Power plays: reflections on the process of submitting an undergraduate dissertation

Summary This article is based on a performance on the power plays of research. It is a self-critical examination of the practices involved in submitting an undergraduate dissertation. The original performance was a dialogue between myself, reflecting on the specific experiences of my dissertation, and Craig Jeffrey, who punctuated it with more general aspects of the dissertation process. It was written for an audience of undergraduate geographers at the University of Cambridge to illuminate the theatre of inequalities and oscillations of power between various actors: the researcher, the researched and the agenda of the academic discipline. Later, my colleagues on the social anthropology Masters programme at the London School of Economics heard another version of the performance.