ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how to come up with a viable and interesting topic for an anthropology research project. The key issue is to focus down on a relatively small-scale, self-contained project that can also be used to address issues of wider analytical and comparative importance. This chapter discusses different approaches to the posing of distinctively anthropological problems, and explores the relationship between library- and fieldwork-based dissertations. It also stresses that a successful choice of topic will bear in mind the existing skills of the student, as well as those that they wish to develop.
