A good dissertation topic is one you can turn into a focused question and actually answer with the time, sources and data you can get: interest matters, but feasibility decides. Here are four tests to run on a topic before you commit, and what to bring to your supervisor.
Check my proposalA topic is an area: housing, sports injuries, a novelist, a tax policy. A question is the thing you will answer within that area. A project is the question plus a way of answering it. Most first ideas are topics, and that is fine. You do not need a final question to start, but you need a direction that leads to one.
The best sources are usually close to hand: a module that made you argue with the reading, a problem you saw on placement, a recent change in Irish policy, a public dataset such as those from the Central Statistics Office. The suggestions for further research at the end of recent journal articles are another good start, because they name gaps that researchers in the field already recognise.
Avoid choosing a topic to impress. A narrow question handled well usually shows more than a broad one handled thinly.
You can narrow a topic by population, place, period or angle: one group instead of everyone, one county or sector instead of the country, a decade instead of a century, one mechanism instead of all of them. Narrowing too far has its own risk. If the answer would matter to nobody beyond your case, ask what the case is an example of, and say so in your proposal.
A useful test is to write down what kind of answer would count. If you cannot imagine what a finished answer would look like, the question is still too vague to plan a method around.
Arrive at your first meeting with two or three directions, each sketched in a short paragraph: the question as you see it now, a possible method, and how you would get the material. Your supervisor knows what has been done before in your department, what is feasible in the time, and what ethics approval would involve. Options give them something to react to; a blank page leaves them to choose for you.
Esmond does not suggest topics and does not judge whether yours is interesting enough. That conversation belongs with your supervisor. Once you have written a proposal, Esmond can evaluate whether your question, aims and planned method fit together, and where the plan is vague or its scope looks large for one project.
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Applying an existing question to a new setting is a normal choice for an undergraduate project. Your module handbook says what yours expects. Your module handbook says what yours expects.
No. Choosing a topic is between you and your supervisor. Esmond evaluates a written proposal or draft once you have one.