You must write a 2000-word essay based on one of the questions below. It must meet the following requirements:
It should fall within 10% of the target length (excluding bibliography), i.e., the text of the essay should be between 1800 and 2200 words in length;
It should be written as one continuous piece (no subheadings);
You must research your essay using academic sources (books and articles) and at least three quarters of the sources on your bibliography should come from the Reading List for this module;
You must develop a critical distance between the sources you read and your essay. If you want to include a short passage in your essay, then quote it properly. But otherwise, you must not follow the sentence or paragraph structure of a source text. Paraphrasing requires you to demonstrate your understanding through your own written account. (Altering the words or order of clauses in a sentence and inserting it in your essay is still plagiarism);
Your in-text citations should follow the Harvard style (surname year: page number) and must include the precise page numbers in the source text for the ideas, arguments or quoted passages which you include in your essay (do not give the page range of a chapter, but the exact page or pages on which the information appears). The markers will check a certain proportion of your citations against the texts cited, to ensure accuracy and academic integrity;
Only cite the texts you have actually used. Do not insert references to texts which you have not read and do not copy citations found in the sources you have read. If you wish to quote a phrase by Jones which you find quoted in a book or article written by Smith, your reference should take the following form: (Jones quoted in Smith 2022: 79);
At this level, you should consult at least 10 academic sources and there should be at least 15 in-text citations in your essay;
While it is acceptable to read Wikipedia entries, student essays on the e-IR website and to explore the use of AI tools like ChatGPT in thinking through how to structure your essay, text from such websites must not be reproduced in your essay, no matter what modifications you may make to that text. Your essay must be written in your own terms and any passages which you copy from academic sources should be identified as quotations through the use of ‘inverted commas’ and accurate citations to the sources (including page numbers).
