Literature Review

So you've been asked to do a literature review for your minor thesis or a major project. If you're not sure what that is exactly, you're not alone. A lit review offers you an opportunity to survey the literature relevant to your project, analyse what you find and place your own intervention into context.

The essential elements of a literature review are to:

• critically review the scholarship in your area,
• organise it thematically by theoretical approach, chronological order or by similar conclusions, and
• relate it to your own project.

You can use the literature review to define your own project - where you agree or disagree with others and how your work adopts or rejects others' methodological approaches. However, this is not where you develop your own work - save that for the body of your essay or thesis.

There is an excellent discussion of what a lit review should include and how to conduct it on the Library website.