How To Pick Your Dissertation Topic

Picking your dissertation topic can be both exhilarating and exasperating. To make sure the experience is more of the former and less of the latter, I'll give you some some tips that will make the process smoother:

1. Make sure the topic is interesting to you. If your advisor happens to think that a particular topic is interesting, but you don't, you should drop it like a hot potato. Pick something that can hold your interest for at least a year, possibly longer.

2. Make sure that the topic is original and important to your discipline. While having a topic that interests you is important, it is also important that you have a topic that professionals in the field believe is intellectually relevant. In other words, does your topic make a professional-level intervention in a field?

3. So, how do you pick the topic?
- Your topic should be something that you like talking about and thinking about.
- Your topic should be something that other people have written about generally, but make sure that they have not said exactly the same thing you intend to say about it.
- Your topic should be something you would be capable of writing about at your current skill levels. Let me explain what I'm saying here. Sometimes we want to write about something that seems incredibly wonderful, but we don't have the skills to write about it yet. We may someday, but not now. Remember that in most cases, a dissertation is your entry-level professional work. It's not your magnum opus. So, write about something that you think you can handle at your current skill level.

4. Bounce ideas off of people and learn what's out there.
-Talk to you advisor. He or she may well know what's been written about in the area of your interest.
-Talk to other faculty members, even ones from another field. In today's academic world, inter-discipline approaches are all the rage, and more important, they're intellectually enriching. So, if you're writing, for example, in history, you might want to see what people in political science and sociology have said about your topic.
-Present chunks of your ideas at conferences. Getting feedback from people at conferences can be very important, for a couple of reasons. First, the folks at these events, if you've picked your conferences carefully, are subject matter experts in your field. You can talk to them during breaks and at lunch and dinner about your topic. Because these folks are faculty but not your supervisors, they will treat you as a colleague rather than as a student. They may be more honest about your work than someone at your home institution. Second, some of these people may well be willing to serve as external readers on your committee. Cultivate these relationships.
-Review books in the field. While book reviewing can be time consuming, It's journeyman work that performs a couple of functions for you. First, journal editors get to know who you are, and that relationship can help pave the way for you to publish peer-reviewed articles. Yes, those articles are blindly read. However, journal editors, if there is a tie about a publication decision, serve to break that tie. If they know you, then they are more likely to vote in your favor. Second, and ultimately more important, reviewing helps you to learn the approaches of people in your field and what's been written about your topic.

So, if you follow this advice, you should have no trouble picking a dissertation topic that you think is interesting and will have an impact in a particular field.