Topics

  • Discuss a case study of rural marketing projects.
  • What are the impacts of reducing the retirement age in America?
  • Mergers and acquisitions: Evaluating the factors contributing to success or failure
  • How can the banking sector influence the economic growth of India?
  • Analysis of global supply chain resilience in the post-pandemic business environment
  • Online marketing on social media platforms is useful for small companies. How?
  • Write a comparative study of organized trading in the USA and UK
  • How is technical knowledge essential to make wise financial decisions?
  • How can consumer purchases influence brand design?
  • Explore the positive and negative impacts of mobile banking

PhD Thesis Topics

  • What are the primary professors’ teaching patterns in China?
  • Discuss the social benefits of same-sex marriages
  • Discuss the legal issue of child labor in Third World countries.
  • What is the positive impact of music therapy on patients with brain injuries?
  • Explain the impacts of 9/11 on new policies against terrorism
  • Discuss the marketing strategies used in political campaigns
  • The US presence in Syria: Is it providing justice or violating the law?
  • Elaborate on the preventive measures to fight obesity among teenagers.
  • How to treat injuries in diabetic patients?
  • What are the political and economic effects of Brexit on the UK?

Thesis Topics for Multiple Fields

Here are some interesting and easy to write thesis topics from multiple fields of study.

Thesis Topics in Education

  • Special education policies in the USA: Are they effective or ineffective?
  • Why is studying abroad a legitimate excuse for traveling?
  • Strategies for supporting undergraduate students' transition to college life
  • Family involvement has a direct impact on a child's performance. Discuss how?
  • Why are students more likely to do the homework assigned by good-looking professors?
  • Role of Parental Involvement in early childhood education for academic readiness
  • Explain the development of emotional intelligence for modern education
  • Informal learning in rural areas through social networks. Is it possible?
  • Public school students interact at the same level as the other students. Is it true?
  • How can reality television disempower students to some extent?

Thesis Topics in Healthcare

  • How does increased physical activity promote healthy aging?
  • The impact of telemedicine on healthcare access and quality
  • Mental health stigma: Addressing barriers to seeking and receiving care
  • How do Supervised Machine Learning models help in Breast Cancer diagnosis?
  • Exploring the mental health implications of prolonged pandemic-related stress and isolation
  • Innovations in remote patient monitoring for chronic disease management
  • How can we improve the affordability of healthcare without sacrificing quality?
  • Strategies for addressing the global burden of non-communicable diseases
  • How can we use social media to promote health literacy and engagement?
  • How can we use genomics to improve disease prevention and treatment?

Thesis Topics for Computer Science

  • Quantum computing: The future of data processing and cryptography
  • How does the feedback system in personnel management work?
  • Describe the development of an automated workplace
  • How can data be analyzed by using robust AI algorithms?
  • Discuss the benefits of the development of a taxi service website
  • The dark web: Anonymity, security, and law enforcement challenges
  • Verification of webpage layouts. How is it beneficial?
  • What are the impacts of mobile computing on global development?
  • Big data analytics for predictive maintenance in IoT systems
  • How can AI-assisted surveillance systems decrease mass school shootings in the US?

Architecture Thesis Topics

  • How have religious buildings in the British Empire affected architecture?
  • Discuss the role of architects in combating the impacts of climate change
  • Why should we construct sustainable buildings for offices?
  • Discuss a case study of small houses to solve homelessness
  • Why should we develop public places in small cities?
  • How can architecture revitalize urban areas sustainably?
  • Are underwater hotels sustainable?
  • Discuss the transformation of urban design in the 21st century
  • How can we construct houses in developed countries with low income?
  • How can architectural design create healing environments in healthcare facilities?

Thesis Topics for Interior Design

  • Role of biophilic design in reducing stress and anxiety in workplaces
  • Designing interior spaces for people with dementia
  • The use of technology to create immersive and interactive interior experiences
  • Design of interior spaces for future generations
  • Impact of culture on prisons and other correctional facilities design
  • Use of universal design to create inclusive restaurants and cafés
  • Use of materials and finishes to create a sustainable and resilient built environment
  • What is the impact of interior design on human performance?
  • Creating inclusive and accessible interior spaces for people with disabilities
  • What is the future of interior design in the age of climate change?

Thesis Topics for Textile Designing

  • How to design textiles that are both aesthetically pleasing and functional?
  • Environmental impact of textile design and how to reduce it
  • How can textile design improve the performance of sportswear and activewear?
  • Design a textile collection that is accessible and affordable for people with disabilities
  • Develop a sustainable textile production process that reduces environmental impact
  • Investigate the impact of textile design on consumer behavior
  • Explore the use of sustainable materials in textile design
  • Challenges and opportunities of new technologies in textile design
  • Ethical implications of materials and production methods in textile design
  • How can textile design reduce fashion waste and promote circularity?

Psychology Thesis Topics

  • Why is emotional intelligence an important factor in professional satisfaction?
  • The notion of the self – Is it a myth or reality?
  • Evaluating the efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral
  • Therapy in managing anxiety
  • Self-efficacy and academic achievement: A longitudinal study of students
  • A good IQ level can have long-term benefits for children. Discuss how?
  • How are emotional disorders directly connected to social cognition?
  • Analyze the relationship between emotional and episodic memory
  • How can rational thinking allow us to make better decisions?
  • How common is depression among homosexual teenagers?
  • What are the psychological techniques to help obese teens?

Political Science Thesis Topics

  • Compare the foreign policies of the US and the UK
  • What were the causes of the American Revolution?
  • How is religion used as a political power?
  • What is the role of social movements in politics?
  • Discuss the consequences of the Civil War
  • Immigration policies and their impact on social cohesion and diversity
  • The impact of campaign finance reform on political corruption
  • What are the negotiation methods during wartime?
  • Explain the difference between political and armed conflicts
  • Give a detailed review of the Human Rights Act 1998

Thesis Topics for Law Students

  • The role of international law in addressing global cybersecurity threats
  • Human rights and refugee law: Analyzing the legal status of stateless individuals
  • Legal aspects of intellectual property rights in the fashion industry
  • Consumer protection laws in E-Commerce: Challenges and emerging trends
  • How can we ensure that plea bargaining is used fairly and ethically?
  • Examining the legal and ethical implications of genetic testing and genetic privacy
  • The evolution of copyright law in the digital era: Balancing innovation and protection
  • How has globalization changed the landscape of international law?
  • What is the future of International Law in a world of increasing nationalism?
  • The impact of race and ethnicity on criminal sentencing

International Relations Thesis Topics

  • What is the impact of Russia’s intervention in Syria?
  • Discuss the trade relations between India and Pakistan
  • Discuss the impacts of the US sanctions on Iran
  • Explain the reasons for OIC failure
  • What is the US foreign policy towards North Korea?
  • Critically analyze the human rights violations in Kashmir
  • What is the policy of the United States toward Russia?
  • Discuss lessons learned politically since 9/11
  • Political problems in Africa have been affected by colonial rule. How?
  • Discuss how is Israel playing the victim card in the war against Palestine

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History Thesis Topics

  • How has World War II saved the world?
  • What is the impact of Buddhism on the Chinese empire?
  • Discuss the struggles of the North American colonies for independence
  • Describe the role of the monarchy in the domestic policy of Great Britain
  • Discuss the impacts of the North Korean nuclear program in Northeast Asia
  • Evaluate the American and Britain relations during the Cold War Era
  • Discuss the global impacts of the Great Depression
  • Explain the Women's rights and woman suffrage: 1848-1920.
  • Enlist the Military Innovations between WWI & WWII
  • Discuss the feminist movement from 1845 to 1920

Criminal Justice Thesis Topics

  • What are the ways to deal with domestic violence?
  • How can we reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system?
  • How is electronic monitoring an abuse of privacy rights?
  • What can be done to prevent cyber crimes?
  • What are the common child abuse crimes committed?
  • How can body cameras reduce police violence?
  • Why are men more likely to get the death penalty?
  • How can drug courts help people with addictions?
  • Discuss the strategies used to stop criminal behavior
  • Discuss the effectiveness of capital punishment in deterring crime

Thesis Topics in English Literature

  • The influence of feminist theory on the work of Margaret Atwood
  • Discuss the effectiveness of verbal communication in displaying feelings
  • How do people communicate when there is no shared language?
  • Language travels through time. Discuss the concept
  • Elaborate on the advantages of learning a second language in graduate school
  • Discuss the effectiveness of non-verbal communication for displaying emotions.
  • Shakespearean adaptations in modern literature and film
  • Narrative techniques in experimental literature and their impact on storytelling
  • What are the benefits of learning two languages at once as a child?
  • How to best communicate: Verbally or non-verbally? 

Thesis Topics in Mass Communication

  • Effects of user-generated content on news credibility and trust in online journalism
  • Impact of deep fake technology on media manipulation and trust in visual media
  • The role of media in promoting political polarization and extremism
  • The challenges of reporting on sensitive topics such as war, violence, and trauma
  • The ethics of using media to exploit or harm vulnerable populations
  • The influence of TikTok on youth culture and entertainment consumption
  • How does sports journalism respond to evolving media landscapes?
  • The role of social media influencers in shaping brand image and consumer behavior
  • The role of media in promoting corporate interests and agendas
  • What is the role of media in the surveillance state and the erosion of privacy?

Thesis Topics in Business Administration 

  • How is digital transformation changing business models and strategies?
  • What role does venture capital play in funding and supporting startups?
  • The role of data analytics in decision-making and improving business outcomes
  • The challenges and opportunities of expanding into new markets
  • What factors influence call center industry employee retention?
  • Comparing leadership structures in manufacturing and retail sectors
  • How do varying leadership styles impact worker performance?
  • Challenges and opportunities of managing supply chains in a globalized economy
  • Is a Human Resources Officer still relevant in today's businesses?
  • What is the impact of internal communications on organizational objectives?

Thesis Topics in Physical Education

  • Role of physical education in preventing childhood obesity
  • Impact of physical activity on sleep quality and overall well-being
  • Influence of physical education on self-esteem and body image in adolescents
  • What strategies promote gender equity in physical education?
  • How can cultural competency be integrated into physical education programs?
  • How does virtual physical education impact student engagement?
  • What factors contribute to successful youth sports and athlete development?
  • How does assessment and feedback improve student learning in physical education?
  • How can older adults be encouraged to maintain active lifestyles?
  • Does physical education have a measurable impact on academic performance?

Civil Engineering Thesis Topics

  • Assessing the impact of climate change on infrastructure resilience
  • Optimizing traffic flow and transportation systems for urban mobility
  • Risk assessment and management in civil engineering projects
  • Green infrastructure and stormwater management in urban environments
  • Geotechnical engineering challenges in high-rise building construction
  • Resilient infrastructure for mitigating the impact of extreme weather events
  • Smart grids and energy-efficient infrastructure for future cities
  • The role of 3D printing in construction: Feasibility and applications
  • Augmented reality and virtual reality in civil engineering education and design
  • What are the risk factors involved in building skyscrapers?

Cyber Security Thesis Topics

  • How can network security deal with cyber crimes?
  • How can an informational system protect your data?
  • How can we prevent the growth of cyber hackers?
  • What are the different types of cyber crimes?
  • How can we make network security affordable for everyone?
  • Discuss the effectiveness of malware protection software.
  • How can we improve cybersecurity in wireless networks?
  • What are the ways to prevent cyber attacks in organizations?
  • How do people become cyber criminals?
  • What are the current trends in the field of cybercrime and security?

Sociology Thesis Topics

  • What are the consequences of adopting a child?
  • Discuss the concept of female empowerment in a conservative society
  • Organ transplantation in our society. Is it ethical?
  • Explain the diffusion and innovation in European culture
  • What are the challenges that most women face at workplaces?
  • How difficult is it to be a single parent in a society?
  • The impact of economic disparities on how people Live: A sociological study
  • Technology has changed the way we eat. How?
  • Violations of social norms can be a positive act. How?
  • What is the relationship between poverty and education?

Philosophy Thesis Topics

  • What is the nature of truth and reality in a post-modern world?
  • Is there any life after death?
  • Can a person be happy without friends and family?
  • Why is there a need to engage children in physical activities?
  • Will you have eternal satisfaction if you had all the wealth in the world?
  • How morality and religion are related to each other?
  • Why do people commit crimes when they’re at the brink of poverty? 
  • How to develop a personal philosophy of life: Influences, values, and decision-making
  • Can free will exist in a deterministic universe, and what are its implications for agency and responsibility?
  • What is the nature of consciousness, and how does it relate to our perception of reality?

Economics Thesis Topics

  • Discuss the differences in commercial practices in rural and urban areas
  • Critically analyze regional divergence in Europe
  • Discuss the relationship between economic geography and the contemporary environment
  • What are the impacts of intellectual capital in growing markets?
  • Labor regulations are a way to solve the issue of unemployment. Discuss how?
  • Explain the factors that determine the market value of a business
  • What is the effect of labor force participation on the economy?
  • Discuss the impact of government expenditure on the economic growth of Australia
  • Discuss the impact of Brexit on small and middle businesses in the UK
  • Write a review of the aid and economic growth of developing economies

Want to know how to format thesis papers properly? Get expert guidance from our detailed blog!

Now that you have access to a wide range of thesis topics for multiple fields, you could use some tips to understand how you should pick a good thesis topic. 

How to Choose a Good Thesis Topic?

Follow the easy tips given below to choose a good topic for your thesis.

steps-to-choose-a-good-thesis-topic-MyPerfectWords.com

The following is a detailed description of the tips for choosing thesis paper topics.

  • Know Your Target Audience : Understand your audience's preferences, opinions, and ideas, and always consider their feedback for better grades
  • Consider Your Strengths : Identify your skills and strengths, and focus on your areas of knowledge
  • Follow Your Interests : Select a topic that aligns with your passions and leverage your creativity for an engaging idea 
  • Combine Different Ideas : Brainstorm multiple ideas based on your interests and knowledge to create a unique idea 
  • Read and Find Gaps : Explore existing literature and research, to identify gaps or areas that require further investigation
  • Put Your Idea to the Test : Conduct small experiments or surveys to test your concept, and utilize data and human resources for a comprehensive analysis. Make sure to identify and address any flaws or weaknesses in your thesis idea.

To conclude , the above research paper topics will surely help you draft an A+ thesis. However, if you need more unique ideas, getting expert help is a good option.

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1000+ FREE Research Topics & Ideas

If you’re at the start of your research journey and are trying to figure out which research topic you want to focus on, you’ve come to the right place. Select your area of interest below to view a comprehensive collection of potential research ideas.

Research topic idea mega list

Research Topic FAQs

What (exactly) is a research topic.

A research topic is the subject of a research project or study – for example, a dissertation or thesis. A research topic typically takes the form of a problem to be solved, or a question to be answered.

A good research topic should be specific enough to allow for focused research and analysis. For example, if you are interested in studying the effects of climate change on agriculture, your research topic could focus on how rising temperatures have impacted crop yields in certain regions over time.

To learn more about the basics of developing a research topic, consider our free research topic ideation webinar.

What constitutes a good research topic?

A strong research topic comprises three important qualities : originality, value and feasibility.

  • Originality – a good topic explores an original area or takes a novel angle on an existing area of study.
  • Value – a strong research topic provides value and makes a contribution, either academically or practically.
  • Feasibility – a good research topic needs to be practical and manageable, given the resource constraints you face.

To learn more about what makes for a high-quality research topic, check out this post .

What's the difference between a research topic and research problem?

A research topic and a research problem are two distinct concepts that are often confused. A research topic is a broader label that indicates the focus of the study , while a research problem is an issue or gap in knowledge within the broader field that needs to be addressed.

To illustrate this distinction, consider a student who has chosen “teenage pregnancy in the United Kingdom” as their research topic. This research topic could encompass any number of issues related to teenage pregnancy such as causes, prevention strategies, health outcomes for mothers and babies, etc.

Within this broad category (the research topic) lies potential areas of inquiry that can be explored further – these become the research problems . For example:

  • What factors contribute to higher rates of teenage pregnancy in certain communities?
  • How do different types of parenting styles affect teen pregnancy rates?
  • What interventions have been successful in reducing teenage pregnancies?

Simply put, a key difference between a research topic and a research problem is scope ; the research topic provides an umbrella under which multiple questions can be asked, while the research problem focuses on one specific question or set of questions within that larger context.

How can I find potential research topics for my project?

There are many steps involved in the process of finding and choosing a high-quality research topic for a dissertation or thesis. We cover these steps in detail in this video (also accessible below).

How can I find quality sources for my research topic?

Finding quality sources is an essential step in the topic ideation process. To do this, you should start by researching scholarly journals, books, and other academic publications related to your topic. These sources can provide reliable information on a wide range of topics. Additionally, they may contain data or statistics that can help support your argument or conclusions.

Identifying Relevant Sources

When searching for relevant sources, it’s important to look beyond just published material; try using online databases such as Google Scholar or JSTOR to find articles from reputable journals that have been peer-reviewed by experts in the field.

You can also use search engines like Google or Bing to locate websites with useful information about your topic. However, be sure to evaluate any website before citing it as a source—look for evidence of authorship (such as an “About Us” page) and make sure the content is up-to-date and accurate before relying on it.

Evaluating Sources

Once you’ve identified potential sources for your research project, take some time to evaluate them thoroughly before deciding which ones will best serve your purpose. Consider factors such as author credibility (are they an expert in their field?), publication date (is the source current?), objectivity (does the author present both sides of an issue?) and relevance (how closely does this source relate to my specific topic?).

By researching the current literature on your topic, you can identify potential sources that will help to provide quality information. Once you’ve identified these sources, it’s time to look for a gap in the research and determine what new knowledge could be gained from further study.

How can I find a good research gap?

Finding a strong gap in the literature is an essential step when looking for potential research topics. We explain what research gaps are and how to find them in this post.

How should I evaluate potential research topics/ideas?

When evaluating potential research topics, it is important to consider the factors that make for a strong topic (we discussed these earlier). Specifically:

  • Originality
  • Feasibility

So, when you have a list of potential topics or ideas, assess each of them in terms of these three criteria. A good topic should take a unique angle, provide value (either to academia or practitioners), and be practical enough for you to pull off, given your limited resources.

Finally, you should also assess whether this project could lead to potential career opportunities such as internships or job offers down the line. Make sure that you are researching something that is relevant enough so that it can benefit your professional development in some way. Additionally, consider how each research topic aligns with your career goals and interests; researching something that you are passionate about can help keep motivation high throughout the process.

How can I assess the feasibility of a research topic?

When evaluating the feasibility and practicality of a research topic, it is important to consider several factors.

First, you should assess whether or not the research topic is within your area of competence. Of course, when you start out, you are not expected to be the world’s leading expert, but do should at least have some foundational knowledge.

Time commitment

When considering a research topic, you should think about how much time will be required for completion. Depending on your field of study, some topics may require more time than others due to their complexity or scope.

Additionally, if you plan on collaborating with other researchers or institutions in order to complete your project, additional considerations must be taken into account such as coordinating schedules and ensuring that all parties involved have adequate resources available.

Resources needed

It’s also critically important to consider what type of resources are necessary in order to conduct the research successfully. This includes physical materials such as lab equipment and chemicals but can also include intangible items like access to certain databases or software programs which may be necessary depending on the nature of your work. Additionally, if there are costs associated with obtaining these materials then this must also be factored into your evaluation process.

Potential risks

It’s important to consider the inherent potential risks for each potential research topic. These can include ethical risks (challenges getting ethical approval), data risks (not being able to access the data you’ll need), technical risks relating to the equipment you’ll use and funding risks (not securing the necessary financial back to undertake the research).

If you’re looking for more information about how to find, evaluate and select research topics for your dissertation or thesis, check out our free webinar here . Alternatively, if you’d like 1:1 help with the topic ideation process, consider our private coaching services .

master thesis topic examples

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This post is part of our dissertation mini-course, which covers everything you need to get started with your dissertation, thesis or research project. 

626 Dissertation Topics for Ph.D. and Thesis Ideas for Master Students

If you are about to go into the world of graduate school, then one of the first things you need to do is choose from all the possible dissertation topics available to you. This is no small task. You are likely to spend many years researching your Master’s or Ph.D. topic and writing the text. This means that choosing a dissertation topic should not be taken lightly.

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No worries! Just read this article by our Custom Writing service , and you’ll find:

  • a collection of great thesis topics on finance, education, management, law, etc.
  • a range of tips on choosing a killing Ph.D. topic.
  • 👍 Top 10 Dissertation Topics
  • 🆚 Thesis vs Dissertation
  • 🔝 Top 10 Thesis Topics
  • 🎓 Thesis Topics List
  • ✅ How to Choose a Topic

👍Top 10 Dissertation Topics

  • Ethical alternatives to animal testing.
  • What’s the future of the Dead Sea?
  • Does accent affect singing ability?
  • The importance of corporate values.
  • Can we regulate influencer marketing?
  • How does inflation affect small businesses?
  • Is homeschooling the future of education?
  • How does Tourette’s syndrome affect one’s daily life?
  • How to conduct market analysis for e-commerce.
  • Has globalization affected cultural appropriation?

🆚 Dissertation vs. Thesis: Is There a Difference?

People often consider a thesis and a dissertation to be the same thing. Yet, there is an important distinction between them. The key difference is that you need a thesis to complete a master’s degree, while a dissertation is necessary for obtaining a doctorate. Keep in mind that it’s vice versa in European higher education.

Here are some other differences:

Despite these differences, theses and dissertations have a lot in common:

  • You need them to complete a degree.
  • Both require certain levels of expertise and writing skills.
  • You defend an argument in both of them.
  • Plagiarism is prohibited in both theses and dissertations.

🔝 Top 10 Thesis Topics for 2024

  • The consequences of obesity.
  • The influence of social media .
  • Economic development and happiness.
  • Feminism in the United States.
  • The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • Racism in schools and colleges.
  • Overeducation in the labor market.
  • DNA evidence in criminal justice.
  • Sales forecasting techniques.
  • Wage difference among athletes.

🎓 Thesis Topics & Ideas

Below, you’ll find a collection of excellent topics for a thesis. To simplify the task, it’s not a bad idea to use a topic chooser . We’ve also prepared a checklist that will help you make the right choice. If you agree with the following statements, you’ve chosen a good thesis topic:

Just in 1 hour! We will write you a plagiarism-free paper in hardly more than 1 hour

  • You are interested in this subject.  It will be easier for you to work on it if you like your area of research. Remember that you will have to spend long hours looking through various data. You need to stay motivated.
  • The topic is helpful in your career path.  Choose a topic that you can apply to further research if you plan to pursue your career in the academic field. Choose something that you can use in your CV if you decided to work in the industry.
  • There is enough available research data.  Don’t choose a topic that is too trivial or uncommon. It is essential to find enough relevant information. Consult your supervisor to understand if you can proceed with it.
  • The topic isn’t too broad or too narrow.  Otherwise, it will be harder for you to find credible sources and relevant data.
  • You already have an understanding of it . Make a list of thesis topics that include the issues you have researched before. It will save you some time and allow you to evaluate your opportunities.
  • Your topic is unique.  Make sure there are no other papers that explore exactly the same issue. The value of your work is your original contribution to the research. If somebody has already investigated the topic, there is not much sense in proceeding with it.

The picture shows the main characteristics of a good thesis topic.

Wondering where to find the most current topic for your research? We’ve collected them below.

Computer Science Thesis Topics

Computers surround us everywhere. From hospitals to home offices, it’s impossible to imagine life without them. A doctorate in computer science can allow you many career opportunities!

  • The latest developments in AI use for healthcare services . Healthcare in the US is expensive for its citizens. One way to reduce the cost is using computer algorithms. This technology research topic lets you explore how AI helps physicians with their tasks.
  • Computer security for public institutions. Several allegations about hackers stealing data from the US government emerged in recent years. With this dissertation idea, study public cybersecurity. Also, discuss ways to improve cybersecurity practices.
  • Visual recognition system architecture: real-time object detection. Discuss a system based on neural networks capable of detecting objects. Focus on the virtual environment. You can alter this trending topic in computer science for real-life settings.
  • Blockchain application outside financial technologies. Analyze and discuss the implications of using blockchain systems outside of the fintech sector. For example, study its use for public services and in government agencies. This topic allows exploring ways of applying established algorithms.
  • Machine learning and text structures. Discuss ways of visualizing text categorization. Focus on complex hierarchical structures of texts. This topic is suitable for postgraduates.
  • Encrypted search: security, performance, and usage. Discuss the use of encryptions to protect data. Say how we can improve it for effective information search.
  • Use of computers in education . Study how algorithms can improve learning. This topic can be altered for other fields. For example, choose AI in business or agriculture.
  • Graphics and visual computing: current state and the future. By now, CAD programs are an integral part of every engineer’s tool kit. Your thesis can analyze the potential of those programs. What would improve their performance? Is there a chance that they will become obsolete?
  • Multimedia databases parsing and indexing. Netflix and YouTube require technology to search across their multimedia databases. This dissertation can be a survey on best practices. Or, add a company name to the title and focus your research on it.
  • AI Marketing: the use of algorithms to improve advertising. In the previous list of research question examples, you can choose a narrow marketing theme. Then, discuss the implications of such algorithms.
  • Study computation of models for virtual environments .
  • Cybersecurity challenges for automated vehicles.
  • AI and vehicle automation: potential safety gaps.
  • Computer graphics : perspectives for medical imaging.
  • Research the use of computer algorithms for medical analysis .
  • Discuss the role of bioinformatics in healthcare improvement.
  • How is a computer-aided design used in creating automobile parts?
  • Review the best practices for System Level Testing of distributed systems.
  • Agile project management for software engineers .
  • Software development risks analysis for successful employment.
  • Study the security mechanisms for WLAN networks .
  • Malicious botnets and network worms: an overview.
  • What are the best practices in ICT systems development?
  • Web-based document management systems using XML.
  • Best algorithms for cluster generation.
  • Methods for improving Open Web Architecture.
  • Analyze software solutions for the increased energy efficiency .
  • Protection of systems against terror attacks : a case study and analysis.
  • New methods of risk management during software development.
  • Analyze how Web space requirements are changing.
  • Analyze how e-publishing is affecting libraries.
  • New methods for studying the behavior of malware, viruses, and worms with the use of secure programming and runtime environments.
  • Analyze redundancy and fault recovery in the 4G wireless network .
  • Analyze the implementation and analysis of the optimal algorithm vs the heuristic algorithm for the generation of clusters.
  • Analyze how full-text databases affect search engines.

Humanities and Art History Thesis Topics

Do you want to put your passion into words? Would you like to share your ideas with the world? Then pursuing a Ph.D. in the arts or humanities is the right path for you.

  • The history of cinema : past and present. With this history dissertation topic, focus on how cinema developed. Explore the period starting from the first short films by the Lumiere brothers. Finish the discussion with modern-day Hollywood examples.
  • Art or commerce: a case study of Hollywood films. Discuss the intersection between artistic expression and profit. This exciting arts topic focuses on modern cinema. You can use examples of art-house movies and modern commercially successful ones.
  • Hollywood vs. Bollywood . Compare the two distinct film production centers for this art thesis. Next, discuss how local cultures impact Hollywood and Bollywood movies’ direction, genres, and plots.
  • The use of visual tools in interior design . This dissertation topic is an intersection between arts and computer science . The focus is on how visualization tools help to create design projects.
  • Racism in the 21st-century literature. Focus on how the narratives about racism have changed. Include examples from poetry and prose of this era. Compare it to works published in the past.
  • The cultural aesthetic of Afrofuturism in literature. This dissertation idea allows you to explore the intersection of arts. Specifically, see how culture, philosophy of science, and history manifest in Afrofuturism .
  • The social value of ecopoetry. Analyze how literature that focuses on ecological problems. Discuss environmental consciousness and environmental issues .
  • Graphic novels: the best examples and implications for the development of literature. What does it mean when literary classics are converted into graphic novels? Incorporate the question if graphic novels can become part of the literary canon.
  • Theater of the Absurd in the 1950s and 1960s. Discuss this form of theatrical art. Examine how it emerged and why it became influential.
  • Post World War II art : cinema and literature. Use examples of films and literary works. Discuss major works of the post-WWII era and their themes.
  • Futurism and the Czech avant-garde : the artistic connection between Europe’s East and West.
  • Study the phenomenon of the hero archetype.
  • Assess dancing as a form of meditation .
  • Review the common elements of various African dances.
  • Folk dances across Western Europe.
  • Discuss regional dances and dance as a ritual.
  • Animation as a modern art form.
  • Research the art of glass-making and its prospects for the future.
  • Analyze the cultural impact of The Beatles beyond music.
  • Literature censorship in the US.
  • Examine the intersection of ecology and arts.
  • Heidelberg Project: is it a model for creating art in urban areas?
  • Study kinetic sculptures of the 20th century.
  • What characterizes social activism in 20 th -century rock music?
  • Jazz in the 21st century: a potential for revival.
  • The history of design in various periods of human existence (the ancient times, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, etc.).
  • Design as art .
  • Philosophy of design.
  • Separate branches of design ( interior design , car design, toy design, etc.).
  • Stylistic peculiarities of a certain designer.
  • Web design as a modern quintessence of design.
  • Social significance of design.
  • The birth of Communism as it relates to Stendhal.
  • The relationship between politics and literature in the 19 th century.
  • An analysis and case study of artists and art during times of war.
  • How contemporary art is related to American suffering.
  • Analyze of how racism relates to the family unit.

List of Science Topics for Your Thesis

A dissertation in science will probably require you to run numerous experiments. Many of them will probably go wrong. But the one that does work might be the next big breakthrough! Find a suitable research theme in the following list of topics:

  • Bacterial injections for the treatment of cancer tumors. Injecting bacteria into tumors is a fairly new approach to treating cancer . Review the mechanism of action and evaluate the potential of this method for curing cancer.
  • Computer imagining and AI for cancer detection . Examine how AI-assisted cancer screening improves accuracy. Include early detection implications and usage in hospitals.
  • Ethics of organ donations and transplantation. With this dissertation topic in science, examine the ethics of encouraging people to donate their organs. Include the implications for medical research and practice.
  • An epidemiological and molecular approach to cancer prevention . This topic idea suggests assessing the current understanding of how cancer develops as well as potential prevention strategies.
  • Ways of speeding up vaccine development and testing. The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that the process of vaccine development is relatively slow. It takes a long time to ensure proper testing. You may discuss these issues in your biochemistry dissertation.
  • The current state of research into ultra-fast rechargeable batteries. The topic of batteries and energy attracts lots of attention. With this topic, you can examine how to improve the design of aluminum-ion batteries. Include ways to decrease their charging time.
  • Nanotechnologies in drug delivery: electrospraying. Current research shows the great potential of nanotechnologies. In particular, the electrospraying technique makes nanoparticle delivery more efficient.
  • Prevalence of various Helicobacter Pylori virulence in a population. Conduct quantitative research and examine a sample of patients to determine the number infected with Helicobacter Pylori.
  • The relationship between gut microbiota and the person’s appetite . Your research can explore the theory that the gut microbiome has varied effects on the person’s body. Review the implications for obesity treatment for different gut microbiomes.
  • The age of antibiotics: is it over? Examine the use of antibiotics and the reasons for its decline. Discuss the evolving nature of bacteria that require remedies other than antibiotics. Include quantitative data in this dissertation for a specific type of disease.
  • CRISPR method for studying human DNA.
  • The study of human evolution : latest discoveries.
  • Denisovans from Siberia: a new type of hominid discovered.
  • Study the use of AI in archeology .
  • Conduct a study of the Neanderthal genome sequence.
  • What are the ways of improving solar cell efficiency?
  • The carbon footprint of modern production: how do companies damage the environment?
  • Research the use of cesium in solar panels .
  • The era of supercapacitors: are we ending the use of batteries?
  • Assess the efficiency of Robot Suits for people with permanent paralysis.
  • Microscale medial robots: potential applications.
  • Look into stem cell mobilization and its mechanisms.
  • Discuss the ethics of automated cars .
  • Space robotics: can we design robots capable of exploring space?
  • Evaluate the efficiency and potential of lithium-based rechargeable batteries.
  • Morality and ethics of stem cell research .
  • Is behavior controlled or affected by genetics and to what level.
  • A look at methods of improving risk factors post-stroke.
  • Analyze of Chinese herbal practice and its relevance to conventional medicine.
  • Analyze the effect schools have on childhood obesity .

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  • New methods of using existing data to gather information that is useful.
  • An in-depth look at the factors affecting the decline of the immune system with age.
  • Analyze of the potential effect of nanotechnology on health and the environment.
  • Analyze of toxicity levels of inhaled nanoparticles.
  • The usefulness of nanotechnology in curing some types of cancer .
  • An analysis and case study of the treatment of patients who have experienced a loss of memory.
  • Analyze the use of DNA typing of remains to identify missing people and the victims of crime.
  • The response of immune deficiency diseases to the activation of T-cell subsets.
  • The influence and importance of IT in the field of biomedicine.

Architecture Thesis Topics

Architecture is more than just aesthetics. That’s become especially clear ever since the doctrine “form follows function” gained traction. Whether you’re into baroque or Bauhaus, there’s plenty to discover about architecture.

  • Religious architecture in the British Empire. Research the transformation of religious buildings and how it affected architecture in general. 
  • Modernist architecture in the USSR at the beginning of the 20th century. Compare modernist architecture in the USSR with other countries. 
  • Urban greening and its influence on buildings’ design . The dissertation proposal can include green roofs as the main point of research. 
  • Brutalism and its history in New York . Provide historical research of brutalism in New York and discuss how it affects modern architecture. 
  • Modern-day aboriginal settlements in Australia. Using examples from media and research, indicate how aboriginal settlements are perceived and handled today. 
  • Transformation of the urban design in the 21st century. Using London, Hong-Kong, and New York as examples, provide an in-depth discussion of changes in the urban design. 
  • The architectural history of Seattle. Conduct research and write a proposal that will compare different architectural styles seen in Seattle. 
  • Integration of culture in environmental design. In this proposal, you can use large cities in Asia as primary examples of the synergy between culture and architecture. 
  • The architecture of residential buildings during the second half of the 20th century. Choose one or several large cities (e.g., Berlin, Miami, Kyoto) as the basis for your research. 
  • The history of Moscow Avant-Garde. Use both Soviet and modern Russian research on Avant-Garde to present the topic accurately. 
  • Use of computer visuals in architecture. 
  • Review the trends in modern furniture design. 
  • Ecology and architecture: integration of green technologies. 
  • Discuss the multiculturalism of contemporary urban architecture. 
  • The history of architecture in urban areas of the US: the study of New York. 
  • Modern city design case study. 
  • Research ways of using wood in modern architecture. 
  • Commercial architecture: aesthetics and usability. 
  • Evaluate the design of municipal buildings in the US. 
  • Creativity in postmodernist architecture. 
  • How do we integrate smart home technology into architecture? 
  • Small scale homes: a study of growing interest in small housing. 
  • Discuss the use of lighting in building design. 
  • Study innovations in structural design in the digital age. 
  • What are the implications of inclusive architecture? 
  • Sustainable architecture: recycling spaces and materials.  
  • Renewable energy in home design. 
  • Assess open concept homes for American families. 
  • Conduct a study of family homes design. 
  • Research architecture suitable for middle-class families. 

Thesis Topics in English Literature & World Literature

Was your New Year’s Resolution to re-read the 100 most influential classical works? Then you might want to consider writing a thesis in advanced higher English. Check out these engaging prompts:

  • In-depth stylistic analysis of The Trial by Franz Kafka . Explain what stylistic devices Kafka used in his story. 
  • The influence of The Hound of the Baskervilles on the development of modern detective stories. Prepare several comparisons of The Hound with modern detective stories to pinpoint its influence. 
  • The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum : women characters in Heinrich Böll’s fiction. Using the book mentioned in the topic, examine how the German writer depicted women in his prose. 
  • Analysis of the terrorism portrayal in modern journalism: The New York Times case study. Pick several articles related to terrorism published in NYT and describe in detail how it is portrayed (keywords, images, etc.).
  • A formalist approach to Dostoevsky: analysis of The Brothers Karamazov . Provide the reader with an explanation of the formalist approach and use it to analyze the novel. 
  • The depiction of sexual violence in young adult literature. Pick several YA novels published in the 2010s for your research. 
  • The use of repetition in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot . Analyze how repetition is used for emphasis and other effects in the play. 
  • Feminism and gender in Margaret Atwood’s Cats’ Eye . Review the book from a feminist point of view and discuss how gender issues are presented in the book. 
  • How does Phillip K. Dick use intertextuality in The Man in the High Castle ? Find as many references to other literary and historical sources as you can and elaborate how Dick uses them and for what aims. 
  • The influence of Steppenwolf on postmodern American literature: the contribution of Herman Hesse. Using Steppenwolf as the primary source, discuss what characteristics common for postmodern literature Hesse uses in this novel. 
  • How does racism manifest itself in classical literature? 
  • Discuss the oppression of women in The Handmaid’s Tale.  
  • Gender roles in The Miniaturist and A Doll’s House : a comparison. 
  • Moral ambiguity in David Harrower’s works. 
  • Literary techniques in the Perks of Being a Wallflower.  
  • The setting in The Murder in the Rue Morgue and its influence on the detective genre. 
  • Review the tropes first introduced in The Moonstone .  
  • Study the depictions of police’s work in Skinner’s Rule . 
  • Assess the influence of Victorian Gothic horror on popular culture. 
  • Social criticism in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  
  • Analyze cyberpunk elements in Gibson’s Neuromancer .  
  • Themes of social equality in modern literature. 
  • Research the views on Native American writers in Nature’s Poem.  
  • Critique of contemporary children’s literature . 
  • Gothic elements in Charlotte Bronte’s works . 
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dracula : a comparative analysis. 
  • Terror in The Picture of Dorian Gray .  
  • Examine the connection of mental health and society in J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye . 
  • Magical realism and romanticism in Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.  
  • How does the cut-up technique contribute to the narration in William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch?  

Criminal Justice Thesis Topics

Are you a forensic science student who prefers research to actual police work? In that case, a dissertation in criminology is a great idea. This way, you can work on preventing crime from the comfort of your desk.

  • Recidivism rates among underage Latino first-time offenders: a quantitative study. Research a group of first-time offenders of a particular age (e.g., 18 to 25 years old).
  • A comparative analysis of the incidents of gun violence in the USA during the 2010s. Choose several prominent examples and compare them to each other.
  • Troublesome statements: the role of witnesses in potentially false accusations. In this dissertation, you can write about the unreliability of statements, using documented examples.

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  • The patterns of drug trafficking in Germany’s largest cities: a case study of Berlin and Hamburg. Analyze the changes in these patterns in the 2010s.
  • Money laundering and corruption in the United States in the 21st century. Using media reports, create dissertation research about corruption schemes.
  • Mental health and self-perception of second-time sex offenders . Determine if their self-perception changes.
  • School shootings in the USA: causes and risk factors . Using recent and historical data, analyze the cases of mass shootings.
  • The influence of cyberbullying on suicide rates among Australian adolescents (13-17 years old). You can base your dissertation report on various research on cyberbullying published in Australian scholarly journals.
  • Child abuse and its influence on serial killer’s perception of victims. Discuss interconnections between abuse and potential sadistic behavior.
  • The history of forensic interviewing in the USA. Present research and practices that contributed to its development.
  • Use of artificial intelligence for forensic investigations.
  • Criminal behavior at a young age and its implications for the future.
  • Drug use: pattern of recurring arrests among American youth.
  • Incarcerated parents: the impact on the child’s perception of crime.
  • Research the reforms of the US criminal justice system.
  • Propose strategies for improving the juvenile detention system.
  • Police officer’s abuse of power: analysis of reports.
  • Race and criminal justice: the case of War on Drugs .
  • What are the possible alternative forms of incarceration?
  • A study of public perception of modern serial killers .
  • Training of sniffer dogs.
  • The implications of eyewitness testimony.
  • Abuse in Hollywood: a case study of Harvey Weinstein.
  • Bias against African Americans during investigations.
  • A study of college violence.
  • Legal implications of medical marijuana legalization .
  • Ethics of criminal justice : the problem of confidentiality.
  • Review the challenges linked with domestic violence investigations.
  • Suggest ways of preventing crimes in schools .
  • Gender bias during crime examinations.

Geography Thesis Topics

If you enjoy unveiling Earth’s secrets, this section is for you. Here you’ll find geography dissertation ideas ranging from studies of movement to regional phenomena.

  • Species that became extinct in the 20th century: qualitative research. Address the human influence on various species .
  • Current issues in the exploration of Arctic. Discuss difficulties and specifics of such explorations.
  • A comparison of urban back gardens in the USA and the UK. You can compare their design and other features (for example, vegetation used for decoration).
  • The causes and outcomes of floodings in the USA in the 2010s. Address climate change as one of the leading causes.
  • Prevention of ecosystem changes with modern technology. Provide various examples of how technology is used to sustain ecosystems.
  • Changes in travel destinations in the 2000s: a comparison of the USA and Canada. Demonstrate what changes in preferences were documented in these countries and show what destinations were especially popular.
  • The perception of environmentally friendly technologies and their impact on the environment by citizens of large metropolitan areas: a case study of Miami. Explain how various projects based on environmentally friendly technologies are launched in Miami.
  • A negative impact of global warming on weather conditions in Iceland. Discuss how tourism in Iceland is affected by these changes.
  • The influence of industrialization on climate change. Address the causes of climate change, using industrialization and its consequences as a basis.
  • Compare Greenfield and Brownfield land use for construction projects.
  • Investigate the significance of red salmon for Kamchatka.
  • The social impact of climate change : a study of migration patterns.
  • The potential of community gardening in underprivileged neighborhoods.
  • Study the link between the strengths of hurricanes and climate change.
  • What can be done to stop gentrification in your community?
  • Evaluate coastal tourism, its effect, and implications.
  • The impact of reservoir locations on water quality .
  • How did industrialization affect the development of Chicago?
  • Study soil pollution levels in your community area.
  • Conduct an analysis of air quality in your city.
  • Eco-tourism , its history, and perspectives.
  • Differences in soil chemistry across several locations.
  • The impact of organic farming on water quality in your area.
  • Compare the sustainability of organically vs. conventionally farmed tomatoes.
  • Research air pollution levels and data on airborne illnesses in your area.
  • What’s the relationship between rock climbing and cliff vegetation?
  • Study the changes in soil fertility upon volcanic eruption.
  • How does the Chernobyl disaster continue to affect the surrounding area?
  • Determine the patterns of floods in a particular area of your choice.

Sociology Thesis Ideas

Sociology studies how humans live together. A dissertation is a great way to dive deeper into a particular subject. You can get as specific as your heart desires! Check out our sociology thesis topics:

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  • Single parent stigma and its influence on family’s quality of life and parent-child relationships . Present examples from recent research that illustrate how the dynamics of these relationships change over time due to stigma.
  • Women empowerment in Saudi Arabia in 2000s: breakthroughs and challenges. Discuss how this empowerment affected legislation and women’s rights .
  • Long-term alcohol addiction and self-perception in young adults. With the help of research, demonstrate whether self-perception of these adults transforms significantly due to their addiction.
  • Adoption and its influence on parent-child relationships. Present and discuss challenges that such families face.
  • Comparison of traditions related to family dinners in the USA and the UK. What specific differences are there and how can they be explained?
  • Influence of the emo culture on suicide rates in high school students. Address the influence of such cultures on adolescents’ behavior.
  • The rates of secularization in elderly individuals living in urban and rural areas. Compare the rates and explain why they are different.
  • Influence of forced outing on transgender individuals and concomitant changes in their quality of life. Explain the effects of forced outing and why this impact is dangerous.
  • Comparison of anti-nuclear movements in Germany and Japan in the 21st century. Explain in detail what differences and similarities are prominent.
  • Performance rates of teenagers in schools in low-income neighborhoods: a case study of Boston schools. When writing your dissertation proposal, consider various factors (poverty, limited access to technology, etc.) that affect performance rates of these teenagers.
  • Black Lives Matter movement’s immediate impact on racism.
  • Research causes of minority bias in the US.
  • Affirmative action and its impact on the perception of varied racial groups.
  • The impact of religion on people’s attitudes towards race.
  • Review the challenges of the US LGBT community.
  • Bias towards transgender studies.
  • Social activism against gender discrimination in the 21st century.
  • The impact of social assistance in schools on a child’s future.
  • Research the changes in education after WWII.
  • Analyze scholarship policies in the US.
  • The impact of student debt on youth’s perception of education in the US.
  • Outcomes of public vs. private schools: a comparison.
  • Research the preservation of culture in American immigrant families.
  • Applying Marx’s conflict theory to social justice movements.
  • Assess changing trends in social norms in a country of your choice.
  • Attitudes towards prejudice among people of different social backgrounds.
  • Comparison of women’s rights in Western and Middle Eastern countries.
  • The impact of capitalism on one’s social values.
  • How does capitalism benefit society across multiple post-soviet countries?
  • Compare healthcare access in autocracies vs. democracies.

💡 Dissertation Topics for Ph.D. students

Below you’ll find a list of excellent dissertation ideas in different fields of study. They are more difficult than thesis topics and require more research. Jump to the section that interests you and find the topic that suits you best! But first:

What Makes a Good Ph.D. Topic?

Usually, universities would expect your dissertation to be original and relevant in the field of the research. Moreover, it would be worthwhile if it has the potential to make a change.

This checklist will help you see whether you’ve made the right choice. Your dissertation topic is good, if:

  • You have an opportunity to research it fully.  You need to know that there is enough data and a theoretical basis. Do some prior research to understand if you will be able to answer all your dissertation questions.
  • You can fill the gaps in the existing knowledge.  Your research matters if you can provide some new information that contributes to the field of your studies.
  • Your dissertation title is catchy.  Try to make it worth the reader’s attention from the first glance.
  • You can evaluate how much time you need.  It is vital to understand all the stages of your research and the challenges you might face to plan your work.
  • You know the subject well.  You will need to explore your topic in-depth. It’s good to have some previous knowledge about it. Starting the research from the very basics will take more time and effort.
  • You have enough resources to investigate it.  Both time and money matter in this case. You need to do high-quality research and meet your deadlines.

Dissertation Topics in Education

Learning is a lifelong experience, and the importance of schools cannot be overestimated. Research in this area is critical to improving education standards. Have a look at these topic ideas to get inspired:

  • Gamification as tools for enhancing learning abilities: theory and practice . Many studies have been conducted on different learning approaches. For young learners, engagement is as critical as the outcome. Therefore, this work focuses on gamification and its effect on children’s improvisation and learning. 
  • Studying the connection between classroom quality and the learning outcome in kindergarten . Children are strongly affected by their environment, especially when it comes to learning. This dissertation topic example is all about looking into different classroom settings and their effect on kids’ learning outcomes. 
  • Evaluating the process of implementation of inclusive education in the US. Professionals argue that inclusive education carries multiple benefits for all students (not just those with limited abilities.) However, it is quite a challenging process to implement all the changes. 
  • Factors influencing the decision to transfer to the higher education abroad . In this work, you can focus on finding out the reasons for such a decision. Why do undergraduate students choose to leave their home country? What are the most important factors? 
  • Online education vs. traditional face-to-face lessons for adult learners: compare and contrast. Online courses have their own benefits. However, would adult learners prefer them to in-person classrooms? How does it affect their learning and motivation? 
  • How does working as a taxi driver and navigating change a person’s brain? 
  • To what extent can reality television be disempowering for students?  
  • The role of homework in the lives of immigrant adolescents. 
  • The impact of teachers’ shocking behaviors in fostering students’ creativity. 
  • The determinants of flossing behavior in college students . 
  • The classification of drinking styles in the college-age population. 
  • Integrating the computer into the curriculum: why you can’t simply plug it in. 
  • The preconditions for serious music-making avocation in computer science students. 
  • Adult graduate difficulties with learning new technologies. 
  • The effect of academic performance on the health of students . 
  • The impact of mathematic coaching on students’ self-esteem . 
  • The influence of internet on the emotional maturity of students. 
  • Academic achievements of students who decide to become teachers. 
  • Is it true that students are more likely to do homework given by good-looking professors? 
  • Informal learning in rural areas via social networks. 
  • Educational blogging for professors: the social networks of educationists. 
  • Does learning existentialism cause suicides? 
  • Is it possible to reduce summer learning loss without students’ consent? 
  • Can we reject classical math and do it at the same time? Yes, we can. 
  • What are major career prospects with a degree in Liberal Arts ? 
  • Using electronic games in museums as an effective education tool. 

Business Dissertation Topics

There are many things a business administrator should keep in mind. Finances, marketing, and development are just the tip of the iceberg. So, the choice of topics is practically endless. Check out this selection to narrow down the possibilities:

  • How are business strategies adjusted to the globalization process? Small businesses’ perspective. Globalization means huge and profitable opportunities. To seize them, all businesses and companies should make some changes in their strategies. Investigate what would be the best action plan for them. 
  • Cultural changes and the effect of feedback in an international company: a case study. Choose a multinational company. Study the impact of feedback (both from the employees and customers) on its organizational culture changes. What reaction does it provoke in the company? 
  • Human resource management approaches in international non-profit organizations. In this study, look into the strategies HR managers apply in non-profit organizations. One of their main responsibilities is to monitor the performance of the employees. However, at the international level it becomes more difficult. 
  • Leadership and organizational culture in making decisions about business strategies. In this research, you study the influence of the organizational culture on leaders. In the case of trying to initiate changes in the business strategy, how is a leadership decision taken? 
  • The role of “ foreign direct investment ” in companies in developing countries: a case study of a large business. For this paper, pick a suitable company first. Aim for large companies in developing countries. Then conduct research and find out what strategies they have for foreign direct investments. 
  • COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on workplace management in small businesses . The COVID-19 pandemic caused many companies to readjust their HR policies. For instance, they allowed their staff to work from home. Research this phenomenon in your thesis. 
  • Social entrepreneurship for large companies. If you want to make the world a better place, social entrepreneurship is a suitable method. We usually associate it with small start-ups. But what about large companies? With this topic, you can research how the concept works for big firms. 
  • How innovation affects demand in technology-driven businesses. This MBA dissertation topic combines business studies and technology . Examine how companies create products for establishing markets. 
  • Management strategies in times of COVID-19: a case study . The pandemic has forced companies to use Zoom , Skype, and messaging instead of regular meetings. Review how executives can apply traditional management models in the digital space. 
  • The impact of burnout on employees . Interview staff members and determine how burnout affects performance. Include the name of a company or industry in your dissertation’s title. 
  • Tourism management in the Middle East. 
  • How do natural disasters impact the demand for essentials?  
  • Compare and contrast Asian and American leadership styles . 
  • How does fluctuation in the stock market impact business operations? 
  • The art of delegation : how to do it effectively and when to avoid it. 
  • How can one efficiently lead a company when unforeseen circumstances occur? 
  • What factors determine employees’ work satisfaction?  
  • Study the link between a company’s success and innovation . 
  • What can business managers do to bridge the gap between generations ? 
  • Research the benefits of global and local brand management. 
  • What causes changes in Chinese business culture? 
  • Choose a small business and analyze its strategy.  
  • Organizational changes : what factors impact transformation? 
  • Internet banking : barriers to usage. 
  • Create a business plan that is focused on a specific issue. 
  • Conditions necessary for quality management in MNCs. 
  • The role of E-commerce for food retailers. 
  • Conduct a case study with the purpose to analyze one or several social phenomena. 
  • Workplace ethics in small businesses.  
  • The phenomenon of remote working and how it is affecting businesses. 
  • Comparison of Generation X and the Millennial Generation . 
  • Managing the Millennial Generation. 
  • Current trends in consumer behavior in relation to advertising. 
  • Analyze which countries margin financing is effective and why. 
  • Analyze the macroeconomic factors affecting exchange rates. 
  • An empirical analysis of the impact of organizational performance and leadership . 

Law Dissertation Topics for Ph.D. Students

Legal science is not dull as one may think. It’s crucial to evaluate laws at any point in time. Do they fit the current norms? Does something or someone need more protection than before? If you want to garnish your legal education with a Ph.D., here are some topic suggestions:

  • Trust law: the circumstances when fully secret and half-secret trusts are necessary. Find out what are the principles that dictate the enforcement of the trusts. There are specific circumstances that determine whether creating trusts would be adequate and relevant. Make sure to take them into consideration.
  • Termination of employment in case of employees tested positive for HIV/AIDS. Your task would be to conduct research and see how HIV/AIDS employees are influenced in the workplace. The most common issues are discrimination and termination of employment.
  • The influence of the Global War on Terrorism on international criminal law. When the US launched the campaign against terrorism in 2001, international criminal law faced some changes. You can study the most significant changes that have been made.
  • The level of effectiveness of the US copyright law in relation to the rights of users. It’s an empirical research topic that would require collecting lots of data. Try to find some cases when the users were left cheated by copyright law. It would bring some diversity to the research and make it more interesting.
  • Study the effect that the US immigration policy has on education right now. Educational institutions are also required to adjust to changes connected with immigration. Different requirements and different curriculums are implemented to fit their needs. You are about to look into this issue.
  • Select a country and analyze its worker protection laws. Compare the rights and obligations of employees in two countries of your choice. What potential improvements can solidify employee rights ?
  • Protection of minorities, legal precedents. Minority rights are becoming more and more relevant. This topic allows you to discuss how laws can be changed to reflect it.
  • Regulation of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies allow for anonymity. Besides, they are not regulated by any state. In your thesis, you can analyze cryptocurrency regulations.
  • Fake news : legal responsibility. Review how the United States legal system approaches disinformation. Focus on false publications on news resources. Another possible topic is improvements to defamation laws.
  • Freedom of expression : a case during a pandemic. This topic is about false information in times of COVID-19. Examine how a state can balance freedom of expression with the spread of false information. Focus on this disease and the fake news about it.
  • Legal practices for preventing possible future pandemics.
  • Research ways of online journalism protection.
  • International law vs. the right to self-determination: comparative case studies of de facto states.
  • Review the history of fiscal laws in America.
  • Limits to freedom of expression in the US legal system.
  • Enforcing regulations concerning domestic violence .
  • Study criminal responsibility for drug possession in the US.
  • Criminalization of violence against women.
  • Review the legal framework for addressing foreign involvement in elections.
  • What was the government response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
  • Health standards for immigrant detention centers in the US .
  • Research the loopholes in the US immigration laws .
  • Birthright citizenship in the US: pros and cons.
  • 1951 Refugee Convention: is it obsolete?
  • Illegal immigrants and their rights in the US justice system.
  • How criminal laws have been impacted around the world by the war on terror .
  • Choose a country and analyze their policies on discrimination.
  • Evaluate the protection given to minority shareholders as dictated by company law.
  • Provide a critical analysis of the law of omissions liability.
  • Investigate and analyze complaints filed in the criminal justice system .
  • A critical analysis of the reform of homicide laws .
  • The morality and impact of euthanasia and how Canada sets a precedent.
  • A detailed analysis of gender and race profiling of suspects in the criminal justice system .
  • Analyze the right to bear arms relative to the context in which the law was written into The Constitution.
  • Create case studies that represent a review of criminal negligence related to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007.

Psychology Dissertation Topics

The mysterious ways of the human mind offer many research opportunities. Psychology encompasses sub-fields such as behavior and cognition. Whatever your area of expertise, you’ll undoubtedly find something interesting in the list below.

  • The current effect of the “price ending” method on the consumers’ behavior . Nowadays, everybody knows the most popular trick that shops pull to make customers buy the products. However, does understanding it make it easier to resist it? Is this psychological trap still working?
  • Burnout at the executive positions in massive US corporations: is it possible to prevent? The phenomenon of burnout is the most common issue that employees face nowadays. But there are ways to detected it at an early stage. Could they be used to predict and prevent this problem?
  • Mindfulness practices and their influence on students’ learning abilities at the top universities (e.g., Harvard). Mindfulness is proved to be extremely useful in overcoming stress and anxiety issues. However, does it affect the learning outcome of the students who study at the best universities in the world?
  • The individual struggles with gender issues and their impact on global gender inequality . Everything always starts with a small thing. For this paper, study the relation between some individual cases and the global issue. How do personal struggles contribute to the worldwide movement for justice?
  • The positive influence of irrational beliefs on mental well-being. In psychology, irrational beliefs are a set of values and opinions that people believe in despite rational evidence against them. However, what positive effect can they bring?
  • Ways of raising awareness of mental health problems. Mental health has been discussed more openly in recent years. Review how this open discussion affects views on personal mental health. As another idea for a psychology dissertation topic, research a specific illness.
  • Student burnout and ways to prevent it. Focus on the problems students face and what strategies can reduce their stress.
  • Pandemic and mental health . The COVID-19 pandemic forced many people to be in isolation from social contacts. Review the potential effects of this practice on people’s well-being. Discuss possible strategies for supporting mental health during possible future pandemics.
  • Weight, self-image, and mental health. A clinical psychology thesis can focus on the psychology behind excess weight. Discuss how weight affects a person’s perception of self. Assess implications for clinical psychologists who work with overweight patients.
  • Social media vs. reality: normalizing real people. Review current efforts of social media accounts in normalizing body image . Explain how this can reverse the damage that edited photos have on mental health.
  • How does gender bias affect mental health in America?
  • What factors affect women’s self-esteem in the workplace?
  • Specifics of transgender mental health.
  • Research the effect of immigration on mental well-being.
  • Study the psychology of racism and ways to combat it.
  • What distinguishes the mental health of minorities in the US?
  • Research the psychology of dissent in the Soviet Union.
  • The connection between stress and overeating: latest developments.
  • Assess the role of social support for losing weight .
  • What’s the role of prejudice in politics?
  • Assess the role of endurance in combating stress .
  • Developing hardiness: strategies and exercises.
  • What’s the effect of emotional resilience on mental health?
  • Helping teenagers overcome stress via relaxation techniques .
  • Look into the perception of anger and its effect on mental health.
  • Understanding the function of the prefrontal cortex in terms of how it is connected to other parts of the brain.
  • Understanding how the prefrontal cortex makes us human.
  • How emotional and anxiety disorders are connected to social cognition that is impaired.
  • Analyze the ability of an MRI to determine brain function.
  • Analyze the relationship between emotional and episodic memory.
  • A comparison of the plasticity of the child’s brain and the adult brain.
  • Analyze the continued relevance of Piaget’s theory of cognitive development.
  • An in-depth look at the social intuitionist model and how it relates to the emotion and reason involved in moral judgement.
  • How the evolution of the human brain can be understood in terms of children cognitive development .
  • A demonstration of the multi-dimensional nature of schizophrenia.
  • How rational thinking and impulse contribute to decision-making.
  • A systematic analysis and review of the psychology of religion.
  • How exposure to nature affects happiness.

Nursing Dissertation Topics

A nurse’s work is hard. Unfortunately, they rarely get the credit they deserve. With a Ph.D., you could become an advocate on the problem. Or you could concentrate on optimizing their work environments.

  • Exercise, changes in lifestyle , and self-tracking for diabetes prevention and management. Center your research on different lifestyle changes (exercise, reduced smoking and drinking) and explain how and why it prevents diabetes .
  • Influence of stigma related to HIV/AIDS on representatives of ethnic minorities: a case study of Native Americans. Using research, provide compelling evidence of how Native Americans are stigmatized and discriminated against.
  • Chronic illness management at home: recommended evidence-based practices. Using current nursing and other professional research, discuss how adults and seniors manage chronic and autoimmune diseases.
  • Depression and stress and their relation to preterm births in first-time mothers. Collect several articles about the issue and using their conclusions show how depression causes preterm births.
  • Burnout in nurses: factors that cause it and practical solutions for prevention . Present outcomes of burnout (decreased performance and concentration, subpar workplace environment) and illustrate how it affects hospitals on a more significant scale.
  • Public health: community-based measures to prevent morbid obesity. In this research, you can list various methods that include exercise and education and explain in detail how they prevent the spread of obesity.
  • Risk factors and injury rates in psychiatric nursing. Present statistics on different types of injuries in psychiatric institutions .
  • Cultural diversity and inclusion in nursing education . When researching diversity, make sure you are using examples of different minority groups’ perception of education.
  • Euthanasia legislation in the USA: ethical issues and debates . Provide a thoughtful discussion of ethical and legal issues surrounding euthanasia.
  • Organizational climate and its influence on perceived patient safety . Your study should focus on the importance of positive relationships between staff members, and its influence on the prevention of medical errors.
  • Dietary practices and their influence on the quality of life in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. SLE is a complex disease that requires a multidisciplinary approach. Describe nutritional research approaches to SLE.
  • Fluoride application training in dental nursing.
  • Describe the specifics of nursing care for patients with diabetes .
  • Assess gender disparity in nursing research.
  • Study nurse burnout prevalence in neonatal care in your community.
  • Nursing staff advising DASH diet: effects on patients’ blood pressure.
  • What are the challenges of asthma management for nurses?
  • Nursing for autistic patients : the best strategies.
  • Racial differences in nursing care: a case study.
  • Evaluate nurses’ role in pain management for patients with dementia.
  • Study the connection between nursing staff turnover and burnout.
  • How is the role of a nurse changing in the modern healthcare system?
  • Review nursing practices for managing elderly patients.
  • A holistic approach to obesity management in nursing.
  • Describe the specifics of nursing in rural areas .
  • Physical activity and mental health: a nursing case study.
  • Discuss nursing pain relief strategies for general care.
  • Determine the ethical implications of nursing malpractice.
  • Nurses consultations for spinal cord injuries .
  • Nursing in an urban setting : challenges and prospects.
  • What are the specifics of pain management in obstetrical nursing?

Marketing Dissertation Topics

Good marketing is what made you buy that product you didn’t know you needed. Marketing needs plenty of scientific research for it to be successful. You can contribute to this effort with one of the following topic ideas:

  • Compare and contrast the effectiveness of traditional and digital marketing in the last five years. Marketing moves towards digital campaigns more and more every year. Though, traditional marketing still exists, of course. Your task is to compare every aspect of these two types in the span of the previous five years.
  • The specifics of the relationship marketing and its influence on the loyalty rates among customers: a case study of fast-food chains. Take a few fast-food chains to conduct this research. Then analyze their relationship marketing strategies. There should be a correlation between the methods they use and the loyalty of their customers.
  • Direct marketing and artificial intelligence: how do companies use it? The industry of marketing couldn’t have missed the opportunity to use the latest technologies for their benefit. Artificial intelligence helps some companies gain a competitive advantage. Find out what those benefits are.
  • Collectivism and individualism : how does culture influence supermarkets? There are some apparent differences in cultures when it comes to shopping. Each shop owner has to implement a specific marketing strategy for targeting the customers. Work on aspects that make those strategies successful in different cultures.
  • The strategies that make personalized products sell effectively. Everybody loves customized products, but it seems like not everybody is willing to share their data to get it. Therefore, businesses are forced to work it out. This research looks into marketing tools and methods they use to sell personalized products.
  • Influence of online shopping apps on impulsive buying behavior . Using prominent examples such as Amazon and eBay , elaborate how apps affect customer’s decision to purchase an item through recommendations.
  • Product design and its impact on consumer’s purchase decision. When preparing this thesis topic, consider using examples of large corporations such as Apple or IKEA to prove your point.
  • Customer loyalty : the importance of satisfaction and loyalty programs. Conduct research using available surveys on satisfaction and draw conclusions from these statistics.
  • Ethnic differences and their impact on brand perception. This research can review the types of products that target White or Black Americans specifically.
  • Preferences for green products: analysis of the income’s influence on consumer decisions. Compare what households are more likely to prefer green products.
  • Shopping habits of Muslim consumers in the USA: qualitative research. Here, you will need to do research by engaging Muslim Americans in your study; you can use interviews or surveys for this topic.
  • Social media and its impact on the promotion of small business. Make sure your reader understands how social media can promote or negatively present small business through customers’ comments.
  • Does globalization make preferences of customers from different socioeconomic backgrounds similar? Interview people from lower, middle, and upper class and discuss the preferences of American households.
  • Social media usage by international companies: a case study of Electronic Arts. Study the influence of customers’ reviews and opinions on EA’s sales.
  • Consumers’ perception of transaction safety in online shopping applications. Discuss how consumers learn to differentiate between reliable and unreliable apps for payments .
  • Marketing high tech products: a case study.
  • Study changing marketing techniques during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The future of big data uses in marketing.
  • Conduct a comparative analysis of offline vs. online advertising .
  • Explore the relationship between marketing strategies and sales.
  • Holiday marketing strategies in the 21st century.
  • Is marketing tailed towards model devices effective?
  • Study the rise of influencer marketing .
  • Review the newest trends in digital advertising .
  • Brand management in 2020: an analysis.
  • Assess the effect of advertising on consumer behavior.
  • Targeted ads: are they efficient?
  • How did marketing change during the COVID-19 pandemic?
  • Assess brand management’s contribution to consumer loyalty .
  • Impact of social media marketing on brand perception.
  • Google Analytics insights for marketing campaigns.
  • Marketing for minority populations.
  • Youtube marketing: the effectiveness of videos for brand promotion.
  • How does partnering with influencers impact brand perception?
  • Social influencer marketing for SMEs.

History Dissertation Topics

History is written not only by the victors but also by history students. Your dissertation can shine a light on understudied cultures. Or perhaps you want to focus on how a specific event impacted the world. Find inspiration among the following dissertation questions and ideas:

  • The historical context of the creation of Guernica by Pablo Picasso . War wasn’t the only inspiration for Pablo Picasso during the process of making Guernica . In this paper, you would look into the environment of the artist and try to identify what else brought him to the creation of this masterpiece.
  • Bismarck and radical nationalism: what influenced the political state? For this research, you would study the underlying reasons for German Nazism before the beginning of World War II. What factors gave it a start when Otto von Bismarck was in charge?
  • The rise of Bollywood: historical context. This paper focuses on the success of Indian Bollywood movies in the 1930s. You would need to look into the events that made those movies famous in the whole world. Don’t forget to mention the social views of Bollywood movies.
  • The influence of secrecy in the technology intervention during World War II. You would study the role that the US Patent and Trademark Office played in the development of special war technology . Secrecy helped to keep it away from the public and enemies. How did it influence the war?
  • Italian prisons in the 19th century: how were they managed after Unification? This paper would require you to study documentation on the management system prison used in Italy at the beginning of the 19th century. You should try to find some practices that might have been socially harmful.
  • Gender perceptions in the Middle Age. When preparing the dissertation, use both historical and literary sources to show how gender was presented.
  • Secularization in the American South during the post-war period. Provide a detailed discussion of secular societies forming in the South after the 1940s.
  • Representation of Jewish history in contemporary art: a case study of Art Spiegelman’s Maus . Using the comic book as the primary basis, explain how Jewish culture and history are presented there.

Quote by Elie Wiesel: “In Jewish history there are no coincidences.”

  • The history of medieval warfare and its influence on Modern Era warfare . When constructing this thesis, make sure you are using both historical and current research to provide details.
  • American-British relations during the Cold War Era . Explain how the Cold War Era changes these relations and what has affected it the most.
  • Germany’s foreign relations during the 1980s. Present a detailed overview of different foreign relations (e.g., with the USA, the USSR, the UK) Germany had during this period.
  • The financial crisis in the USA in 2007-2009. Using research and media sources, explain to the reader how the crisis is still affecting the USA.
  • The development of Austrian identity after World War II. In this case, you can use both historical evidence and Austrian literature that provides personal opinions of writers and artists on the issue.
  • The impact of the Great Depression on the American involvement in the World War II. To show your understanding of historical processes, demonstrate how the Great Depression affected the USA’s perception of WWII.
  • How I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb: the development of nuclear warfare in the 20th century. Discuss the development of nuclear warfare in the USA and the USSR.
  • What was the role of China in the Cold War?
  • How did the Spanish Flu affect the pandemics that followed it?
  • Determine the influence of the stock market crash in 1929 on the World Wars.
  • First Battle of Marne’s impact on the outcomes of WWI.
  • Tool usage and creation: Aztecs vs. Mayas.
  • How did the enlightenment philosophy impact the development of the natural sciences?
  • The effects of Christianization in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Assess the role of slavery in the US civil rights movement.
  • Study the history of LGBT rights establishment in the US.
  • What are the origins of slavery in Africa?
  • The Moon Landing and its impact on space exploration.
  • Explore the role of the Bible in Jewish history.
  • The US’ involvement in WWII.
  • The aftermath of WWII: major historical events.
  • Research the link between the Mexican-American War and the Gold Rush .
  • Cold War insights: lessons from the Suez Crisis.
  • Explore the role of democratization in the Soviet Union collapse.
  • Global cooperation in early modern Europe.
  • Study the legacy of the arms race.
  • How did the First Ladies influence life in the 20th century America?

Dissertation Topics in Management

Companies and employees alike benefit from well-thought-out management strategies. So, a thesis in management has the potential to improve work environments even further. Kickstart your research by choosing one of the following topics:

  • Ecotourism in Canada: issues and trends in small business. Explain issues that arise in ecotourism with climate change.
  • Management ethics: how social media affects employees’ privacy and organizational climate. Present examples of negative and positive influence.
  • Leadership styles : a comparison of democratic and autocratic leadership. Discuss what leadership style should be chosen to rule various companies, depending on their business plan.
  • Political risk and its influence on emergency management . Explain how political crises affect and shape emergency management.
  • Cultural diversity and its impact on employees’ satisfaction and commitment. Show what advantages and disadvantages there are in cultural diversity.
  • Economic growth and unemployment rates in Australia during the 1990s: a historical perspective. Explain the causes of economic growth and unemployment.
  • Challenges in human resources management working with millennials: qualitative research. Discuss what particular challenges HR managers face and how they can be addressed.
  • The significance of organizational routines in international corporations: a case study of Google. Conduct research on the importance of routine and its impact on performance.
  • Computer skills and management: the effectiveness of computerized management information system in rural areas. Describe how digital management can be effectively applied in companies working in rural areas.
  • The history of digital rights management in the USA. Present the changes in the field during the 1990s-2010s.
  • Analyze the best leadership styles for SMEs.
  • Examine the changes entrepreneurship underwent in the past decades.
  • How do leadership styles relate to work satisfaction ?
  • Overview of business negotiation methods using technology.
  • Ways of integrating corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices.
  • Discuss the specifics of airline companies’ management .
  • Choose a theory of motivation in the workplace and make a case study on it.
  • Study change management in SMEs in times of a crisis.
  • Managing diverse workforce: a qualitative analysis.
  • Use of employee voice in US companies.
  • Research the relationship between the organization’s goals and a manager’s behavior.
  • What are the best current practices in public administration ?
  • Applying strategic human capital principles in practice.
  • The study of female CEOs in a country of your choice.
  • Employees’ perception of change management : a quantitative analysis.
  • A study of employees’ resistance to change.
  • What’s the correlation between a CEO’s leadership traits and employee motivation ?
  • Workplace risk management : a study of psychosocial hazards.
  • Conduct a quantitative study of the gender pay gap for CEOs.
  • Research the relationship between management style and employee productivity .

Qualitative Dissertation: Ideas for Proposals

If you want your thesis to be more practical, you’ve come to the right section. Common approaches for qualitative dissertations include researching case studies, surveys, or ethnographies. Because of this, fieldwork will be an integral part of your doctorate journey.

  • A comparison of teaching techniques that targeted children with autism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Provide a detailed overview of techniques and explain how research affected them.
  • The development of cognitive-behavioral therapy and its effectiveness in patients with eating disorders . Present the history of CBT and use recent research to demonstrate its effectiveness.
  • Ageism and sexism in international organizations of the fashion industry. Describe how the fashion industry defines what it means to be “young and beautiful.”
  • Addressing sexual harassment at the workplace : the influence of organizational policies on targets’ decision to file a complaint. Explain what policies can support the target and what can prevent such decision.
  • Strategies to eliminate bias in self-evaluation reports of employees. Using research in HRM, outline the best strategies that are currently used to avoid bias .
  • Post-cancer therapy: issues and trends. Present and discuss various trends, the research behind them, and the effectiveness of different types of therapy.
  • A family history of abuse and its influence on drug use in adults. Explain how abuse can provoke addiction in the future.
  • The importance of trusting doctor-patient relationships on patient’s medication adherence and management of a healthy lifestyle. Describe how such relationships negatively or positively affect a patient’s decision to take medicine as prescribed.
  • Barriers to the acquisition of social support among young men and women veterans in the USA. Discuss mental and physical disorders as major barriers.
  • Single mothers’ perceptions of breastfeeding in public places: qualitative research. Conduct interviews to find out their opinion.
  • The impact of online learning on student’s academic performance.
  • A study of the youths’ perception of learning smartphone applications.
  • Research the issue of gender bias in college education.
  • Student’s perception of the mental health support and impact on campus.
  • Perceptions of charter school education in the 21 century.
  • Discuss homeschooling and its effect on a child’s socialization.
  • What’s the impact of cyberbullying on teenagers’ mental health?
  • How inmates perceive alternative forms of incarceration.
  • Gun violence from the perspective of victims.
  • Research bias towards video games as an art form.
  • In what ways are minorities disadvantaged in America?
  • Evaluate cooking as a therapeutic exercise.
  • Assess the link between a principal’s leadership style and the school’s rating.
  • The effect of online counseling on patients’ mental health.
  • Perception of mental health stigma among students.
  • How does gig economy re-define work?
  • The implications of freelancing in the 2020s.
  • Opinions about a 6-day work week in your community.
  • Assess the process of adaptation to working from home .
  • Conduct a research study of views on the BLM movement outside the US.

Quantitative Dissertation Proposal Topics

Some scholars just love working with data. Are you one of them? Then you’ll probably enjoy quantitative research. If you’re into finding patterns and making predictions, here are some enticing topics:

  • A study of a major city’s livability index. Choose a city and assess whether it’s well-designed or not.
  • A quantitative study of biofilms in technology. Discuss methods of using biofilms in technology. Include a list of recent advances and new tools.
  • A quantitative study of teachers’ perception of online learning . This topic prompts you to use an evaluation scale.
  • An assessment of a link between product reviews and intention to purchase. Study the effect online reviews have on potential customers.
  • Immigration and its connection to crime statistics . Analyze data on immigration to the US and the number of violent crimes. Determine the relationship between the two phenomena.
  • The relationship between obesity and occupation. Assess the BMIs of participants of different professions. Then, test the results for a correlation and discuss its implications.
  • A relationship between nurses’ knowledge of diabetes management and patient satisfaction. Assess the nurses’ knowledge about diabetes and compare the results with patient satisfaction scores. Thus, you can determine if expertise translates into better care.
  • A study of the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on SMEs financial operations. With this qualitative dissertation proposal in business and management, choose a small company. Analyze its financial data pre- and post-pandemic. Include a discussion of financial management during pandemics.
  • A study of millennials ’ pet ownership. Determine the percentage of millennials who have pets. Compare these patterns with previous generations.
  • Economic growth and urbanization. Compare the empirical data about the state of economics and the number of people living in cities.
  • Determine how urbanization affects bacterial community compositions.
  • The economic impact of immigration on SMEs.
  • Study the rates of crimes in the US in relation to nonviolent crimes.
  • How do various teaching styles affect learning?
  • Compare overconfidence in CEOs of SMEs and corporations.
  • How does inclusive language influence social behavior?
  • Assess consumers’ satisfaction with online banking in your area.
  • Evaluate crude oil price prediction methods.
  • Is there a link between smartphone use and mental illness?
  • Correlation between eyewitness identification and memory
  • What are the attitudes towards AI development among women?
  • Determine the rates of cybercrimes since the 1990s.
  • A study of the police brutality cases across the US in the last decade.
  • Correlation between education level and employment.
  • The presence of sleep disorders in mental illnesses.
  • Assess the attitudes towards medical care in the US .
  • Determine the correlation between eating disorders and physical illness.
  • Study the rates of cyberbullying among minority students.
  • How various religious groups influence politics : a game-theoretical approach.
  • Does regular exercise decrease symptoms of depression in adults?

Dissertation Topics in Educational Leadership

Educational leadership is a science focused on helping students to achieve their academic goals. It includes the motivation of staff and learners, improvement of educational programs, and creation of a healthy, productive environment in institutions. Want to dedicate your research to it? Take a look at these topic samples:

  • Fatigue among American medical students. Medical students often need to memorize and analyze big portions of information. That is why many of them don’t sleep enough, get tired quickly, and find it hard to concentrate. What can be done about it?
  • How did the COVID-19 pandemic and distance learning affect students’ motivation? Online education has multiple benefits and drawbacks. Some students might find it easier to get access to various textbooks online. Others want to return to campus. What is their motivation ?
  • Creating better learning conditions on campus : the challenges in 2022. With the increasing speed of technological progress, it is hard to catch up with the latest innovations. Explore them in your dissertation. For instance, you can focus on facilities for students with special needs .
  • How can we enhance discipline among first-year students on campus? For some younger students, it is hard to get used to living on their own. They need to accept new responsibilities, find time to take care of themselves, and organize their lives. How can we help them?
  • Development of soft skills among undergraduate students. For future employers, soft skills are as important as hard skills. That is why colleges need to pay attention to soft skills such as time management , communication, and creativity.
  • The efficiency of workshops for enhancing students’ creativity.
  • Do nutrition habits influence the studying process?
  • The importance of mental health care in high school.
  • What leadership styles are the most efficient in college communities?
  • Does the implementation of early childhood education lead to further academic success?
  • What is the role of school counseling among teenagers?
  • What psychological factors make students drop out of college?
  • Developing leadership qualities among MBA students.
  • How to help college athletes to cope with psychological and physical pressure.
  • Ways of reducing anxiety levels among criminology students.
  • Helping students to choose their majors and find a career path.
  • How to enhance communication between higher education administration and students?
  • Motivating students to succeed after graduation .
  • Why do we need psychology classes in high school?
  • How can we prevent the bullying of Latin American students in middle and high school?

✅ How to Choose a Thesis Topic: Main Steps

In case you have no idea where to start from, here is a quick guideline on how to choose a Ph.D. thesis topic:

We hope this article helped you to choose a suitable topic for your dissertation. We wish you good luck with your research!

Learn more on this topic:

  • Dissertation Critique: Examples, How-to Guide
  • The Ultimate Guide to Writing an Outstanding Dissertation
  • How to Write an Abstract: Brief Steps and Structure Example

✏️ Dissertation FAQ

While working on a dissertation, you might deal with several types of research. The main research types are primary, qualitative, quantitative, and legal. In any case, it’s the way in which a researcher studies the subject using a particular methodology.

First of all, make sure that you are personally fascinated by the subject. This is essential for any thesis, be it master’s or an undergraduate dissertation. Besides, make sure the topic is feasible and hasn’t been studies much.

A good dissertation title is the one that represents the subject under study. To state which aspect is being studied is also important. The title should include neither a hypothesis nor a conclusion: think about it as “spoilers”—nobody likes them.

Just like any paper, a great dissertation is the one that is well-organized. The topic of the paper should correspond to the title. The text should have a cohesive structure with a definite introduction, argumentative main part, and a logical conclusion.

🔗 References

  • Dissertation Topics 1961-Present: Rudgers University
  • Completed Thesis and Dissertation Topics: University of Florida
  • Current Legal Topics: Library of Congress
  • The Right Dissertation Topic: Academics.com
  • Days and Nights at the Museum…there’s a Dissertation for that!: Proquest.com
  • Dissertation Titles: University of Michigan
  • How to Pick a Master’s Thesis Topic: Medium.com
  • How to Come Up With a Thesis Topic: Gradschools.com
  • How to Choose Your Thesis Topic: Central European University
  • How Do I Choose a Thesis Topic?: Grad School Hub
  • Senior Thesis Topics: Hamilton College
  • Arizona Research Topics: Arizona State Library
  • Dissertation Proposal: Bartleby.com
  • Dissertation Guide Essay
  • How to Start Your Dissertation: 10 Top Tips: Studential.com
  • How to Write a Dissertation or Bedtime Reading for People Who do not Have Time to Sleep: Purdue University
  • A Step-By-Step Guide to Writing a Ph.D. Dissertation: ThoughtCo
  • Dissertations Guide from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
  • Developing a Thesis Statement: University of Wisconsin Madison
  • Thesis/Dissertation Writing and Editing, Formatting, and Defending: Massey University
  • Business Management Research Topics: Top Universities
  • Law Topics: Law.com
  • Psychology Topics: APA
  • Marketing Topics: Marketing Profs
  • Topics: History.com
  • Computer Science: Encyclopedia Britannica
  • Humanities: Research Topics Ideas: University of Michigan-Flint
  • Art Topics: Art UK
  • Topics: American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Nurses Topics: Medscape
  • Architecture: Research Topics: University of Washington
  • Topics in Geography: Research Gate
  • New Topics in Sociology: University of Toronto
  • Business Management Topics: The University of Maine
  • Qualitative Case Study: Science.gov
  • All Topics: Science News
  • Criminology: Science Direct
  • Topics in Literature: Sheridan College: Libguides
  • Advanced Computer Science Topics: The University of Texas at Austin
  • Application of Computer Techniques in Medicine: NIH
  • Important Leadership and Management Topics: WHO
  • Quantitative Research: University of Southern California
  • Action Research: Brown University
  • 10 Traits of Successful School Leaders: University of San Diego
  • HIST 280 Topics: Texas A&M University
  • The Relationship Between Burnout, Depression, and Anxiety: Frontiers In
  • College of Nursing: University of Missouri–St. Louis
  • All Topics: Educause
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THESIS TOPICS FOR MASTER AND BACHELOR THESIS

The go-to thesis inspiration platform to find research and thesis topic ideas for students. Find 150+ Bachelor and Master thesis topic examples below.

master thesis topic examples

IT & Computer Science

master thesis topic examples

Business & Economics

master thesis topic examples

Engineering & Technology

master thesis topic examples

Management & Leadership

master thesis topic examples

Finance & Accounting

master thesis topic examples

Sustainability & Environment

master thesis topic examples

Entrepreneurship & Innovation

master thesis topic examples

Marketing, Communication & Media

master thesis topic examples

Political Science

master thesis topic examples

Tourism & Hospitality

master thesis topic examples

Mathematics & Statistics

master thesis topic examples

Medicine & Health

master thesis topic examples

Religion & Theology

master thesis topic examples

Art & Literature

master thesis topic examples

Philosophy & Ethics

master thesis topic examples

Education & Learning

master thesis topic examples

Thesis topic ideas and examples for students

Explore good ideas and examples of thesis topics in 24 different research areas and themes. All thesis topics examples and ideas are created by students to find a Bachelor or Master thesis collaboration through Excelerate.

Ready to kickstart your thesis writing? Follow our guide on how to choose a thesis topic or find tips on choosing the perfect topic for your thesis .

master thesis topic examples

32 IT & Computer Science

Interested in the digital era of endless innovation and opportunities? Explore information technology & computer science research topics that develop algorithms, secure systems, craft user-friendly interfaces, and much more.

IT & Computer Science research topics

master thesis topic examples

18 Business & Economics

Interested in the world of business and economics, understanding what fosters and drive organizational triumphs? Explore business and economic research topics examining sustainable strategies to fuel growth and success.

Business & Economics research topics

master thesis topic examples

17 Engineering & Technology

Interested in machines, algorithms, and structures that shape industries, societies, and our lives? Browse engineering and technology research topics that merge design, creativity, and innovation toward a smarter future.

Engineering & Technology research topics

master thesis topic examples

12 Management & Leadership

Interested in human interactions, what drives change, and how to lead with impact? Explore management and leadership research topics examining how to elevate organizations through effective and impactful strategies and techniques.

Management & Leadership research topics

master thesis topic examples

7 Finance & Accounting

Curious about finance and accounting, analyzing the fusion of money and informed decision-making? Explore financial research topics examining strategies to fuel economic stability and growth.

Finance & Accounting research topics

master thesis topic examples

7 Sustainability & Environment

Interested in environmental dynamics and safeguarding our Planet? Explore research topics in environment, sustainability, and climate seeking to tackle climate change, cultivate sustainable practices, and craft greener, healthier solutions.

Sustainability & Environment research topics

master thesis topic examples

7 Entrepreneurship & Innovation

Interested in the entrepreneurial landscape, from visionary ideas to disruptive technologies? Explore entrepreneurship and innovation research topics that ignite novelty and innovation, propelling industries into the future.

Entrepreneurship & Innovation research topics

master thesis topic examples

5 Marketing, Communication & Media

Interested in the world of marketing, captivating consumers through messages that resonate and engage people? Explore marketing, communications, and media research topics delving into the art of persuasion and consumer behavior.

Marketing, Communication & Media research topics

master thesis topic examples

4 Sociology

Interested in human interactions and societal frameworks? Explore sociology research topics examining the complexity of interactions and societal dynamics, uncovering the basis of our actions.

Sociology research topics

master thesis topic examples

2 Chemistry

Interested in our universe's building blocks, unlocking the secrets of chemical compositions and reactions? Explore chemistry research topics that delve into the world of atoms and molecules.

Chemistry research topics

master thesis topic examples

2 Political Science

Interested in discovering the dynamics of power, policies, and global relations? Explore political science research topics breaking down ideologies that shape societies and nations.

Political Science research topics

master thesis topic examples

2 Tourism & Hospitality

Interested in the world of travel and leisure, culture, and top-tier hospitality? Explore tourism and hospitality research topics examining the art of crafting immersive experiences and adventures for people.

Tourism & Hospitality research topics

master thesis topic examples

Want to dive into the world of legal frameworks, unraveling the principles that shape societies and uphold justice? Explore research topics in law, understanding its pivotal role in society.

Law research topics

master thesis topic examples

1 Psychology

Interested in the depths and complexities of the human mind that shape our behaviors? Explore psychology research topics that seek to investigate and decode the drivers of our actions.

Psychology research topics

master thesis topic examples

1 Mathematics & Statistics

Interested in the language of numbers, equations, and probabilities? Explore mathematical and statistical research topics digging into real-world puzzles that unravel complex data, patterns, and problems.

Mathematics & Statistics research topics

master thesis topic examples

1 Medicine & Health

Interested in the complexities of human well-being, from cellular mechanisms to healthcare systems? Explore medicine and health research topics delving into solutions for healthier societies.

Medicine & Health research topics

master thesis topic examples

Interested in the complexities of the living world, from genes to ecosystems? Explore biology research topics that seek to enrich our understanding of medicine, conservation, and of life itself.

Biology research topics

master thesis topic examples

Interested in the intricacies of human evolution and understanding the roots of our modern world? Explore history research topics that delve deep into the events that shaped our civilization.

History research topics

master thesis topic examples

0 Religion & Theology

Interested in how the realm of faith impacts societies and individuals? Explore religion and theology research topics that seek to understand faith, examining its influence on cultures and minds.

Religion & Theology research topics

master thesis topic examples

0 Art & Literature

Interested in artistic creations and literary masterpieces, revealing the essence of human imagination and creativity? Explore art and literature research topics examining artistic landscapes and the messages behind them.

Art & Literature research topics

master thesis topic examples

0 Philosophy & Ethics

Want to dig deeper into the nature of existence, morality, and knowledge? Explore philosophy and ethics research topics that guide societies and shape ethical paradigms for humanity.

Philosophy & Ethics research topics

master thesis topic examples

0 Education & Learning

Interested in shaping minds through innovative learning journeys? Explore education and learning research topics examining educational landscapes, curricula, and technologies fostering cognitive growth and curiosity.

Education & Learning research topics

master thesis topic examples

0 Astronomy

Interesting in delving into the celestial mysteries, from stars and galaxies to the universe's grand narrative? Explore astronomy research topics on an astronomical journey to understand our universe's origin and evolution.

Astronomy research topics

master thesis topic examples

Curious about the world of taxation, shaping financial strategies, compliance, and legal frameworks? Explore tax research topics that craft strategies, ensure compliance, and dive into the rules and nuances of taxation.

Tax research topics

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How to choose a good thesis topic

Choosing a thesis topic is a difficult but essential step on your thesis journey. Your choice of topic not only determines the direction of your research but is also what needs to keep you motivated and satisfied throughout your thesis writing process.

To help you choose a good topic for your Bachelor’s or Master’s, here is our step-by-step guide on choosing a good thesis topic .

How to choose a good thesis topic - 5 essential steps

Step 1: Reflect and identify your research interests

At the beginning of your thesis journey reflect upon your research interests and personal passions .

What interesting research topics and subjects have consistently fascinated you throughout your studies? Think about your courses, readings, previous projects, and research papers that have inspired and sparked your curiosity in the past.

Use online thesis topic databases like Excelerate.dk to search for interesting topics created by other students and researchers. This way you explore new perspectives and ideas for your thesis project.

Remember, you’ll be spending a huge amount of time investigating and delving deep into your topic. It’s important that your topic genuinely excites you to keep you motivated while writing your thesis.

Step 2: Explore the current research landscape of your interest

Once you’ve identified your research topic interests, conduct a thorough literature review in your chosen research field .

Familiarise yourself with the existing research, ongoing debates and discussions, and potential gaps in the current knowledge. Look at recent publications, research paper topics, and emerging trends in the field.

This approach will not only help you gain a deeper understanding but also identify potential research questions or areas that require further exploration. Perhaps a thesis topic you could dig deeper into in your project?

Step 3: Consult with your academic supervisors and peers

By now you hopefully have a rough idea of the direction your thesis project is going. Discuss your research ideas and initial thoughts with your academic supervisor, professors, and fellow students to receive constructive feedback.

You shouldn’t hesitate to ask your academic advisors and peers for suggestions and recommendations. Their research expertise and knowledge can give you valuable insights to help you get started with your thesis.

Step 4: Define the research goals and objectives for your thesis

It’s time to clearly outline your project’s research goals and objectives . What are the specific questions you want to answer? What is the scope of your thesis? It’s essential that you are realistic about the resources and time available for your research.

You only have 6 to 12 months to write your thesis. Ensure that your thesis topic is not too broad or too narrow. Try to strike a balance that allows you for in-depth analysis within the scope of your research.

Step 5: Consider the practicality and feasibility of your thesis topic

At this point in the process, it’s time to assess the practicality and feasibility of your chosen thesis topic.

Are the necessary resources and data available to you? Do you for example have access to libraries, databases, laboratory equipment, search materials, and archives? Consider also your methodology for collecting the data. Will you need to conduct surveys, interviews, experiments, or collect historical data?

Data collection is time-consuming. It’s crucial that you have a clear plan for your data collection so you realistically obtain the data you need within the time frame of your thesis project.

Step 6: Get your thesis topic approved and begin writing

That’s the way to go! You’re now at the final step of choosing the best thesis topic for your project.

All you have to do now is consult with your thesis supervisor to make any final adjustments and get your thesis topic approved .

We wish you the best of luck with your thesis writing. We root for you!

How to find the best topic for your thesis

What is the best topic for your thesis? That depends on your interests, passions, and future goals. Here are questions to consider and tips on finding the best thesis topic .

 1. Your topic should align with your personal interests

The best topic for your thesis aligns with your personal interests and passions . Pursuing research on a topic that genuinely intrigues you will keep you motivated throughout your thesis writing and lead to a more meaningful project. Think about what excites you within your field and explore research questions that pique your curiosity.

2. Your topic should be relevant and contribute to your research field

The best thesis topic is relevant to your field of study . Your research topic should address a specific issue or contribute to a broader conversation within your discipline. Pick a topic that is meaningful and has the potential to advance knowledge, challenge existing theories, or offer practical solutions to real-world problems. Think about how your research can fill a gap in current knowledge.

3. Your topic should align with your academic and career goals

The best research topic for your thesis is aligned with your future academic and/or career goals . Ask yourself: What are your short-term and long-term goals and aspirations? Your thesis project provides you with invaluable experience and expertise in your chosen research field and industry. The best topic for you is used as a stepping stone towards your future endeavours and career.

10 questions to consider to find the best thesis topic

  • What are my key interests – both personally and academically?
  • What are the areas my personal passions and academic discipline overlap?
  • What courses excited me the most during my studies?
  • What theories and concepts did I enjoy working with?
  • What do I want to avoid during my thesis writing process?
  • What resources and data do I need to obtain?
  • What research methods do I like to use?
  • What are my academic goals after my thesis?
  • What are my career goals?
  • What industry do I want to work in?

Looking for more inspiration? Check out our 8 tips for finding the perfect thesis topic .

Related articles

How to write a thesis alone, how to write the perfect thesis statement for your master’s – 6 easy steps, thesis writing in a group, thesis writing tips – a guide to writing a good thesis project, what is writer’s block and how do you overcome it, find the perfect thesis topic – 8 useful tips.

master thesis topic examples

Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to come up with a topic for your thesis

master thesis topic examples

Finding a thesis topic

The easiest method to choose a thesis topic, how to choose a thesis topic that will get you a job, ask your supervisor for help, found my thesis topic, now what, further tips on finding a thesis topic, frequently asked questions about coming up with a topic for your thesis, related articles.

Depending on the level of your studies, you will be required to come up with a topic for your thesis by yourself or to choose from a list of broad topics. In either case, you will need to:

  • Choose a specific scope
  • Narrow it down as much as you can.
  • Find a topic by considering specific debates or discussions that interest you.
  • Choose a topic based on phenomenon, point of view, and context.
  • Consider the relevance of your topic in relation to job market realities.
  • Ask your supervisor for help and guidance, as needed.

Tip: Balance your own interests with what can help you grow in your field..

In any case, you can start by asking yourself if you’ve attended any lecture where you were particularly interested in a certain subject and go from there. The following questions might help you shine a light on personal topics of interest:

  • What aspect of your studies holds a particular interest for you?
  • Was something mentioned in a discussion that you found intriguing?
  • Did you read about a theory or idea that spoke to you?

Ideas for a thesis can stem from many sources, so let your mind wander and see if anything tickles your curiosity. A thesis is a chance for you to spend some quality time with a certain aspect of your studies, so you better think of a topic that not only appeals to you but will also help you grow in your field.

Tip: Use phenomenon, point of view, and context to help you choose a balanced thesis topic.

We can all agree that choosing a topic for a thesis or any paper is one, if not the most, difficult steps in writing. However, according to Sahlman's How to Write a Master Thesis Fast , choosing a topic for your thesis is rather easy if you focus on the three following areas:

  • Point of view

Focus on a specific phenomenon as the center of your thesis. For example, "queer rights" or "climate change". Next, you choose a point of view. From what perspective do you see the phenomenon? For instance, “American culture” or “legally/ financially”. Finally, you narrow it down to a particular context, such as “from 2000 to 2010” or “small German enterprises in 2017”.

By combining the examples of these three areas, we come up with two potential thesis topics:

The development of queer rights in American culture from 2000 to 2010

Emerging climate change regulations of small German enterprises in 2017

The topic doesn't need to be perfect at first. The idea is to brainstorm with the topics that most interest you in the beginning and slowly come up with with a compelling topic you can brag about at friends’ dinner parties. Here is a list of the top 100 research paper topics for some inspiration.

Tip: Think about how your potential topic can make an intervention into your field of study.

If you will be writing extensively about a specific topic it does not only have to meet the requirements of the academia but it should also expand your professional horizons. According to the article how to pick a masters thesis topic , you should be thinking beyond the completion of your degree.

The author states "use your time as a student to make yourself as attractive to employers as possible." In order to achieve this, make sure that at least one of the three components (phenomenon, point of view and context) is of interest in your desired professional field.

For example, the thesis topics mentioned above would be of great help to people interested in working in the field of human rights and climate change. By choosing a thesis topic related to your professional future, your chances of landing your desired job will be higher, as you could bring fresh and valuable knowledge to your field.

Tip: Ask your supervisor for advice early in the process.

If your topic is still not fully shaped, then take advantage of the greater wisdom of your supervisor and ask for guidance. Arm yourself with enough possible topics and pay your supervisor a visit. Explain what’s your specific point of view and/or context of interest and, luckily, they will steer you in the right direction.

It is certainly not enough to find a topic for your thesis. You also need to make sure that it is a relevant topic and that you will be able to develop it.

  • 5 Tips for selecting a thesis topic
  • How to come up with a thesis topic
  • How to pick a Masters thesis topic

Choosing a topic for your thesis is easy if you focus on the three following areas:

Focus on a specific phenomenon as the center of your thesis. From what perspective do you see the phenomenon? Finally, narrow it down to a particular context . By combining these three areas, you can come up with several possible thesis topics.

Here is a list of the top 100 research paper topics for some inspiration.

The amount of time you need to choose a thesis topic depends on you. If you use the method we explained above, it can take very short time. If you doubt yourself too much, you might end up spending many days choosing a topic.

Here's a YouTube tutorial on How To Choose A Research Topic For A Dissertation Or Thesis (7 Step Method + Examples) by the Grad Coach.

The first person to ask for help if you have trouble finding a thesis topic is your supervisor. Take advantage of their greater wisdom and ask for guidance. Explain them your interests, and, luckily, they will steer you in the right direction.

How to give a good scientific presentation

While Sandel argues that pursuing perfection through genetic engineering would decrease our sense of humility, he claims that the sense of solidarity we would lose is also important.

This thesis summarizes several points in Sandel’s argument, but it does not make a claim about how we should understand his argument. A reader who read Sandel’s argument would not also need to read an essay based on this descriptive thesis.  

Broad thesis (arguable, but difficult to support with evidence) 

Michael Sandel’s arguments about genetic engineering do not take into consideration all the relevant issues.

This is an arguable claim because it would be possible to argue against it by saying that Michael Sandel’s arguments do take all of the relevant issues into consideration. But the claim is too broad. Because the thesis does not specify which “issues” it is focused on—or why it matters if they are considered—readers won’t know what the rest of the essay will argue, and the writer won’t know what to focus on. If there is a particular issue that Sandel does not address, then a more specific version of the thesis would include that issue—hand an explanation of why it is important.  

Arguable thesis with analytical claim 

While Sandel argues persuasively that our instinct to “remake” (54) ourselves into something ever more perfect is a problem, his belief that we can always draw a line between what is medically necessary and what makes us simply “better than well” (51) is less convincing.

This is an arguable analytical claim. To argue for this claim, the essay writer will need to show how evidence from the article itself points to this interpretation. It’s also a reasonable scope for a thesis because it can be supported with evidence available in the text and is neither too broad nor too narrow.  

Arguable thesis with normative claim 

Given Sandel’s argument against genetic enhancement, we should not allow parents to decide on using Human Growth Hormone for their children.

This thesis tells us what we should do about a particular issue discussed in Sandel’s article, but it does not tell us how we should understand Sandel’s argument.  

Questions to ask about your thesis 

  • Is the thesis truly arguable? Does it speak to a genuine dilemma in the source, or would most readers automatically agree with it?  
  • Is the thesis too obvious? Again, would most or all readers agree with it without needing to see your argument?  
  • Is the thesis complex enough to require a whole essay's worth of argument?  
  • Is the thesis supportable with evidence from the text rather than with generalizations or outside research?  
  • Would anyone want to read a paper in which this thesis was developed? That is, can you explain what this paper is adding to our understanding of a problem, question, or topic?
  • picture_as_pdf Thesis

master thesis topic examples

Communication Studies

Master's thesis topics, 2023 graduates.

Master’s Student: Ellen Alley

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Anita Vangelisti

I CAN SEE HOW YOU FEEL: FRAMEWORKS FOR EMOTION RECOGNITION AND THEIR ASSOCIATIONS WITH RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             

Master’s Student: Dewi Rosfalianti Azizah

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Stacey Sowards 

IN AND BEYOND THE GATE OF PESANTREN:  ISLAMIC FEMINISM AND FEMALE ULAMA CONTRIBUTIONS TO ISLAMIC DISCOURSE IN INDONESIA                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Master’s Student: Faith Osterberg

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Jeffrey Treem 

UNDERSTANDING CONCEPTS OF WORK THROUGH YOUNG PROFESSIONALS' NOTIONS OF WORK, CALLING, AND SELF-ADVANCEMENT IN FULLY REMOTE ROLES                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Master’s Student:  Karissa Marie Hernandez

PARENTS, PRIVACY, PARENTIFICATION: EXPLORING PARENTAL DISCLOSURES OF FAMILY SECRETS, PARENTIFICATION, PRIVACY MANAGEMENT, AND RELATIONSHIP SATISFACTION                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Master’s Student:  Vanessa Lopez

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Nik Palomares & Dr. Roselia Mendez Murillo (Co-Chair)  

HOW HISPANIC ACCENTS MAKE ONLINE DATING PROFILES MORE SOCIALLY ATTRACTIVE:  DOES INTERCULTURAL SENSITIVITY PLAY A ROLE?         

Master’s Student:  Katherine McChurch 

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Rene Dailey 

SURVIVORS' DISCLOSURE AND THEIR ABILITY TO RECALL AND COPE WITH THEIR SEXUAL ASSAULT                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Master’s Student:  Margaret E Solice

Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Johanna Hartelius 

PRIVILEGING HISTORIES: AN HOSPITABLE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE FIRST ALL-WOMAN STATE SUPREME COURT                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Master’s Student:  Yating Yang

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Master’s thesis examples: tips and ideas for your next academic paper.

  • January 1, 2023
  • Last Updated: July 21, 2023

Master's Thesis Examples

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A master’s thesis is extremely important, it represents how you ideate and your interest. Additionally, a master’s thesis also tells your employer a lot about you and what you can bring to the table. It might surprise you, but in most cases, a good master’s thesis can typically help you get the job of your dreams. However, picking a good thesis topic can be a total nightmare. So, We have compiled some tips and curated a few master’s thesis examples in this blog to make your writing process easier and more interesting. 

Before we dive into master’s dissertation examples, let’s understand what a master’s thesis is and how to write a good master’s thesis proposal. 

What Exactly Is A Master’s Thesis?

The master’s thesis is a unique piece of academic writing that enables students to delve deeply into a subject and develop an extensive report that illustrates how one‘s understanding has increased over the course of the master’s degree programme. To support the underlying argument in the thesis paper, there is a requirement for exhaustive primary and secondary research. In-depth research also helps college students gain knowledge significantly and it improves their learning skills.  

What Makes A Good Thesis Paper?

The steps to writing a good master’s thesis are as follows: 

Choose a relevant and a good topic 

There is no secret recipe for selecting the perfect thesis topic. Students can explore topics of their interest and then widely read up on that subject. Talking to other scholars who are invested in that field also significantly helps.  They should start looking for unexplored angles which will help them shed new light on the selected topic. A good topic leads to a good thesis argument and a good argument will result in an excellent thesis paper. 

Choose An Accurate Thesis Question

Make certain that your thesis questions are carefully crafted because these questions generate valuable research. It’s important to choose a unique question as your answer will add new substance to the existing body of research. A well-chosen question will also help to keep the research focused, organised, and interesting. 

Conduct Extensive Research

As a next step, you must conduct the required research to find the answer to the main question of your Master’s thesis. Do whatever it takes to accurately answer the thesis question which includes reading other research papers that already exist and carrying out surveys and interviews.  

It is not enough to just conduct research; one must also know how to format the thesis paper. The manner in which you present your report is also critical. 

Here Are The Steps To Follow While Writing A Master’s Thesis

Master's Thesis Examples

Although formatting varies by university, there are some general steps that must be followed when writing a thesis paper. The following are some basic guidelines: 

  • Introduction 

Draft a coherent introduction. The introductory section is important, as it is the first section a reader comes across and the writer must clearly establish their goal. The objectives of the dissertation and the broader hypothesis must be stated clearly in the introduction. The introduction must be drafted in an accessible tone that allows people who aren’t experts in the field to understand the context.

  • Literature review

This segment enables students to show their extensive understanding of the subject by contextualising existing texts in their specialised area. Students go over the main pieces of work, outlining any problems they find. The review of literature is basically an overview of all the previous research on your selected topic.

  • Contextualise 

After the literature review, contextualise your report. It simply means you should describe how your primary and secondary research adds to the existing body of knowledge after reviewing it. In other words, you should describe how your work advances the field. In this section, you can describe how you found information on the subject. This segment’s purpose is to show the cognitive processes that contributed to your research results. 

  • Write Your Results 

This section gives students the chance to objectively demonstrate what they discovered while conducting their research. Students could perhaps simply list the data they collected using a particular framework or research methods and arrange their findings in a comprehensible way without providing any analysis. 

  • Conclusion 

Your conclusion should explain the significance of this Master’s thesis and possibly offer a route for future researchers to take in order to continue gathering pertinent data. Additionally, after giving readers all the information they need, this portion is where students can decipher the raw data and illustrate how their research has changed their understanding of the subject or given the readers a new perspective. 

The following are some master’s thesis examples from a variety of disciplines, ranging from science to architecture. However, these are just a few master’s dissertation examples, and students should conduct their own research to find out relevant topics for themselves.

Here’s The List Of Master’s Thesis Examples :

  • An explanation based on the science of COVID-19 and its effects on individuals 
  • How important is the legalisation of same-sex marriage? 
  • Pros and cons of the rise of artificial intelligence. Will it soon take over humanity? 
  • How will the economic downturn affect job opportunities for new graduates? 
  • What are the workplace sexual harassment issues for all genders
  • What is the housing model of the 21st century? 
  • The significance of recycled materials in environmentally friendly real design
  • What are digital marketing trends to expect and how they will affect businesses?  
  • What is the online advertising impact on consumer behaviour?
  • Climate change and its implications in 2023 

Master’s Thesis Examples: FAQs

1. Why is a master’s thesis important?

A thesis provides you with an excellent opportunity to dive deep into interesting research in order to acquire a deeper understanding of your field of work. 

2. Who should take up a thesis for their final project in their master’s degree?

Students who want to work in academia or do their PhD should always pursue a thesis. They should also take this route if they want to pursue a doctorate.

3. What is the most important factor to consider when deciding on a thesis topic?

Choose a topic that excites you the most. Your topic of interest will make the writing process much easier. 

4. Can I co-author my master’s thesis with a faculty member?

If your degree allows that, then absolutely. In many cases, your thesis guide is your co-author. 

Thank you for reading this blog on ‘Master’s Thesis Examples: Tips and Ideas For Your Next Academic Paper’ . If you’d like to read more blogs, here are some recommendations that may be of interest to you –  

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Prize-Winning Thesis and Dissertation Examples

Published on 9 September 2022 by Tegan George . Revised on 6 April 2023.

It can be difficult to know where to start when writing your thesis or dissertation . One way to come up with some ideas or maybe even combat writer’s block is to check out previous work done by other students.

This article collects a list of undergraduate, master’s, and PhD theses and dissertations that have won prizes for their high-quality research.

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Award-winning undergraduate theses, award-winning master’s theses, award-winning ph.d. dissertations.

University : University of Pennsylvania Faculty : History Author : Suchait Kahlon Award : 2021 Hilary Conroy Prize for Best Honors Thesis in World History Title : “Abolition, Africans, and Abstraction: the Influence of the “Noble Savage” on British and French Antislavery Thought, 1787-1807”

University : Columbia University Faculty : History Author : Julien Saint Reiman Award : 2018 Charles A. Beard Senior Thesis Prize Title : “A Starving Man Helping Another Starving Man”: UNRRA, India, and the Genesis of Global Relief, 1943-1947

University: University College London Faculty: Geography Author: Anna Knowles-Smith Award:  2017 Royal Geographical Society Undergraduate Dissertation Prize Title:  Refugees and theatre: an exploration of the basis of self-representation

University: University of Washington Faculty:  Computer Science & Engineering Author: Nick J. Martindell Award: 2014 Best Senior Thesis Award Title:  DCDN: Distributed content delivery for the modern web

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University:  University of Edinburgh Faculty:  Informatics Author:  Christopher Sipola Award:  2018 Social Responsibility & Sustainability Dissertation Prize Title:  Summarizing electricity usage with a neural network

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Education Author:  Matthew Brillinger Award:  2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Humanities Prize Title:  Educational Park Planning in Berkeley, California, 1965-1968

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty: Social Sciences Author:  Heather Martin Award:  2015 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  An Analysis of Sexual Assault Support Services for Women who have a Developmental Disability

University : University of Ottawa Faculty : Physics Author : Guillaume Thekkadath Award : 2017 Commission on Graduate Studies in the Sciences Prize Title : Joint measurements of complementary properties of quantum systems

University:  London School of Economics Faculty: International Development Author: Lajos Kossuth Award:  2016 Winner of the Prize for Best Overall Performance Title:  Shiny Happy People: A study of the effects income relative to a reference group exerts on life satisfaction

University : Stanford University Faculty : English Author : Nathan Wainstein Award : 2021 Alden Prize Title : “Unformed Art: Bad Writing in the Modernist Novel”

University : University of Massachusetts at Amherst Faculty : Molecular and Cellular Biology Author : Nils Pilotte Award : 2021 Byron Prize for Best Ph.D. Dissertation Title : “Improved Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Molecular Diagnostics for Soil-Transmitted Helminths”

University:  Utrecht University Faculty:  Linguistics Author:  Hans Rutger Bosker Award: 2014 AVT/Anéla Dissertation Prize Title:  The processing and evaluation of fluency in native and non-native speech

University: California Institute of Technology Faculty: Physics Author: Michael P. Mendenhall Award: 2015 Dissertation Award in Nuclear Physics Title: Measurement of the neutron beta decay asymmetry using ultracold neutrons

University:  Stanford University Faculty: Management Science and Engineering Author:  Shayan O. Gharan Award:  Doctoral Dissertation Award 2013 Title:   New Rounding Techniques for the Design and Analysis of Approximation Algorithms

University: University of Minnesota Faculty: Chemical Engineering Author: Eric A. Vandre Award:  2014 Andreas Acrivos Dissertation Award in Fluid Dynamics Title: Onset of Dynamics Wetting Failure: The Mechanics of High-speed Fluid Displacement

University: Erasmus University Rotterdam Faculty: Marketing Author: Ezgi Akpinar Award: McKinsey Marketing Dissertation Award 2014 Title: Consumer Information Sharing: Understanding Psychological Drivers of Social Transmission

University: University of Washington Faculty: Computer Science & Engineering Author: Keith N. Snavely Award:  2009 Doctoral Dissertation Award Title: Scene Reconstruction and Visualization from Internet Photo Collections

University:  University of Ottawa Faculty:  Social Work Author:  Susannah Taylor Award: 2018 Joseph De Koninck Prize Title:  Effacing and Obscuring Autonomy: the Effects of Structural Violence on the Transition to Adulthood of Street Involved Youth

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Other students also liked, how to choose a dissertation topic | 8 steps to follow, how to write a thesis or dissertation conclusion, dissertation & thesis outline | example & free templates.

Excellent Master Theses MBIT

You can find a full overview of all BIT theses here: https://essay.utwente.nl/view/programme/60025.html. Theses are scored based on the criteria in the assessment form for the Final Project . Below a few examples of theses that scored well. 

  • Naik, Nilay Prashant (2023)  Application Portfolio Management Maturity : A Grounded Theory investigation on the processes and expected benefits.
  • Man, T. (2022)  Modelling Security Architectures of Collaborative Networks.
  • Versloot, C.W.A. (2019)  Amplifying the Analyst: Machine Learning Approaches for Buried Utility Characterization.
  • Plant, O.H. (2019)  DevOps under control : development of a framework for achieving internal control and effectively managing risks in a DevOps environment.  
  • Aggelen, J.M. van (2017)  Using virtual reality to support substance use disorder treatment in people with an intellectual disability.
  • Franck, T. (2016)  Towards an Integrated Model of Smart Manufacturing Enterprises.
  • Teerenstra, G.H.G. (2016)  The start of IT Governance in a Dutch Academic Medical Centre.  
  • Brand, A. (2013). Improving interoperability between electric mobility and the electricity system - Towards a reference architecture for charging electric vehicles.
  • Paagman, A.J.G.M. (2012). Only for the money?: Motives for introducing shared services in government organizations.
  • Iankoulova, I.D. (2012). Business Intelligence for horizontal cooperation: Measuring the performance of a transformation network sharing cooperation between logistics companies.
  • Groot, R.E.J. de (2012). IT-Based risks in advergame campaigns: A focus on fairness and privacy.
  • Oude Maatman, R.B. (2011). Design and evaluate a deployment process for the ES benefits management method.
  • Boot, M.N.S. (2011). Electronic retail payments at public events: An exploratory study into the feasibility of various electronic payment systems at public events.
  • Wesselink, M.G. (2011). Requirements engineering in market-facing projects: A case study.
  • Veen, E.R.G. van der (2011). Precedent for doing things differently: case studies of agile development of large, distributed outsourcing projects.
  • Hoorn, R. van der (2011). Ensuring the pigs don’t chicken out: Improving the use of good practices in agile software development.
  • Maranny, E.A. (2011). Stage Maturity Model of m-Government (SMM M-Gov): Improving e-Government performance by utilizing m-Government features.
  • De Jong, F. (2009). The Right Governance Framework for Managing an Offshore IT Outsourcing Relationship.: The Shell Case.
  • Koster, S.R. (2009 ). An evaluation method for Business Process Management products.
  • Steen, B. (2009). Generation of optimal business processes from business rules.
  • Brandhorst, C.J. (2008). Intelligente Elektronische Ondersteuning voor Huisartsen.
  • Draaijer, R. (2008). Why Share? An empirical investigation of knowledge contribution within electronic networks of practice.  
  • Linders, S. (2008). Opportunities and limitations of using SOA concepts and technologies for building BI applications: a Delphi Study.
  • Oostrum, A.R. (2008). A service register as an information intermediary : towards a structured design approach for service registers.
  • Elling, E. (2007). Tools for fun and fruitful meetings: don’t let meetings make you go bananas!

How to write a fantastic thesis introduction (+15 examples)

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The thesis introduction, usually chapter 1, is one of the most important chapters of a thesis. It sets the scene. It previews key arguments and findings. And it helps the reader to understand the structure of the thesis. In short, a lot is riding on this first chapter. With the following tips, you can write a powerful thesis introduction.

Disclosure: This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may earn a small commission if you make a purchase using the links below at no additional cost to you . I only recommend products or services that I truly believe can benefit my audience. As always, my opinions are my own.

Elements of a fantastic thesis introduction

Open with a (personal) story, begin with a problem, define a clear research gap, describe the scientific relevance of the thesis, describe the societal relevance of the thesis, write down the thesis’ core claim in 1-2 sentences, support your argument with sufficient evidence, consider possible objections, address the empirical research context, give a taste of the thesis’ empirical analysis, hint at the practical implications of the research, provide a reading guide, briefly summarise all chapters to come, design a figure illustrating the thesis structure.

An introductory chapter plays an integral part in every thesis. The first chapter has to include quite a lot of information to contextualise the research. At the same time, a good thesis introduction is not too long, but clear and to the point.

A powerful thesis introduction does the following:

  • It captures the reader’s attention.
  • It presents a clear research gap and emphasises the thesis’ relevance.
  • It provides a compelling argument.
  • It previews the research findings.
  • It explains the structure of the thesis.

In addition, a powerful thesis introduction is well-written, logically structured, and free of grammar and spelling errors. Reputable thesis editors can elevate the quality of your introduction to the next level. If you are in search of a trustworthy thesis or dissertation editor who upholds high-quality standards and offers efficient turnaround times, I recommend the professional thesis and dissertation editing service provided by Editage . 

This list can feel quite overwhelming. However, with some easy tips and tricks, you can accomplish all these goals in your thesis introduction. (And if you struggle with finding the right wording, have a look at academic key phrases for introductions .)

Ways to capture the reader’s attention

A powerful thesis introduction should spark the reader’s interest on the first pages. A reader should be enticed to continue reading! There are three common ways to capture the reader’s attention.

An established way to capture the reader’s attention in a thesis introduction is by starting with a story. Regardless of how abstract and ‘scientific’ the actual thesis content is, it can be useful to ease the reader into the topic with a short story.

This story can be, for instance, based on one of your study participants. It can also be a very personal account of one of your own experiences, which drew you to study the thesis topic in the first place.

Start by providing data or statistics

Data and statistics are another established way to immediately draw in your reader. Especially surprising or shocking numbers can highlight the importance of a thesis topic in the first few sentences!

So if your thesis topic lends itself to being kick-started with data or statistics, you are in for a quick and easy way to write a memorable thesis introduction.

The third established way to capture the reader’s attention is by starting with the problem that underlies your thesis. It is advisable to keep the problem simple. A few sentences at the start of the chapter should suffice.

Usually, at a later stage in the introductory chapter, it is common to go more in-depth, describing the research problem (and its scientific and societal relevance) in more detail.

You may also like: Minimalist writing for a better thesis

Emphasising the thesis’ relevance

A good thesis is a relevant thesis. No one wants to read about a concept that has already been explored hundreds of times, or that no one cares about.

Of course, a thesis heavily relies on the work of other scholars. However, each thesis is – and should be – unique. If you want to write a fantastic thesis introduction, your job is to point out this uniqueness!

In academic research, a research gap signifies a research area or research question that has not been explored yet, that has been insufficiently explored, or whose insights and findings are outdated.

Every thesis needs a crystal-clear research gap. Spell it out instead of letting your reader figure out why your thesis is relevant.

* This example has been taken from an actual academic paper on toxic behaviour in online games: Liu, J. and Agur, C. (2022). “After All, They Don’t Know Me” Exploring the Psychological Mechanisms of Toxic Behavior in Online Games. Games and Culture 1–24, DOI: 10.1177/15554120221115397

The scientific relevance of a thesis highlights the importance of your work in terms of advancing theoretical insights on a topic. You can think of this part as your contribution to the (international) academic literature.

Scientific relevance comes in different forms. For instance, you can critically assess a prominent theory explaining a specific phenomenon. Maybe something is missing? Or you can develop a novel framework that combines different frameworks used by other scholars. Or you can draw attention to the context-specific nature of a phenomenon that is discussed in the international literature.

The societal relevance of a thesis highlights the importance of your research in more practical terms. You can think of this part as your contribution beyond theoretical insights and academic publications.

Why are your insights useful? Who can benefit from your insights? How can your insights improve existing practices?

master thesis topic examples

Formulating a compelling argument

Arguments are sets of reasons supporting an idea, which – in academia – often integrate theoretical and empirical insights. Think of an argument as an umbrella statement, or core claim. It should be no longer than one or two sentences.

Including an argument in the introduction of your thesis may seem counterintuitive. After all, the reader will be introduced to your core claim before reading all the chapters of your thesis that led you to this claim in the first place.

But rest assured: A clear argument at the start of your thesis introduction is a sign of a good thesis. It works like a movie teaser to generate interest. And it helps the reader to follow your subsequent line of argumentation.

The core claim of your thesis should be accompanied by sufficient evidence. This does not mean that you have to write 10 pages about your results at this point.

However, you do need to show the reader that your claim is credible and legitimate because of the work you have done.

A good argument already anticipates possible objections. Not everyone will agree with your core claim. Therefore, it is smart to think ahead. What criticism can you expect?

Think about reasons or opposing positions that people can come up with to disagree with your claim. Then, try to address them head-on.

Providing a captivating preview of findings

Similar to presenting a compelling argument, a fantastic thesis introduction also previews some of the findings. When reading an introduction, the reader wants to learn a bit more about the research context. Furthermore, a reader should get a taste of the type of analysis that will be conducted. And lastly, a hint at the practical implications of the findings encourages the reader to read until the end.

If you focus on a specific empirical context, make sure to provide some information about it. The empirical context could be, for instance, a country, an island, a school or city. Make sure the reader understands why you chose this context for your research, and why it fits to your research objective.

If you did all your research in a lab, this section is obviously irrelevant. However, in that case you should explain the setup of your experiment, etcetera.

The empirical part of your thesis centers around the collection and analysis of information. What information, and what evidence, did you generate? And what are some of the key findings?

For instance, you can provide a short summary of the different research methods that you used to collect data. Followed by a short overview of how you analysed this data, and some of the key findings. The reader needs to understand why your empirical analysis is worth reading.

You already highlighted the practical relevance of your thesis in the introductory chapter. However, you should also provide a preview of some of the practical implications that you will develop in your thesis based on your findings.

Presenting a crystal clear thesis structure

A fantastic thesis introduction helps the reader to understand the structure and logic of your whole thesis. This is probably the easiest part to write in a thesis introduction. However, this part can be best written at the very end, once everything else is ready.

A reading guide is an essential part in a thesis introduction! Usually, the reading guide can be found toward the end of the introductory chapter.

The reading guide basically tells the reader what to expect in the chapters to come.

In a longer thesis, such as a PhD thesis, it can be smart to provide a summary of each chapter to come. Think of a paragraph for each chapter, almost in the form of an abstract.

For shorter theses, which also have a shorter introduction, this step is not necessary.

Especially for longer theses, it tends to be a good idea to design a simple figure that illustrates the structure of your thesis. It helps the reader to better grasp the logic of your thesis.

master thesis topic examples

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Topics for master theses

The Department of Business and Management Science can offer the following Master Theses topics:

  • Department of Business and Management Science
  • Master's thesis

Investments, Insurance and Household Finance

Insurance (life insurance or non-life insurance).

Insurance topics can be divided into life insurance and non-life insurance. They address different kinds of risks. There are several types of products considered as life insurance:  payments to the policyholder's beneficiaries in the event of death, income to individuals unable to work due to a disability, pensions, etc. Non-life insurance is designed to protect against other types of risks, such as property damage or liability.

We can discuss your specific interests concerning insurance. For example, a possible thesis topic can be an analysis of a particular insurance product or methodology of insurance premium computation.

Supervisor: Roman Kozlov .

What determines donations to charitable causes in Norway?

Charitable donations by individuals are an important source of funding for social services and public goods. This study aims at identifying important factors that determine when and how people donate using detailed information on the Norwegian deposit lottery (pantelotteri) in which people are able to donate deposits they would receive for recycling bottles and cans. For example, how did individuals respond to insecurity during Covid-19? Do news of natural disasters affect donations? How long-lasting are these effects?

Supervisor: Maximilian Todtenhaupt .

Data på individnivå fra Statistisk sentralbyrå

Tjenesten microdata.no gir tilgang til variabler på individnivå om befolkning, utdanning, sysselsetting, inntekt, formue, gjeld, skatt, trygd, barnevern, valg og boforhold. Jeg har ikke et bestemt spørsmål i tankene, men veileder gjerne oppgaver som bruker disse dataene. Studenter som ønsker å gjøre dette kan få tilgang til microdata.no gjennom NHH. Bakgrunn fra et kurs i økonometri er sterkt å anbefale.

Supervisor: Øyvind Thomassen .

The black swans of climate risk: Compound events

Extreme weather events such as floods, heatwaves, droughts, and storms cause major economic losses to private and public sector alike. The latest IPCC report shows that the frequency, and to some extent the magnitude, of such events will continue to increase although there are exceptions. The probability of so-called ‘compound events’ – that two or more extreme events happen simultaneously or successively – will increase due to this ongoing trend.

Such events carry even more extreme economic losses and play a crucial role in evaluating climate risk, but they are not well constrained nor understood. In 2018, there was elevated risk for snow-driven flooding in central Norway, which was followed by one of the warmest and driest summers on record, which coincided with several climatically induced forest fires. Based on both historical data and climate predictions, the students will evaluate the probability and potential economic consequences of compound events today and in the future and provide insights and advice for the insurance industry. The industry partner for this thesis is Tryg.

Supervisor: Geir Drage Berentsen .

Inequality and the inheritance tax in Norway

Prior research argues that the inheritance tax is an important instrument to reduce inequality. In Norway, the inheritance tax was abolished in 2014. How did this effect income and wealth inequality in various parts of Norway? The aim of this thesis is to investigate these questions using micro-level data from Statistics Norway (SSB).

Did companies misuse government support during Covid-19?

Government support to firms during the Covid-19 pandemic was comprehensive and supposed to quickly reach businesses. This may have lead to some firms exploiting government funds that were not eligible. For example, some companies may have been reconstructed to utilize the support schemes and then initiate bankruptcies in parts of companies. It may also be of interest to look at risk factors that arise in companies that receive payments from several support schemes. This study will contribute to an evaluation of how well the grant schemes have worked.

Corporate solvency and government support during Covid-19

The lock-down of Norway on March 12, 2020 meant that many businesses had problems paying taxes and fees. In order to alleviate the burdens and avoid bankruptcies, the government, with effect from 12 June 2020, issued a regulatory provision that allows for deferral of payment for most tax and duty claims. This has led to a halving of bankruptcies compared with 2019 and raises several interesting, empirical questions: Have schemes led to companies being kept alive that would normally have gone bankrupt? How can the tax administration predict bankruptcy among firms?

Topics on mutual funds

I can provide data on equity mutual funds that can be used and extended with additional data to examine different research questions. Experience with programming in R/Stata/Python or similar is useful.

Supervisor: Andreas Ørpetveit .

Real investments

Analyze a given investment project, either accepted or planned, in order to show its value creation by calculating the related net present value (or using a different profitability measure). This problem is thus a parallel to company valuation, however, the time horizon will typically be shorter and including option characteristics may be more relevant. Besides, strategic and financial issues will be more prominent than accounting issues in this thesis.

Supervisor: Øystein Gjerde .

The Dynamics of Conflict through the Lens of Financial Markets

In a series of influential studies, scholars have identified that companies benefit from conflict. Arms companies are involved in smuggling, diamond mining companies exploit the chaos to secure extraction rights and corrupt officials disclose top secret information. Every conflict is different and firms will find a way to profit from the chaos.

Possible questions are: do these findings still hold in recent times, from for e.g. 2005 to 2020? Are the perpetrators different? Can we link perpetrators through their board composition? How connected are the boards of companies that violate embargoes? How does corporate governance influence illegal activities? 

Starting point: DellaVigna, S. and La Ferrara, E., 2010. Detecting illegal arms trade. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy , 2(4), pp. 26-57.

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman .

Consumer behavior and insurance

Supervisor: Aysil Emirmahmutoglu .

Performance evaluation for mutual funds

Supervisor: Trond M. Døskeland .

Identifying financial behavioral biases for households

Risk management.

Analyze a given company or a given line of business exposed to price risk from commodities/services sold or bought. May also be combined with currency risk. What is the level of risk, how do we measure it, which instruments are available to deal with this risk and how successful is the risk-reducing strategy, using these instruments. Hedging strategies are based on a combination of risk-reduction and expected values, so both components may be included in the analyses.

Supervisor: Øystein Gjerde .

Topics on Shipping economics and finance

We have comprehensive data on micro-level commodity trades, vessel behaviors, satellite-based information, in addition to the commodity and freight market data.  By addressing practical challenges faced by shipping companies, theses can be developed based on hands-on projects in collabration with shipping companies, banks or insurance companies. The following aspects serve as broad examples:

Topic 1: Trade flow and freight rate forecasting

Topic 2: Investment horizon. How to balance asset lifespan, carbon neutral regulation and investment costs.

Topic 3: Carbon costs in transportation

Topic 4: ESG disclosure in shipping & offshore industry

Topic 5: Climate change and credit risk in shipping & offshore

Supervisor: Haiying Jia

Topics on Marine Insurance

Topic 1: Marine accident analysis w.r.t. attributes such as trade, location, or crew

Topic 2: Automated underwriting in marine insurance

Topic 3: Risk exposure vs. financial return

Analysis of high-frequency supply data for oil tankers

Using unique daily spatial data for vessel employment, analyze how regional freight rate changes are driven by supply and demand, and whether the specifications and operator of a ship matters for its attractiveness in the market.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia .

Dividend taxation, abusive stock swap and loan transactions

A tax strategy among investors is to recast a dividend payment as a swap payment in order to take advantage of favoured tax treatment given to swap agreements involving non-US persons in the US. US stock dividents paid to non-US persons are subject to the dividend tax, whereas “dividend equivalents” paid to non-US persons as part of a swap agreement are not subject to any US tax.

Since a 2009 Senate hearing identified the tax evasion nature of these transactions, there has been little research on the topic. These transactions are likely the origin from which cum fraud schemes have arisen. Since 2009 the US has had reforms in their dividend tax and in the legislation surrounding the claiming of these dividend equivalents. What is the impact of these reforms on stock lending of US stocks?

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman  and Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman

Dividend taxation, Cum-Cum Trading and Ex-Dividend Pricing

A common tax planning strategy among investors is to sell their stocks the day before dividends are due, and buy them back on the ex-dividend day. This strategy, known as cum-cum trading, allows investors to avoid paying dividend taxes. The Norwegian tax authorities are considering to implement policies that make cum-cum trading less attractive in order to generate more dividend tax revenue.

Your task will be to see how cum-cum trading relates to taxation and other policy variables, using international stock market data. Questions that you could answer in this topic are: Do stock market experience excess trade around the dividend day? Does excess trade relate to the dividend tax rate? Do stock prices reflect the level of the dividend tax? Are policies aimed at combating cum-cum trading effective in other countries?

Cum-cum trading strategies have been detected in Europe. Are they present in the Asian and South-American market? Are these trades a global problem that contributes to rising inequality?

Business Taxation

Agricultural policy, the environment and the price of necessities in norway.

It is well known that the price of necessities, especially food products in Norway is higher than in neighboring countries. An important determinant of the price of necessities consists in tariff barriers. Tariffs in Norway are among the highest in the developed world. Norway charges particularly high tariffs on meat and dairy products, but also substantial tariffs on fruit and vegetables. In neo-classical models of trade such tariffs generate a negative shock to consumer surplus that exceeds the gain in producer surplus. Moreover, in the recent context tariffs have become increasingly controversial because they contribute to already rising prices in supermarkets.

A recent paper by Shapiro (2021) also highlights the environmental impact of tariffs. On the one hand, Norwegian tariffs displace agricultural production from abroad to Norway. This is good for the environment if production in Norway is cleaner than abroad and vice versa. On the other hand, tariffs affect the relative price of clean (low emissions per unit of produced good) to dirty (high emissions) goods. Shapiro (2021) finds that tariffs, on average, increase the price of clean goods more than the price of dirty goods. That is, tariffs act as an implicit subsidy on pollution.

In this topic you can think of the following research questions:

  • What is the benefit of the current tariffs to the Norwegian agricultural sector and how do they compare to the cost incurred by consumers?
  • What is the environmental impact of Norwegian tariffs? Is Shapiro’s conclusion that tariffs, worldwide, harm the environment also valid for Norway’s tariffs? If so, how can Norway introduce greener tariffs?
  • Anything else relating to tariffs that comes to mind.

Joseph S Shapiro, The Environmental Bias of Trade Policy, The Quarterly Journal of Economics , Volume 136, Issue 2, May 2021, Pages 831–886, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjaa042

Floris Zoutman

Energy Subsidies in Europe: a cross-country analysis

Mainly, as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine energy prices across Europe have increased tremendously. The price of natural gas, which prior to the invasion ranged between 50-100 euro per MWh peaked to more than 300 euro per MWh in September of 2022. Prices of other forms of energy, particularly electricity, have seen a corresponding incline. At the same time the consumption of electricity has dropped significantly. Between August 2022 and January 2023 European demand for natural gas dropped by 19.3 percent. This decline challenges the traditional view that the demand for energy is inelastic. At the same time, there is confounding variation in the form of changes in weather which hinder the possibility to estimate the causal relationship between the price of energy and the demand of energy.

In this thesis you will aim to estimate the price elasticity of energy using variation in energy policy. While all European countries faced similar increases in the price of energy, the policy response between countries differed substantially. In some countries, government offered little in the form of direct subsidies on energy. Other countries, like Norway, offered generous subsidies effectively shielding consumers from most of the price increase. If the demand for energy is elastic, we should see that higher subsidies result in more energy consumption. On the other hand, of the demand for energy is inelastic there will be no relation between the two variables.

Data on energy policies and energy/electricity consumption for several European countries.

Regression modes

Solving the Replication Crisis

Recently there are many calls to create a practice of replicating empirical research. In this topic students can choose one of more than 4000 published papers with data packages and attempt to replicate the tables and figures in the paper. While replicating a paper, the students would learn a given method of analysis. The individual contribution of students would be to implement an additional analysis such as machine learning with the purpose of corroborating the results or answering an additional question on the base of the data.

Website: https://replication.uni-goettingen.de/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Airbnb in Norway & electricity prices

The risk of accepting Airbnb guests is that they might run up all of your utilities. Are renters sensitive to this concern? Estimate the relationship between listings and electricity prices.

Scrape the Data from http://insideairbnb.com/get-the-data/ and determine whether Airbnb listings in the last 2 years respond to electricity prices.

Bank disclosures and corporate governance

Since 2015 European banks must disclose their operations in tax havens. These operations involve activities like complicated tax arbitrage strategies. While technically legal, tax arbitrage may be morally questionable and sometimes courts make rulings turning some tax arbitrage strategies illegal. How does the involvement of banks in tax havens correlate to their corporate governance? What is the relationship between a bank’s ethical credo and the ethicality of the bank’s behavior?

Starting point: https://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/opening-the-vaults-the-use-of-tax-havens-by-europes-biggest-banks-620234/ .

Leak data and nationality

A recent article identified a set of 30 last names of individuals involved in mafia activities in Italy. Are these names mentioned in the Panama papers, Pandora papers or other leaks? What are the activities of the involved firms? Are these mentions consistent with money laundering.

Taxing foreign investors: an empirical analysis of recent reforms of the dividend withholding tax system

Foreign individual and institutional investors are a fundamental component of global capital markets. On the one side, attracting foreign portfolio equity investments is a key policy objective for many countries around the world given the related benefits. On the other side, they pose serious challenges from a tax collection perspective. Traditionally, countries around the world rely on withholding tax to ensure the proper collection of taxes on foreign investors. Yet, existing withholding tax systems are far from being ideal and reforming them is high on the political agenda in Norway and within the European Union. Recently Finland launched a new innovative system called TRACE to make the collection of such taxes easier. Norway has also a similar system since few years now. 

The master thesis should provide an overview of the two systems, compare them and analyses whether the introduction of such systems increased investment in those countries and/or affected dividend payment policy of domestic companies.

Supervisor:  Elisa Casi-Eberhard .

Digital residency program: a policy to boost the economy or a high-tech route for suspect funds?

In 2021, Palau launched its digital residency program, which offers foreigners a digital identity to access to all services within Palau’s emerging digital economy. However, Palau is not the first country to offer such a program. In 2014, Estonia was the first country to establish a digital residency program. It primarily targeted businesses that could start a EU based company and run it from anywhere, fully online.

For example, a foreign entrepreneur would be able to use his/her digital signature to conclude contracts throughout the European Union entirely remotely. So far, it has been a success with more than 50,000 applications as of 2019. Yet, anecdotal evidence suggests that the Estonian digital residency program has also been vulnerable to money laundering risks. What is the economic effect of such programs? Do they improve the business environment of a country or do they offer a high-tech route for suspect funds?

Supervisor: Elisa Casi  and Mohammed Mardan .

Inventors and tax havens

Inventors are an important source of innovation for any country. At the same time they are highly mobile and respond to tax incentives. Furthermore, the intellectual property they create (e.g. patents) can be used shift income to tax havens. How many inventors are involved in such tax avoidance behavior? This project will assess the importance of inventors in tax havens by combining data on international inventors with the Panama papers which have recently become available.

The Tax Haven Call

In political and institutional economy we think of countries as having extractive and inclusive institutions. Institutions are loosely defined as informal norms of behaviour. In an influential (but controversial) paper by Acemoglu et al. (2001) the type of institutions are shown to impact economic development. However, it is unclear whether what aspect of these informal norms have influenced countries like the Netherlands, Ireland and Bermuda to become tax havens?

Dharmapala and Hines (2009) have found that governance is an important factor that separates tax havens from non-tax havens. Better-governed small countries are more likely to be successful tax havens than badly governed small countries. Governance and institutions are closely related, but the link is not explored in this article.

In addition, the list of tax havens has expanded since 2009 and now we have continuous measures of secrecy and tax haven status, which can give better identification in re-examining the question: What makes a tax haven?

Starting point: Dharmapala, D. and Hines Jr, J.R., 2009. Which countries become tax havens?. Journal of Public Economics, 93(9-10), pp.1058-1068.

Wealth Taxation in Norway

The wealth tax is one of the most controversial aspects of the Norwegian tax system. Detractors believe that the wealth tax hurts economic growth by disincentivizing entrepreneurial activity and risk taking, and taking away a source of liquidity for business owners. Proponents argue that the wealth tax is a great instrument to reduce inequality.

In this project you will use data on Norwegian tax payers to evaluate the arguments of the detractors. Specifically, the goal is to understand i.) whether the arguments are valid empirically, ii.) how large the concerns are quantitatively. Specific research questions could be i.) does the wealth tax discourage individuals/business owners from taking risk, ii.) does the wealth tax reduce liquidity for small businesses, iii.) does the wealth tax reduce innovation or iv). does the wealth tax discourage savings. The answer of each of these four questions is of great practical relevance to policy makers that have to make a trade-off between the efficiency cost and the equity gain associated with the wealth tax.

Data: Individual tax return data

Literature:

  • Berzins, Janis, Øyvind Bøhren and Bodan Stacesu (2019). Illiquid Shareholders and real firm effects: the personal wealth tax and financial constraints. Working Paper BI.
  • Akcigit, U., Grigsby, J., Nicholas, T., & Stantcheva, S. (2018). Taxation and Innovation in the 20th Century. NBER Working Paper.

Supervisor: Floris Zoutman

Using Textual Analysis to identify whether there is a gender gap in financial white collar crime

There is very little systematic evidence on the gender gap in crime. In particular, it is difficult to quantify it for financial white collar crime, as they do not find their way into police statistics and as there is little female presence on the top levels of companies.

In this project, we can use textual analysis tools to collect data from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on insider trading and other frauds. We can match the name of the defendant to a gender, and quantify what is the difference between males and females.

Then, we can correlate the gap, as well as the fraud itself, to past financial statements of involved companies in terms of gender representation in the board of the company and other indicators of company culture. Finally, we can compare the gap to other measures of female participation in the boardroom and determine whether white collar females seem more or less likely to commit crimes than white collar males. We can provide a partial answer to the question: Are companies going to become more responsible (do less criminal rule-breaking) if there are more females on the board?

Methods: Textual analysis, web crawling, R

Detecting Corruption in the Oil-For-Food Program

The Oil for Food Program (OFFP) was a relief effort orchestrated by the United Nations to help the people of Iraq after the Gulf War. It lasted from 1995 to 2003. Leaks from classified reports reveal that there has been rampant corruption, from the bank that handled the Iraq escrow account, to the trucking company that was supposed to handle the logistics of food transport. Even the then UN General Secretary Kofi Annan has been implicated in this corruption scandal. By looking at important events that influence the survival of the OFFP and stock prices of companies bidding for contracts, by virtue of insider trading, we can find an indirect proof for corruption.

The methodology for this thesis is the same as in DellaVigna, S. and La Ferrara, E., 2010. Detecting illegal arms trade. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2(4), pp.26-57.

COVID-19 and lockdown measures: understanding the mechanisms

During the COVID-19 pandemic most countries imposed Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) or lockdown measures in an effort to halt the spread of the disease. In a case study focusing on the Scandinavian countries we show that in Scandinavia the NPIs introduced by Norway and Denmark were extraordinarily effective in reducing the pressure on the health care system and mortality (Juranek and Zoutman 2020). In this thesis we want you to pick apart the mechanisms. Which NPIs are most effective in reducing the spread of the disease? When should countries introduce NPIs (traditional epidemiology suggests that early NPIs will be much more effective than the same NPIs introduced at later stages)? What is the relationship between mobility on the one hand, and the spread of COVID-19 on the other hand? All of these questions remain mostly unanswered and are of extreme importance to policy makers trying to stop a second (or third) COVID-19 wave, or trying to fight a new infectious disease in the future.

Data: the EU has created a database which contains an overview of all NPIs passed in EEA countries. The database also contains records on hospitalizations, which for many reasons is the most valuable measure in tracking the spread of the disease. Google has publicly available data on mobility. For Scandinavian countries we can also track data at the regional level.

Methods: the methods depend on the background and training of the student undertaking the thesis. Many meaningful relationship can be estimated through linear regression. However, it is also possible to use more advanced methods such as machine learning or epidemiological models.

Reference: Juranek, Steffen and Floris Zoutman (2020). “The Effect of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on the Demand for Health Care and Mortality: Evidence on COVID-19 in Scandinavia” SSRN Working Paper.

COVID-19 and Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions: A cost-benefit analysis

All countries in developed countries have introduced Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing, handwashing, mask wearing and school closures, in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. The charge has up to now been lead almost exclusively by epidemiologists. In most countries economists are not included in the team of experts that advice the government on these decisions. That’s a pity, because economics, and especially, old-fashioned cost-benefit analysis has a lot to offer under these conditions. Roughly speaking NPIs all have their economic costs and benefits (i.e. their ability to halt the spread of COVID-19). From a cost-benefit standpoint it is possible to sort NPIs from “cheap” (high benefits, low costs) to “expensive” (low costs, high benefits). In case of a pandemic the objective of the government should be to keep the pandemic suppressed at the lowest possible cost. This means that we should pass NPIs in order from cheap to expensive. In particular, the most expensive measures should only be introduced in case cheaper methods do not suffice.

To give a practical example, handwashing is cheap in the sense that it has very little economic costs and is most likely quite effective at stopping the spread of COVID-19. Social distancing is relatively more costly as it comes with high economic costs (think for instance about spacing people out in classrooms, public transport etc.), and is probably not much more effective than handwashing. This does not imply that we should not practice social distancing, but it does imply that handwashing comes “first”.

In this thesis, you will do two things. First, you explain in more detail the principles of cost-benefit analysis applied to the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, you provide your best guestimates of the costs and benefits of NPIs passed in Norway using, for instance, academic literature, media sources and interviews with experts. Third, you apply your cost-benefit analysis with the guestimates to provide clear policy advice to Norwegian policy makers on which measures should come first.

Methods: cost-benefit analysis, literature review, interviews with experts

COVID-19 and the Labor Market: Understanding the Mechanisms

Juranek et al (2020) study the labor market in the Nordic countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the pandemic has had disastrous consequences in terms of both unemployed and furloughed workers in all four countries. Sweden, comparatively does the best, and Norway is at the bottom (at least in the short run). Part of the difference in labor market outcomes is driven by differences in lockdown measures, which Sweden (in)famously abstained from, but there are also differences in labor market policies. Moreover, the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic itself may have a direct effect on labor markets. In this project, you will try to unpack the mechanisms focusing on data from the Nordic countries. As a first pass, you will extend the data of Juranek et al (2020) and replicate their analysis over a longer time frame. Afterwards, you will build a statistical model that disentangles the mechanisms between COVID-19 and the labor market using causal diagrams, regression analysis and/or machine learning tools. The results will be helpful in understanding how the pandemic affected labor markets, and guide policy makers in passing measures that fight the pandemic but minimize the damage to the labor market. Data: Labor market data from the Nordic countries available from the various statistical agencies, data on mobility available from Google and data on the spread of the pandemic, available from health institutes. Methods: Linear Regression, causal diagrams, machine learnings (the choice of methods can be adjusted based on the student’s background).

References: Juranek, Steffen, Jörg Paetzold, Hannes Winner and Floris Zoutman (2020) “Labor Market Effects of COVID-19 in Sweden and its Neighbors: Evidence from Novel Administrative Data” SSRN Working Paper

How do schools adapt to their physical infrastructure?

Does it matter for teaching practice whether the school is new, old, well maintained, run down, a permanent building or temporary modules ("barracks")?

Supervisor: Arnt-Ove Hopland

Data Science and Analytics

Use high frequency satellite data to estimate economic and environmental outcomes of energy production processes.

ESA’s Earth Online portal offers European research institutes direct and simple access to Earth Observation data coming from satellite missions operated directly by the European Space Agency and Third Party Missions. These data can be combined with ghgsat estimates to answer the following question: "How much carbon dioxide equivalent was released during the mining/extraction of a particular mine/oil & gas field?"

Supervisor: Giacomo Benini .

Gender gap in acting and sensitivity to sudden reputation changes

The value of a good reputation has changed in recent years. A simple internet search can show that no one can maintain a good reputation. This is especially relevant in jobs that are close to the public eye. Consider Johnny Depp who lost on a considerable income after he was dropped by movie studios during his divorce proceedings. The research question is: How much of the gender pay gap of film stars is due to reputation?

Scrape data from https://www.qscores.com/performer , and determine what is the price of a good reputation.

Social and economic networks

Networks are important in shaping behavior in many environments. For example, economic production and supply chains are organized as networks, new technologies diffuse in the economy through research and development collaboration networks. Social networks pervade our social and economic lives. They play a central role in the transmission of information about job opportunities and are critical to the trade of many goods and services. The presence of networks makes it important to understand which network structures can emerge and how networks impact behavior.

We can discuss your specific interests concerning with analysis of network models or/and analysis of real life networks. For example, a possible thesis topic can be online networks, networks in science and education (e.g. collaboration, co-authorship networks, citation networks), financial networks (e.g. influence of networks on financial decisions), trade networks, networks in labor markets.

Detailing the Value of Climate- and Environmental Surveillance on Sea food production

What’s the cost-benefit for using an integrated climate and environment surveillance on seafood production? The student will assess the impact and values associated with using a detailed monitoring tool called Clarify, which currently is employed by many seafood producers. The student will be given access to unpublished data afforded by Clarify that can be directly compared to other chains of the seafood production, including feeding, fish welfare, loss to sickness and slaughter. Additional climate data can also be made available to the student depending on emerging needs. This Master opens for a relevant exploration of how monitoring can strengthen seafood sustainability and resilience to the changing climate conditions that remain the key premise for seafood production. The industry partner for this thesis is Clarify.

Optimal placement and impact of offshore wind parks

In this thesis, the students will use historical weather data to investigate the potential of Norwegian wind power in a scenario where all the current offshore locations suggested by the NVE are in full production. Alternative locations derived from optimizing production output are available and can be compared to the sites suggested by NVE. A secondary goal is to use the results to investigate the impact on the European energy market. The industry partner for this thesis is Statkraft.

What are the optimal sites for future seafood production?

Wind conditions, sea currents, -temperature and -salinity are all important factors when considering new locations for ocean-based aquaculture facilities. Moreover, locations that are considered optimal today may not be suitable locations in the future due to climate change. In this thesis, the students will investigate the current optimal placements of aquaculture based on detailed historical data. By considering state of the art climate predictions, it can be investigated how these placements will change on different time horizons. The students should also discuss placement conflicts with fisheries and coastal shipping routes. The industry partner for this thesis is Clarify.

Economic impacts of climate change

Many social and economic activities are heavily affected by weather variables such as temperatures and precipitation. In this master thesis, the students will explore the relationship between weather variables and economic decisions made by Norwegian households and/or businesses. In addition, the students will explore how climate change, through its effect on temperatures and precipitation, will affect these economic decisions into the future.

Examples of relationships to explore are the effects of heatwaves on human mortality rates, extreme precipitation on agricultural production, or drought on hydropower production. The exploration can be either on the macro or micro level and can be in the form of either a statistical analysis or modelling exercise. For the prediction exercise, the students will have access to novel climate forecasts from the Climate Futures project. An interesting question to explore is how access to improved seasonal weather forecasts can mitigate the harmful economic impacts of climate change.

Investigating patterns in procurement data

Public procurement involves a large amount of money and involves a wide range of sectors. In Norway public procurement was almost 600 million NOK in the 2019 statistics and the public bought everything: from toilet paper and office supplies to new roads, high-tech hospital supplies and defense material. Data on official tenders (possibilities for contracting with the public sector) are announced on doffin.no and there is a special complaint committee dealing with disputes related to public contracts. This offers a rich amount of data to explore topics within public procurement.

For instance, sometimes a public entity can pretend to be looking for a contractor in a competitive manner, however the phrasing of the contract allows the entity to choose preferentially a predetermined contractor. This step can be part of a larger corruption kick-back scheme that is well-hidden beneath a veil of legality. There could also be differences in how public procurement in various dimensions (geographical, type of public entity, etc.). This topic allows students to investigate procurement tenders and complaints on decisions made to determine whether there is evidence of specific patterns or preferential treatment.

Necessary skills: web scraping, textual analysis, statistical/econometric analysis

Supervisors: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman and Malin Arve .

Textual analysis of topics in the facilities management literature

Using machine learning techniques to study the evolvement of the facilities management literature.

Supervisor: Arnt Ove Hopland .

Textual analysis of topics in the public choice literature

Using machine learning techniques to study the evolvement of the public choice literature.

Textual analysis of topics in the operations research literature

Using machine learning techniques to study the evolvement of the operations research literature.

Does climate change affect the probability distributions of weather at sea?

Using large amounts of global hindcasting data for weather variables, to investigate the spatial and temporal changes in the probability distributions for certain key drivers (e.g. wave height, wind speed) for chosen main trade routes in ocean transportation. The objective is to provide further insight in, for instance, seasonal and spatial patterns. Also to develop an algorithm that can match a vessel track in space and time with interpolated weather variables observable only at certain spatial nodes.

Supervisor: Professor Roar Ådland

Port operations and weather impact

Using empirical hindcast and forecast data for precipitation in selected South American ports, to assess and predict the impact of rain events and intensity on the loading of weather sensitive cargoes such as paper, grain etc.

Work in co-operation with shipping companies Western Bulk and/or G2Ocean.

Correcting witness reports through Machine Learning

It is well known that witness accounts on crime are often unreliable. The effects of stress or poor light on the victim can create a skewed perception of how the perpetrator looked. This, coupled with an unconscious discriminatory bias, leads to the victim reporting that the perpetrator was unknown or from the black racial minority. Often the witness report is based on an estimate – e.g. “ the perpetrator looked black, around 25 years”.

Comparing actual arrests to reports, we can try to put a number on the amount of witness error. By training a machine learning model on a subsample, we can try to predict the gender, race and age of unobserved criminals. This can impact the computation of statistics on black/white, male/female and young/old crime gaps. What if blacks are actually responsible for a very small fraction of crimes? What if females are responsible for more crimes? This could lead us to rethink current racial profiling strategies in crime detection.

Data: National Incident Based Reporting System, US

Starting point: Imbens, G.W. and Lemieux, T., 2008. Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice. Journal of econometrics, 142(2), pp.615-635. Fryer Jr, R.G., 2016. An empirical analysis of racial differences in police use of force (No. w22399). National Bureau of Economic Research

Nonlinear econometrics

A large portion of empirical research within economics and finance is based on linear models, of which the linear regression is by far the most prominent. Is this because we live in a linear world, or at least an approximately linear world, or is it the case that we implicitly close our eyes to important features i our data by not considering nonlinear methods on equal footing as traditional ones?

Questions like this may take your master project in several directions, such as (listed from least to most statistical/mathematical maturity recommended to complete the project, all of them benefit from programming skills):

1. To what degree is linear regression the main vehicle for measuring marginal effects of explanatory variables X to a response variable Y within economic research (within a certain field/ in Norway/ at NHH or otherwise suitably limited)? Why do researchers choose this method (convenience/interpretability of coefficients/easy presentation/theoretical foundations/...)?  Then, figure out to which degree such concerns can be addressed by a corresponding nonlinear model. A nice touch would be to re-do a recent linear study nonlinearly and see if there indeed are effects that were missed.

2. A bit more technical version of the point above is to write a thesis that revolves around the systematical development of a tool in your programming language of choice (such as R or Python) that implements as many needs as possible of the linearly oriented researcher in a nonlinear framework, with pre-work consisting of providing a theoretical foundation, and as post-work perhaps testing your «product» by trying to «sell it» to an experienced researcher.

3. Financial time series are typically nonlinear in the sense that the correlation coefficient does not, in general, give good descriptions of dependencies across time and space. This has naturally lead to the development of nonlinear methods to model financial processes. For example, the classical theory for portfolio allocation that Harry Markowitz introduced in the 1950s balances expected return (as measured by means) and risk (as measured by standard deviations and correlations) in order to provide the optimal distribution of wealth across different assets.

The Markowitz portfolio theory is very simple and easy to implement. But, it explicitly assumes that dependence between assets is linear, so the decades following its introduction have seen many attempts to improve the Markowitz method by modelling dependencies nonlinearly. Many authors note, however, that it is actually quite hard to attain higher returns using modern methods compared to the classical approach. This project may contain a survey of modern portfolio selection methods (which will require the ability to read fairly technical research papers), and a discussion part where we try to answer the question whether beating the classical approach indeed is «hard», and if so, why?

Supervisor: Håkon Otneim .

Energy Markets, Resource Management and Sustainability

Master thesis in cooperation with fjord miljø as in nordfjordeid.

Some highlights of the company:

  • Developer of equipment to the fish farming industry
  • Our mission is to provide equipment to protect fish from lice infection
  • Our products are for example protection shields, upwelling system, filtration of surface water and monitoring environmental conditions by the use of sensors
  • We are constantly seeking new developments to improve our solutions
  • We are also in a progress of making new partners to have the option to supply complementary products which will supplement our existing products
  • Main office is located in Nordfjordeid
  • Contact person: Arild Heggland

Some aspects that could be the foundation of a master thesis:

  • Market knowledge of Fjord Miljø and our products
  • Market rating of Fjord Miljø
  • How to improve knowledge and rating?
  • Estimate willingness to pay for protection against lice infection
  • Valuation of our products
  • How do fish farmers consider new products to be useful in the future, these products will be specified later
  • Where do fish farmers expect the industry to move on, landbased, closed containers in sea, continue as their producing today?
  • Other relevant topics.

Supervisor: Stein Ivar Steinshamn .

Finance as resource allocation: Does ESG build real assets?

This study complements the many that have asked whether ESG (environment, sustainability and governance) is associated with higher or lower return on investment: Finance also creates real assets. Is there evidence, in our time, that preferences or policies, regulation, raises resource flows and asset creation (builds windmills, for instance).

Supervisor: Gunnar S. Eskeland .

The potential in renewable power

Contact Eskeland for Study design, as many approaches are on the table. One is the role of taxes (incl the new 'grunnrenteskatt'), another is new concessions and the role and shape of auctions, including contracts of difference; a third is offshore installations and how they are placed in terms of access to markets, etc.

Political Economy and Social Perspectives on the Climate Transition

NHH works with technically oriented partners (industry, ntnu, ife) on scenarios for the transition to a low-carbon economy. This thesis will combine such scenarios for the transition with perspectives from political economy (as with: who pays, and industry interests, and rich vs poor) and social acceptance.

Electric vehicles and de-carbonizing transportation

This topic is in collaboration with ENOVA.

Norway has pledged to reach almost net zero emissions by 2050. The transport sector is responsible for almost one-third of the emissions in Norway, and the use of passenger cars alone is responsible for almost 10%. Therefore, to reach net zero, it is vital to de-carbonize the Norwegian car fleet. A key strategy to reduce emissions from the transport sector is to induce households to replace their fossil fuel cars with electric vehicles. Although most of the new cars sold in Norway are electric, the national fleet of cars still contains 'only' electric vehicles 20%. Will all cars in the future eventually be electric? Or are there barriers preventing the switch to electric vehicles?

In this topic, students will explore the sources of emissions from the Norwegian car fleet and how these emissions can be reduced. The thesis will focus on two main issues:

1. Emissions from the car fleet in Norway: Emissions from the transport sector have been steadily falling. But the car fleet is projected to increase in the coming years, and the share of transport with car is also increasing.

a) What are the drivers of emissions? For example, number of miles driven per car, age of the cars, geographical distribution, etc.

b) How will these emissions evolve over time?

2. Switching from fossil fuel cars to electric vehicles: Purchasing and driving electric vehicles have been heavily subsidized by the government. But people are still driving fossil fuel cars.

a) What are the barriers to replacing your fossil fuel car with an electric vehicle? For example, economic, behavioral, social, etc.

b) How can we induce households to make the switch to electric?

This topic can be approached from many different angles and is suitable for a wide range of empirical methods.

Supervisor: Isabel Hovdahl .

Electric vehicles in Norway: Emission reductions versus lost tax tax revenue

An analysis of electrical vehicles in  Norway where reduced emissions are measured against  reduced tax revenue.

A number of topics in collaboration with the Maritime Cleantech cluster administration

  • What branding effect will the use of green/emission-free logistics chains have for the fish farming industry?
  • What is the willingness to pay on the part of cargo owners for the use of low- and zero-emission vessels in their logistics operations?
  • Economic valuation of Maritime Cleantech as a cluster organisation.
  • Hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels - how big a role can the production and distribution of these play for Norwegian value creation in 2050?
  • Joint Norwegian investment for the maritime industry: how to position ourselves for increased exports of green technology? (Strategic/Marketing)
  • Analysis of the market for green maritime technology in Southern Europe (can be built on research done by Innovation Norway in France, Spain and Italy)
  • Size, scope and framework of incentive schemes for contracts for difference.
  • Are end consumers willing to pay for green (maritime) transport? If so, how much?
  • Profitability analyzes and CO2 reduction for conversion of existing vessels vs. new construction.
  • Life cycle analyzes for ships - case speedboats and/or cargo ships - Lifetime of vessels - co2 emissions - conversion or measures that can reduce emissions during the ship's lifetime.
  • Return scheme/ circular economy model for ships.
  • Is there an update of the policy apparatus to support wider and more retrofit solutions for ships, to make them more energy efficient?

Possible topics in collaboration with Maritime Cleantech cluster partners with assistance from the cluster administration

  • Shipping aims to halve its emissions by 2050. How should a shipping company approach this goal in terms of investment and redevelopment programmes? (Shipping company)
  • How to market/sell green fuels and technologies that have not yet been demonstrated in the market? For example hydrogen, fuel cells etc. (fuel producers, FC producers and the like.)
  • Strategy for marketing hydrogen/ammonia as a safe and secure green fuel (producers).
  • Green innovation: How to change from traditional offshore to deliveries in new value chains (supplier industry, shipyards, shipping companies).
  • Efficient/appropriate incentive/public/industrial structure for the production and supply of new energy carriers from wind farms and other offshore locations.

Evaluation of various ways for Norway to fulfill the Paris-agreement

The objective is to compare various ways Norway can fulfill the Paris-agreement with respect to consequences for the Norwegian economy and for global emissions among other things.

Can or will energy transition hold back development

Clean up and transition in the north sea, energy companies, esg and responsive strategies, esg in finance, and eus taxonomy, how suited are batteries to solve the intermittency problem.

A study of the efficiency and suitability of batteries in order to solve the intermittency problem associated with new renewable energy such as solar and wind power.

Hydrogen and its role in Europe's energy transition

Transport and co2 emission reductions (or any segment: maritime, aviation, cars, etc), war, crisis and energy in europe, green energy and guarantees of origin.

During the last years, governments around the world have implemented different policies to promote investments in renewable production capacity. One of the main instruments is a policy known as guarantees of origin. These guarantees operate as a guarantee for final consumers that the electricity they consume comes from renewable energy sources.

An important characteristic of the guarantees is that the producers are free to sell the electricity and guarantees separately. What we are observing is that while electricity from Norwegian hydropower is largely sold to consumers in Norway, the guarantees from Norwegian hydropower is sold to consumers in Germany and the Netherlands. Despite the growing importance of this policy, there are few studies of the impacts of guarantees of origin on renewable production capacity.

In this master thesis, the students will investigate the effect of this policy instrument on renewable electricity capacity in Europe. What has Norway’s role been in promoting renewable energy capacity through guarantees of origin? What has the interaction been between guarantees of origin and other incentives to boost investments in renewable production capacity? And what are the implications of the de-coupling of the sale of the electricity with the sale of the guarantees?

This topic of research is suitable for many different types of methods, depending on the interests and skills of the students. The thesis can be based on either a statistical analysis, case study or modelling exercise.

Supervisor: Isabel Hovdahl and  Mario Blázquez .

Analysis of catch data in Norwegian fisheries

Organizing and analyzing data from the Norwegian directorate of fisheries.

Econometric analysis of the sales of new cars in Norway

Supervisor:  Øyvind Thomassen .

Contact: [email protected] .

I have three data sets that you can use for the thesis: 1) price lists with car model variant and some technical characteristics, 2) new registrations of car model engine variants, by age and sex of the registered owner, 3) the annual rules for calculating the registration tax (engangsavgift). 

For most uses, you will want to merge data sets 1) and 2). This will entail some tedious data work (probably using Stata or R), because of a lack of exact common identifiers. 

The data go up to 2015, but it may be possible to obtain more recent data. 

There are many questions that could be answered with the data, including saying something about the effect of the favorable tax treatment given to electric vehicles, which probably explains their large market share in Norway. 

To choose this topic you must have taken a course in econometrics.

Econometric analysis of data from the government vehicle register

Like my topic ‘Econometric analysis of the sales of new cars in Norway’, this topic is based on data on cars in Norway. However, for this topic, I currently do not have the data, but I believe they can be obtained from Statens Vegvesen (Norwegian Public Roads Administration).

My other topic uses data on the flow of new cars. This topic uses data on the stock of cars. The two data sources could conceivably be combined.

Background from a course in econometrics is needed.

Natural resource extraction nearby: opportunity or concern for non-resource firms?

How does natural resource extraction such as oil&gas production affect nearby firms in other sectors, such as manufacturing and services? Potential agglomeration effects could benefit firms, but increased competition for labor or more corruption might harm firms. Since firms are the backbone of every modern economy, these considerations are crucial to understand whether natural resources are a blessing or a curse.

Supervisor: Paul Pelzl .

Topics on Environmental Economics

Potential topics are:

  • Zero emissions (in shipping/buildings/road veh/airplanes): too much, or just right?
  • Certificates of Origin for Electricity; Stepchild or rising star?
  • A carbon cap for Norwegian farmers: Let forests do what cows and farmers cannot?
  • Carbon footprint and economic analysis for a firm/sector
  • Hydrogen: which part is failing: cars, hydrogen or filling and logistics
  • A new look at biomass and biofuels: can photosynthesis propel transport
  • Oceans in a sustainability strategy
  • Solar power: if a leap lies ahead, what can trigger it
  • Decentralized power generation in Norway: framework and business analysis
  • Renewable power in Norway: shall it expand, and with what instruments
  • A role for Norway as a battery for Europe’s intermittent power
  • A business analysis of Norway’s three proposed carbon capture and storage projects (cement, fertilizer, waste dump)
  • Analysis of emission reduction prospects in Norwegian transport
  • Econometric analysis of demand for energy (or carbon) intensive goods, transport
  • Forests: More wood and biomass in buildings: Economic analysis of climate prospects
  • Financial markets: is there evidence of ‘sin portfolios’ or ‘virtue’ (or green/fossil)? The value of fossil assets / promises in financial markets
  • Analysis of CO2 markets
  • Modeling energy exchange in Northern Europe

Analysis of electric batteries and improvements in electricity networks

In cooperation with ENOVA

Contact: Gunnar Eskeland  (NHH) and  Børge Nilssen Stafne (ENOVA)

Logistics: improvements in efficiency and greenhouse gas reductions

Contact: Gunnar Eskeland  (NHH) and  Arnt Gunnar Lium (ENOVA)

Electricity in the transport sector: Economic and environmental effects

Regulation and benchmarking of natural monopolies in the energy sector.

Supervisors: Endre Bjørndal and Mette Bjørndal .

Pricing and congestion management in wholesale electricity markets

Integration of renewable energy sources in electricity markets, local flexibility markets and demand response in the electricity sector, integration of regional electricity markets and use of hvdc interconnectors, european integration of intraday and balancing markets, sustainable energy and development.

Around the world, the governments are imple- menting policies to foster the introduction of renewable energy. In that context, there are different research questions to develop in a master thesis that could contribute to develop a sustainable economic system.

  • Which will be the relation between renewable energy and hydrogen?
  • Which are the policies introduced in cities to reduce carbon emissions?
  • Which will be the impact of the adoption of renewable energy in women unemploy- ment? Could the introduction of renewable energy increase the gender gap?
  • Which will be the changes in the design of electricity markets induced by the intro- duction of renewable energy?
  • Which is the relation between hydrogen and lithium batteries? Which is the best way to store electricity in the short-term and in the long-term?
  • Which policies could be implemented to promote energy effciency?
  • How do the electricity grid need to change to accommodate renewable energy?

Supervisor: Mario Blazques de Paz

Transmission constraints

Electricity markets are moving through the integration around the world. Moreover, the countries are increasing their investments in renewable production capacity to fulfil with the agreements in carbon emission reductions. In that context, the transmission grid plays a crucial role promoting the integration of electricity markets and accommodating the renewable production capacity into the system. In re- lation with this topic, there are different research questions that could be of interest to develop a master thesis.

  • Which should be design of electricity markets in the presence of transmission con- straints.
  • Could the integration of electricity markets in Europe increase competition? Which will be the impact of that integration in the investments in transmission capacity, and in renewable production capacity?
  • Which should be the relation between the spot and the redispatch market when the transmission lines are congested? How we can design those markets to increase com- petition?
  • How should the regulator design transmission tariffs to guarantee investments in trans- mission capacity, and transmission effciency?

Supervisor:  Mario Blazques de Paz

Incentives, Contracts and Firm Behaviour

How do natural disasters affect local business activity evidence from indonesia.

Besides having adverse humanitarian effects, natural disasters may have a large detrimental impact on local business activity in the affected region. On the other hand, unaffected yet nearby regions may experience a surge in business activity, as these regions compensate for the neighboring downturn. The aim of this master thesis is to quantify these and potentially other effects using Indonesian data on various types of natural disasters and on manufacturing, thereby shedding light on the economic effects of natural disasters across space. The thesis requires some training in econometrics and motivation to do a considerable amount of data work. Regarding business activity, data comes from the Indonesian manufacturing plant census and can be provided by the supervisor; regarding natural disasters, data comes from https://www.desinventar.net/. Please note that a thesis on this topic cannot be written in Spring 2023 due to parental leave of the supervisor.

Key references

  • Kirchberger (2017): Natural disasters and labor markets . Journal of Development Economics , Volume 125, pages 40-58.
  • Gignoux and Menendez (2016): Benefit in the wake of disaster: Long-run effects of earthquakes on welfare in rural Indonesia . Journal of Development Economics , Volume 118, pages 26-44.

Like my topic ‘Econometric analysis of the sales of new cars in Norway’, this topic is based on data on cars in Norway. However, for this topic, I currently do not have the data, but I believe they can be obtained from Statens Vegvesen (Norwegian Public Roads Administration). See information here: https://www.vegvesen.no/om-oss/om-organisasjonen/apne-data/api-for-kjoretoyopplysninger/utvidet-utlevering-av-kjoretoyopplysninger/

Economics of organization and management control

Including the use of bonus pay (case studies or across companies), how to measure performance, balanced scorecard (or alternative ways to use key performance indicators for management control purposes), drivers of profitability in an industry or a company, beyond budgeting, transfer pricing, and organizational boundaries.

Supervisor: Iver Bragelien.

Streaming markets for music and books

Supervisor: Øystein Foros .

Interplay between content providers and distributors in digital platforms

The appstore battle with music and app providers (the case of fortnite and spotify), the war among consoles 2020: sony (playstation 5-) vs microsoft (xbox series), konkurransen i mobilmarkedet.

Sammenligne f.eks. Norge og Finland som har ulik markedsstruktur. Mye deskriptiv empiri for å bedre forstå markedet og forskjellen mellom landene.

Supervisor: Øystein Foros .

Kulturminister Trine Skei Grande har nylig foreslått å utvide bokavtalen. Det vil gi en lengre fastprisperiode og høyere priser på opptil 65 prosent av bøkene. Den norske bokavtalen, som gir forleggerne rett til å sette en fast pris på nye bøker, er havnet i søkelyset til Efta-landenes overvåkningsorgan Esa. Nylig besvarte Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet (NFD), på vegne av den norske regjeringen, en rekke spørsmål fra Esa om forholdet mellom bokavtalen og EØS-avtalens eksplisitte forbud mot prissamarbeid i artikkel 53. Her kunne det være interessant å sammenligne med kommisjonens sak mot Amazon ift most-favored nation (MFN) klausuler.

Personalisert prising

Med utgangspunkt i prosjektet Moving towards the market of one? Competition with personalized pricing and endogenous mismatch costs, jobbe med applikasjoner? Kan også knyttet opp mot AI.

Shipping, Logistics and Operations Management

Impact of climate change on vessel operations.

Utilizing weather data and AIS data, we aim to evaluate the influence of climatic events on routine maritime trade operations. Significant events, such as the draught restriction in the Panama Canal due to severe droughts, have resulted in costlier transits and prolonged waiting time durations. This thesis can investigate the externality cost of severe weather patterns, such as intensified El Niño.

Supervisor: Gabriel Fuentes

Climate Policy and Its Effect on Maritime Trade

By quantifying shipping emissions, including greenhouse gases (GHGs) and sulfur, a thesis on this topic can investigate the impact of maritime climate-related policies on the overall trajectory of vessel emissions. There's ongoing debate surrounding regulations like the IMO 2020 Sulphur Cap and the introduction of measures like the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII). We will evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of these regulations.

Decision Support for Maritime Investments Amid Uncertain Climate Policies

Maritime investments face uncertainties with evolving climate-related policies. A seemingly recent and valuable asset today might become obsolete or uncompetitive due to policy shifts in the near future. A thesis on this topic could aim to introduce a model that navigates potential scenarios related to the progression of climate policies.

Dark Fleet Economics in Grain and Oil Trade

The phenomenon of "dark fleets" refers to vessels that operate in hidden or illegal capacities, often eluding detection through various means. Leveraging a blend of AIS (Automatic Identification System) data and satellite optical imagery, we can observe the activities of these fleets, particularly in the grain and oil trade sectors. Your thesis could focus on the externalities of the dark fleet on the legal market or the effect on trading patterns.

Working with Vake.ai

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman and Gabriel Fuentes

Tourist management

In 2019 before the sanitary emergency started, Norway received 5.88 million tourists representing 7,04 billion dollars and 1,7% of its GDP, reaching the highest levels in 2017. In this year, the tourism industry represented nearly 4,2% of Norwegian GDP and attracted around 170 billion NOK in total tourism consumption. These numbers show the potential of this industry for economic growth and depict some challenges. Particularly when we put the number of tourists in relation to the population of the country, it becomes clear the necessity to take a closer look at current policies and opportunities from point of view of operation research. 

For the City of Bergen, the cruise industry is especially important. Bergen receives the largest number of cruise tourists in the country, making of it one of the most visited cities in Scandinavia. 

It might be interesting for cruise companies to have touristic recommendations for their passengers, itineraries that provide the most benefits out the visit, and ensure the passengers will be back to the ship on time. But also, from the city hall perspective, it might be desirable to have a more homogenous distribution of the visitors across town in order to avoid crowds. Additionally, according to Bergen’s urbanization plan, there could be desirable areas of the city where it is more interesting to bring visitors and the money they spend on their trip, in the frame of urban development, social welfare, and environment. 

In order to assess the different locations, it is necessary to understand the city trends, socio-economic indicators, passenger preferences, and tourist offers, among others. Then use this information as support for an optimization model, allowing to suggest the best routes, both for the tourists and the City of Bergen. 

Main supervisor: PhD-candidate Andres Felipe Velez Correa .

Helicopter fleet composition and allocation

In the oil and gas industry, helicopters are widely used for personnel and cargo transport between offshore platforms and heliports on the land. Therefore, the decision-making regarding the composition of the helicopter fleet and the allocation of this resource is vital for a stable operation of oil & gas exploration and extraction. Such tactical decision affects various aspects of an oil company, including contract utilization, carbon footprint, plan robustness and operating expenses.

However, the common practice in the industry is that the decision of fleet composition and allocation is still manually made based on demand forecast and individual’s experience. Such decision-making process cannot guarantee optimal solutions, is not scalable, and would likely lead to low resource utilization rate and high operating cost.

We are now seeing a clear trend in the oil and gas industry which is to apply automation in its various and complex decision-making process with the support of optimization. In terms of the helicopter fleet composition and allocation problem in this case, a decision support tool is expected to facilitate the decision of helicopter chattering and deployment with stochastic demand for the next planning period. Moreover, resource sharing, namely utilizing idle helicopter resources from other operators, is also a promising opportunity to increase the overall efficiency on an industry level and hence is becoming increasingly popular among different oil companies and helicopter operators.

With its trademark solution DaWinci as the industry standard in personnel logistics management, Quorum is the software supplier for many of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. Quorum Software Norway, as the market leader, is now cooperating with several major players in the oil and gas industry to address various new challenges with new software planning tools. This master project will take advantage of Quorum’s expertise in logistics management in oil and gas industry, and look at some of the following issues:

  • Literature review on related problems and topics
  • Mathematical formulation of the problem
  • Study the uncertainty involved in this problem and methods to handle such stochasticity
  • Study and develop necessary solution methods
  • Analyze the numerical results based on a realistic problem instance from Quorum

Students choosing this project should expect to visit Quorum Software’s Bergen office to work alongside our optimization engineers for up to a week.

Collaborator: Quorum Software, contact person Xin Wang ( [email protected] ).

Supervisor: Yewen Gu .

What is the value of better weather forecasts?

Using empirical case studies to quantify how more accurate short-term weather forecasting can improve chartering decisions for a ship operator.

Working with company Western Bulk.

Evacuation of large passenger ships

Large cruise ships can be hard to exit in emergency situations and face unique challenges regarding evacuation. The ship’s steel hull has so far precluded the use of wireless technologies, which implies that all communications must be cabled-based, not even cell-phones work in an emergency. Another challenge is that evacuation plans are static and cannot be adapted as the emergency unfolds, something important in this context as different factors, such as winds, waves and tilting of the boat, affect passenger behaviour and the evacuation itself. In an ongoing project we try to develop a practical and theoretically sound stochastic and dynamic evacuation model for a large passenger ships aided by innovative wireless technology.

The project is in cooperation with NTNU (that covers the technical parts with respect to engineering and ship design) while NHH cover the dynamic modeling of an evacuation. The new wireless technology comes from ScanReach at Sotra - https://www.scanreach.com/ - and they are closely involved in the project.

Possible theses would cover aspects (to be agreed upon between supervisor and student) of modeling the evacuation or solving resulting models. There are many challenges in the modeling so that the resulting model is fast, which is required in an emergency.

Supervisor: Stein W. Wallace

Cargo Scheduling

For e.g. breakbulk and chemical shipping companies it is challenging to find out which cargoes fit best together into a voyage such that all cargoes can be transported on voyages and ships travel the least possible distance. The aim of this topic is to create a model with typical restrictions and find a good weighing of the different aspects of the objective function. In cooperation with Dataloy Systems, you can use data to develop and test your model as well as discuss the underlying concepts.

Supervisor: Julio Cesar Goez

Small city logistics

Urban population growth is driving an increase in the amount of freight that goes into and out of cities. That growth poses an increasing challenge to freight transportation in smaller compact cities with difficult topology, which is typical for most Norwegian cities and numerous cities abroad.

This transportation challenge is exacerbated by phenomena such as an increase in internet trade, the demand for fast delivery, and a reduction in the ownership of private cars in the city centre which could be used for shopping. The result is an increase in the total volume of freight, and more critically, in the total number of deliveries, normally managed by a large variety of transportation companies.

Unless planned for and regulated, a consequence might be increased traffic, with enhanced energy consumption, that competes for available space and may affect living conditions for a growing urban population.

This project will study small city logistics, with a focus on Bergen, to find the options available for the authorities, business models for a better city logistics setup, as well as mathematical modeling. Will be done in cooperation with the City of Bergen, Vestland County, Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) at The University of Bergen. The project can be qualitative as well as quantitative.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway, and we offer two project grants of NOK 25,000.

Possible supervisors: Stein W. Wallace or Julio C. Goez .

Using autonomous vehicles to improve our emergency services

The aim of emergency medical services (EMS) is to provide timely assistance to emergencies in order to save lives. Within this service, quality and capacity have sometimes deteriorated because staffing is not satisfactory and because the organization and directives are not clear. My interest is to work on the use of autonomous vessels to help ameliorate the burden that EMS staffing represents in the case of boat ambulances, and to improve the logistics planning of the system.

The aim is to analyze the use of autonomous vessels to improve response times and coverage. For example, by combining autonomous vessels with geographic information systems, one may use real time information of potential patients to improve the deployment of the resources. In particular my interest is to explore the following key research topic: designing algorithms with predictive capabilities that can be included in real time systems and capable of managing a continuous feed of data points coming from users’ cell phones and other sources.

Supervisor: Julio C. Goez .

Repositioning of Empty Vessels in the Dry Bulk Shipping Market

Aim: find key drivers for decision-making process of repositioning empty vessels - current market conditions, sentiment - repeating patterns, etc.

Supervisor: Vít Procházka.

Logistics/sharing economy: Analytics for car-sharing models

Car-sharing provides short-term vehicle access to a group of user members who share the use of a vehicle fleet owned by a car-sharing organization that maintains, manages, and insures the vehicles. An example of this model in Bergen is bildeleringer. Managing the fleet involves decisions such as the size of the fleet, how to position and reposition the vehicles, maintenance schedules, and pricing approaches. Strong background on analytics required

Supervisor: Julio C. Goez

Optimization of requirements of cloud computing resources

The providers of online applications usually need to find the deployment of minimum cost for running it in the cloud. For the deployment, the planner on the application side must consider renting resources from cloud providers. However, there is a service level constraint that must be satisfied to ensure the quality of the service.

How to analyze the impact of introducing a scheduling software?

Scheduling takes an important role in making shipping as efficient as possible. We want to evaluate the quality of a schedule in practice. As the amount of information changes from what is available during planning to what is available when the plan comes into action, this is a complex problem. The aim of this topic is to find a model to evaluate a plan with respect to how it was used in practice. This will allow us to evaluate if companies improved their scheduling over time. Using data provided by Dataloy Systems, we want to test the model and for example analyse if the implementation of a scheduling software had a positive impact on the schedules.

Supervisors: Julio Cesar Goez

Modelling storage and capacity for scheduling for example for antarctic fishing

Fishing in the antarctic is a profitable business that is aiming to professionalize its scheduling. Fishing boats are fishing and at the same time producing various fish products on board, increasing their stock of fish products on board. On regular intervals they need to meet a cargo vessel to transfer all their cargo onto the cargo vessel. This is to avoid the fishing boat having to go all the way to the coast and losing valuable fishing time. We want to find a model that fits this operation and can be extended to other storage scenarios (storage on the cargo ship, storage at a warehouse the cargo ship delivers to)

Scheduling well in a single port

For a ship that should visit several terminals in a port to discharge cargo and load cargo scheduling these terminal visits is not trivial. Each terminal has an individual waiting list, each cargo potentially has a deadline when it needs to be discharged or loaded and additionally the ship is not allowed to be overloaded at any point in time. We are interested in a model to evaluate the quality of different solutions.

Sample Student Theses

Global education.

  • Global Jackson Orlando Charlotte Washington D.C. Atlanta Houston Dallas Memphis --> New York City Global
  • Campus Home

Below are downloads (PDF format) of the M.A. (Religion) theses of some of our graduates to date.

Note: Certain requirements for current thesis students have changed since earlier theses were completed.

master thesis topic examples

AeroAstro Communication Lab

Creating an Outline for Your Master’s Thesis

1. introduction.

Your master’s thesis serves to explain the research that you have done during your time as a masters student. For many students, the master’s thesis is the longest document that they’ve ever written, and the length of the document can feel intimidating. The purpose of this CommKit is to cover a key element of writing your thesis: the outline.

2. Criteria for Success

The most important criterion for success is that you’ve shown an outline with your chapter breakdown to your advisor. Your advisor is the one that formally signs off on your thesis as completed, so their feedback is the most important. 

Every master’s thesis will have the following elements.

  • Introduction  –  Familiarize the reader with the topic and what gap exists in the field. 
  • Literature Review – Provide a detailed analysis of similar work in the field and how your work is unique. Master’s thesis literature reviews typically have at least 60 citations throughout the entire document 
  • Methods – Explain how you produced your results
  • Results –  Show your results and comment on their significance and implications. 
  • Conclusion – Summarize the methodology you used to generate results,  your key findings, and any future areas of work.

Having an outline for your master’s thesis will help you explain the motivation behind your work, and also connect the different experiments or results that you completed. Furthermore, an outline for your master’s thesis can help break down the larger task of writing the entire thesis into smaller, more manageable chapter-sized subtasks.

4. Analyze Your Audience

The most important audience member for your master’s thesis is your advisor, as they are ultimately the person that signs off on whether or not your thesis is sufficient enough to graduate. The needs of any other audience members are secondary. 

Ideally, a good master’s thesis is accessible to people that work in your field. In some cases, master’s theses are passed on to newer students so that that research can continue. In these cases, the thesis is used as a guide to introduce newer students to the research area. If you intend for your thesis to be used as a guide for new students, you may spend more time explaining the state of the field in your introduction and literature review. Additionally, your thesis will be posted publicly on DSpace , MIT’s digital repository for all theses. 

5. Best Practices

5.1. identify your claims.

A key element to figuring out the unique structure to your master’s thesis is identifying the claims of your work. A claim is an answer to a research question or gap. Your thesis can have both a higher level claim and also lower level claims that motivate the research projects that you worked on. Identifying your claims will help you spot the key objectives which you want to highlight in the thesis. This will keep your writing on topic. 

Some examples are shown below:

Gap/Question : There are no field-portable microplastic sensing technologies to measure their distribution in the environment.

→ Claim : Impedance spectroscopy can be used in a microfluidic device to rapidly distinguish organic matter from polymers.

Gap/Question: How effective are convolutional neural networks for pose estimation during in-space assembly? 

→ Claim : Convolutional neural networks can be used to estimate the pose of satellites, but struggle with oversaturated images and images with multiple satellites.

5.2. Support Your Claims

Once you have identified your claim, the next step is to identify evidence that will support it. The structure of your paper will be very dependent on the claim that you make.  Figure 1 and 2 demonstrate two different structures to support a claim. In one outline, the claim is best supported by a linear structure that describes the building, testing, and validation of a model. In another outline, the claim is best supported by a trifold structure, where three independent methods are discussed. Depending on the extent of the evidence, you could break this trifold structure into 3 separate chapters, or they could all be discussed in a singular chapter. The value of identifying claims and evidence is that it helps you organize your paper coherently at a high level. The number of chapters that are output as a result of your claim identification is up to you and what you think would be sufficient discussion for a chapter within your thesis. 

A block diagram that shows a sample claim-evidence structure. Text to the left says, "Just like a paper" and on the right there is a large purple box that says "I built a model that imporves X." Underneath that box, there are three boxes aligned in a column that say, "I built the model", "I tested the model and it improves X", and then "I applied the model to a new system"

5.3. Connect the Evidence to Your Claims with Reasoning

One common mistake that students make when writing their thesis is treating each chapter as an isolated piece of writing. While it is helpful to break down the actual task of thesis writing into chapter-size pieces, these chapters should have some connection to one another. For your outline, it is ideal to identify what these connections were. Perhaps what made you start on one project was that you realized the weaknesses in your prior work and you wanted to make improvements. For readers who were not doing the research with you, describing the connections between your work in different chapters can help them understand the motivation and value of why you pursued each component. 

5.4. Combine Your Claims, Evidence, and Reasoning to Produce Your Outline

Once you have identified your claims, the evidence you have surrounding each claim, and the reasoning that connects each piece of your work, you can now create your full outline, putting the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle. An example outline is provided as an annotated example.

There are no requirements for minimum or maximum number of chapters that your master’s thesis can have. Therefore, when translating your outline to a literal chapter breakdown, you should feel free to use as many chapters as needed. If your methods section for a claim is extremely long, it may make more sense to have it be a standalone chapter, as shown in the attached annotated pdf. 

6. Additional Resources

Every IAP, the Comm Lab hosts a workshop on how to write your master’s thesis. This workshop provides tips for writing each of these sections, and steps you through the process of creating an outline. 

Resources and Annotated Examples

Example 1. structure diagram and table of contents, example 2. table of contents.

Track: Microelectronics

master thesis topic examples

Degree: Master of Science Electrical Engineering, Track: Microelectronics

Credits:  120 ECTS, 24 months

Type: Regular study programme

Mode: Full-time

Language of instruction: English

Start: September

Microelectronics play a crucial role in all fields of innovation. The ever-increasing demand for processing power, sensing capabilities, communication, and miniaturisation makes microelectronics the most innovative field of all.

For example:

  • Chipmakers are pushed to develop new and reliable processes that allow the integration of hundreds of millions (or even billons) of transistors onto a single microchip.
  • Analogue designers are challenged to build accurate circuits from clearly non-ideal transistors.
  • Digital designers face problems with regard to the design, layout and testing of highly complex circuits.
  • System designers must meet the requirements of application environments that are often multidisciplinary.

Graduating in Microelectronics constitutes an excellent basis for a successful international career in this field. The department is internationally renowned for its research on smart sensors, microsystems, semiconductor fabrication, solar cells, signal processing, RF transceivers and RF components. This is reflected by the high number of publications in top-level journals, invitations for key-note speeches, and international awards received. Students have the opportunity to transform their own ideas from theory to application in the department’s own clean room and, quite often, present their work at international conferences. The range of facilities also encourages fruitful discussions between design oriented and technology-oriented students.

What you will learn

Within the 2-year programme students receive highly specialised knowledge and experience that they need in order to design, fabricate and test electronic devices, circuits and systems. You will take part in one of the internationally renowned research projects among others smart sensors, microsystems, semiconductor fabrication, solar cells, signal processing, RF transceivers and RF components. At TU Delft you will get the opportunity to transform your own ideas from theory to application in the clean room of Else Kooi Laboratory (EKL).

Scholarships Microelectronics

The Department of Microelectronics offers a number of scholarships which are available for students of proven excellence. These scholarships include:

  • Full tuition fees for the TU Delft MSc programme and contribution to living expenses for 2 years. To be considered for these scholarships, your complete application for the MSc programme needs to be uploaded before December 1st . More information
  • Industrial sponsored scholarships comprising tuition fee waivers for the 2nd year. To be considered for these scholarships students should show excellent performance during the first year and choose a thesis topic in line with the sponsor’s interest, usually a chip design.

Apart from scholarships other forms of financial support exist. During their thesis project many students receive a stipend that usually covers part of the living expenses. Also students can earn some money as part-time Teaching Assistants.

Biomedical Devices specialisation

For information regarding the Biomedical Deviced specialisation, check this page.

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How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Introduction

Published on September 7, 2022 by Tegan George and Shona McCombes. Revised on November 21, 2023.

The introduction is the first section of your thesis or dissertation , appearing right after the table of contents . Your introduction draws your reader in, setting the stage for your research with a clear focus, purpose, and direction on a relevant topic .

Your introduction should include:

  • Your topic, in context: what does your reader need to know to understand your thesis dissertation?
  • Your focus and scope: what specific aspect of the topic will you address?
  • The relevance of your research: how does your work fit into existing studies on your topic?
  • Your questions and objectives: what does your research aim to find out, and how?
  • An overview of your structure: what does each section contribute to the overall aim?

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Table of contents

How to start your introduction, topic and context, focus and scope, relevance and importance, questions and objectives, overview of the structure, thesis introduction example, introduction checklist, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about introductions.

Although your introduction kicks off your dissertation, it doesn’t have to be the first thing you write — in fact, it’s often one of the very last parts to be completed (just before your abstract ).

It’s a good idea to write a rough draft of your introduction as you begin your research, to help guide you. If you wrote a research proposal , consider using this as a template, as it contains many of the same elements. However, be sure to revise your introduction throughout the writing process, making sure it matches the content of your ensuing sections.

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master thesis topic examples

Begin by introducing your dissertation topic and giving any necessary background information. It’s important to contextualize your research and generate interest. Aim to show why your topic is timely or important. You may want to mention a relevant news item, academic debate, or practical problem.

After a brief introduction to your general area of interest, narrow your focus and define the scope of your research.

You can narrow this down in many ways, such as by:

  • Geographical area
  • Time period
  • Demographics or communities
  • Themes or aspects of the topic

It’s essential to share your motivation for doing this research, as well as how it relates to existing work on your topic. Further, you should also mention what new insights you expect it will contribute.

Start by giving a brief overview of the current state of research. You should definitely cite the most relevant literature, but remember that you will conduct a more in-depth survey of relevant sources in the literature review section, so there’s no need to go too in-depth in the introduction.

Depending on your field, the importance of your research might focus on its practical application (e.g., in policy or management) or on advancing scholarly understanding of the topic (e.g., by developing theories or adding new empirical data). In many cases, it will do both.

Ultimately, your introduction should explain how your thesis or dissertation:

  • Helps solve a practical or theoretical problem
  • Addresses a gap in the literature
  • Builds on existing research
  • Proposes a new understanding of your topic

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Perhaps the most important part of your introduction is your questions and objectives, as it sets up the expectations for the rest of your thesis or dissertation. How you formulate your research questions and research objectives will depend on your discipline, topic, and focus, but you should always clearly state the central aim of your research.

If your research aims to test hypotheses , you can formulate them here. Your introduction is also a good place for a conceptual framework that suggests relationships between variables .

  • Conduct surveys to collect data on students’ levels of knowledge, understanding, and positive/negative perceptions of government policy.
  • Determine whether attitudes to climate policy are associated with variables such as age, gender, region, and social class.
  • Conduct interviews to gain qualitative insights into students’ perspectives and actions in relation to climate policy.

To help guide your reader, end your introduction with an outline  of the structure of the thesis or dissertation to follow. Share a brief summary of each chapter, clearly showing how each contributes to your central aims. However, be careful to keep this overview concise: 1-2 sentences should be enough.

I. Introduction

Human language consists of a set of vowels and consonants which are combined to form words. During the speech production process, thoughts are converted into spoken utterances to convey a message. The appropriate words and their meanings are selected in the mental lexicon (Dell & Burger, 1997). This pre-verbal message is then grammatically coded, during which a syntactic representation of the utterance is built.

Speech, language, and voice disorders affect the vocal cords, nerves, muscles, and brain structures, which result in a distorted language reception or speech production (Sataloff & Hawkshaw, 2014). The symptoms vary from adding superfluous words and taking pauses to hoarseness of the voice, depending on the type of disorder (Dodd, 2005). However, distortions of the speech may also occur as a result of a disease that seems unrelated to speech, such as multiple sclerosis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

This study aims to determine which acoustic parameters are suitable for the automatic detection of exacerbations in patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) by investigating which aspects of speech differ between COPD patients and healthy speakers and which aspects differ between COPD patients in exacerbation and stable COPD patients.

Checklist: Introduction

I have introduced my research topic in an engaging way.

I have provided necessary context to help the reader understand my topic.

I have clearly specified the focus of my research.

I have shown the relevance and importance of the dissertation topic .

I have clearly stated the problem or question that my research addresses.

I have outlined the specific objectives of the research .

I have provided an overview of the dissertation’s structure .

You've written a strong introduction for your thesis or dissertation. Use the other checklists to continue improving your dissertation.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or research bias, make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

Research bias

  • Survivorship bias
  • Self-serving bias
  • Availability heuristic
  • Halo effect
  • Hindsight bias
  • Deep learning
  • Generative AI
  • Machine learning
  • Reinforcement learning
  • Supervised vs. unsupervised learning

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The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

  • A hook to catch the reader’s interest
  • Relevant background on the topic
  • Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

  • A thesis statement or research question
  • Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

Research objectives describe what you intend your research project to accomplish.

They summarize the approach and purpose of the project and help to focus your research.

Your objectives should appear in the introduction of your research paper , at the end of your problem statement .

Scope of research is determined at the beginning of your research process , prior to the data collection stage. Sometimes called “scope of study,” your scope delineates what will and will not be covered in your project. It helps you focus your work and your time, ensuring that you’ll be able to achieve your goals and outcomes.

Defining a scope can be very useful in any research project, from a research proposal to a thesis or dissertation . A scope is needed for all types of research: quantitative , qualitative , and mixed methods .

To define your scope of research, consider the following:

  • Budget constraints or any specifics of grant funding
  • Your proposed timeline and duration
  • Specifics about your population of study, your proposed sample size , and the research methodology you’ll pursue
  • Any inclusion and exclusion criteria
  • Any anticipated control , extraneous , or confounding variables that could bias your research if not accounted for properly.

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  22. Track: Microelectronics

    Industrial sponsored scholarships comprising tuition fee waivers for the 2nd year. To be considered for these scholarships students should show excellent performance during the first year and choose a thesis topic in line with the sponsor's interest, usually a chip design. Apart from scholarships other forms of financial support exist.

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    Overview of the structure. To help guide your reader, end your introduction with an outline of the structure of the thesis or dissertation to follow. Share a brief summary of each chapter, clearly showing how each contributes to your central aims. However, be careful to keep this overview concise: 1-2 sentences should be enough.