Nottingham Civic Exchange Dissertations launched

Nottingham Civic Exchange will unleash the intellectual power of Political and International Relations students to explore a range of important issues for a place like Nottingham through their final year dissertations. As Nottingham Trent University's place-based think tank, we believe it is important for our students to engage as we do on the critical topics. We are trialling this proposal which will pitch five dissertation topics for Politics & International Relations students for 2018/19.

These topics will be focused on:

• Economic Insecurity

• Students as civic actors

• Challenging/challenges of local governance systems

• Inquiries, commissions and their impact

• Power and decision making

Nottingham Civic Exchange will be creating a single dissertation question for each of these themes that students can tackle. Alongside academic support, these students will receive encouragement from the Civic Exchange throughout their third year. These dissertation studies will be published on our website and shared via social media. The Civic Exchange will also work with the students to develop policy briefings based on their findings and will engage stakeholders to connect with these studies to improve their understanding.

We know our students will provide critical responses to these issues and are excited to share the topics with our students.

The research questions available to all Politics and International Relations students are:

• The Conservative election campaign of 2017 outlined a commitment to improving the lives of Ordinary Working Families. To what extent has government policy reflected this commitment?

• Successive governments have pursued a ‘localism’ agenda. To what extent does this suggest that local government has become more or less powerful?

• Politics is more than turning up to vote. Investigating contemporary examples of student civic activism and political engagement.

• This generation is arguably economically worse off than previous generations, the first time this has happened. What are the perceptions and experience of students on their own economic security/insecurity?

• Did the general election of 2017 inspire a ‘youthquake’?

If you'd like to take part as a student or find out about our research questions please contact Rich Pickford for full details. Please send a 300-word note to Nottingham Civic Exchange by Friday 20 April, outlining why this topic matters to you and what you think you would gain from working with Nottingham Civic Exchange by the deadline.