When choosing a dissertation or thesis topic, it can be tempting to choose a topic that everyone’s talking about precisely because of its popularity. This approach to a research project that will last several months (or years in the case of a PhD) can lead to a great deal of difficulty, some of which may…
Category: Political Economy
A pair of new publications
I had two articles come out over the past month or so, both collaborative efforts with recent MSc students. Engaging the dragon, with Yue Ming, in Economic and Political Studies (gold open access through T&F’s transformative agreement with UCL), examines UK government publications providing guidance for British firms doing business in China. We find a…
The UK’s CPTPP Goal
I’ve written a short piece in The Conversation on the UK’s aims of joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
Classes
I’ve started fielding a few questions relating to module selection and content for the coming year, as the UCL module catalogue entries appear to answer as many questions as they raise. I’ll try to provide some additional description here; refer to the module catalogue for definitive information.(1) All questions relating to the enrolment process should…
Journals for international political economy, 2020 edition
IPE Journals, 2020 (.csv) This is a bit late this year, with both extended thesis supervision duties and the switch to preparing for online teaching delivery this coming year the main culprits. As with previous versions, the core data here are pulled from Scimago. What’s changed? I’ve dropped Clarivate/Thomson-Reuters/JCR/whatever-they’re-called-now impact factors, as their closed nature…
Quoting versus paraphrasing
When dealing with sources in the body text of a paper, writers frequently face the choice between paraphrasing or quoting the source. In student writing, mistakes in either can lead to reduced marks or plagiarism procedures. Having seen far too many problems with this recently, I provide a brief overview of both here. This is…