How to find a research topic

• Before planning an essay, it is important to choose the correct topic
• Choosing a topic at random will make the essay very hard and slow to write
• To choose the topic, you need to read for a few days 
• This will help to establish historiographical debates and find gaps the research has missed
• Once a broad amount of reading is done, a topic should jump out

Benefits of choosing a topic vs being given one

• If you are given a topic, you have to try and fit evidence around a preselected question
• If you choose a topic, you find evidence and then work out a question

• The second approach is much quicker
• The first approach means you might try and fit in evidence that is not appropriate
• The second approach means you are being led by the evidence, so will be more impartial

How to structure a concept

• The historiography portrays X events/time period in a certain light
• Event Y does not seem to fit within this broader general narrative
• This is because the historiography has missed certain documents and evidence which are not cited in any of the papers
• This essay will examine the events of Y and use it as a way to provide a counternarrative to the explanations provided by X historiography

How to apply this:

• Location - maybe they missed factors going on in different location? They are probably looking too locally
• Archival sources - have some just been released that they did not have a chance to look at before now?