NOTES: Literature Review - Purposes & Where to Start (3.1-3.2)

  1. Show you have engaged (or *can* engage) with the scholarship around your topic and have some idea of relevant theoretical and/or methodological approaches. 
  2. Provides overall context as to what your trying to do, which helps in assessing feasibility and establishing criteria for success/failure.
  3. Narrow in on succinct statement of the tradition of the work in your area that you feel is relevant/important, and of your scholarly values. 
  4. Enables you to define series of research questions to guide and frame your work. 


Don't just list and evaluate work done by others to date.

Write a ‘problem-oriented’ narrative 

  • beginning - identify the main issue
  • middle - add in scholarship to date and develop a framework 
  • end - pose a set of focused RQs.

Start with what you know

identify related theories and authors who publish around the topic you are interested in

snowballing - look at works cited by the authors you know, track them down --> build up picture of research tradition

start with a fairly recent (up-to-date) text

search engines: Google Scholar (scholar.google.co.uk)

Establish general themes:

  • What seem to be the perspectives that researchers adopt?
  • Do these appear to change over time?
  • Which author names reappear and which names tend to come up when the history of the field is described?
  • What seem to be the core components or ideas that make up the area?
  • Which aspects of the field seem well covered and which not?

Refine your search terms

look for material from specific authors or around particular theories and concepts. For example, in an historically-oriented project you will want first to focus in on a period or timespan; or, you will need to refine your study in terms of geographical setting.

look for alternative search terms, and for patterns of common terms/usages


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