Writing a research proposal

I'm currently in the process of putting together my application for the MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture. One of the application requirements is a brief research proposal in the personal statement (which can be between 500-1000 words).

I have no idea how to start this - how does one just come up with a thesis that hasn't already been done? I'm interested in subculture, religious symbolism, the avant-garde, etc so I have some idea of what I like but no idea how to turn any of that into a research proposal.

Any help would be very appreciated!

Reply 1

AnaaaElec

Hi! I do a completely different discipline so can’t offer much help on specifics of content, but when I wrote my research proposal I followed this guide: https://www.cdh.cam.ac.uk/mphil/research-proposal/

With regards to novelty, a lot of how research proposals tend to be assessed is by how they take existing work in certain novel directions. Justifying new questions you want to ask and what has and hasn’t been covered by previous studies is a key part of proposing research, but your area of focus doesn’t need to be reinventing the wheel. I suggest looking for papers or journals which focus on your topics of interest and coming up with research questions from there, justifying and building on what has already been written whilst explaining why the questions you want to answer are new. Hope this helps!