Bachelor thesis

• Have passed courses in the first five semesters of the Market and Management Anthropology program.
• Have knowledge of anthropological field work methods as taught in the MMA program.
• Have completed a semester at a host university outside Denmark. 

The bachelor thesis demonstrates the students’ abilities to participate independently in professional and interdisciplinary collaborations with a professional approach. The bachelor thesis can be written individually or in pair. 

The bachelor project completes the MMA program. The purpose of the project is to allow the student to demonstrate the capability to theorize about a market or management related problem, to analyze and interpret fieldwork data and to write an ethnographic report. The assignment should reflect the students’ competences to reflect on fieldwork in a complex, globalized and multicultural setting, to combine empirical data with relevant theoretical concepts and scientific paradigm, to reflect on their own positioning and ethical dilemmas, and to evaluate and discuss their methodological and analytic design. Finally the student should be able to reflect on the implication of the project from a market and/or managerial perspective. 

The bachelor thesis is prepared under supervision in a topic approved by the supervisor.

The project builds on the fieldwork carried out in the 5th semester of the study programme.

The exact research questions and content of the project is determined by the chosen problem and is decided upon by the student in collaboration with the supervisor.

The student has fulfilled the learning goals of the course when he or she can:

• plan and execute a fieldwork
• formulate a problem statement and research question
• apply relevant literature
• analyse data with relevant theories
• reflect on own position and philosophical paradigm

• Demonstrate skills in planning, designing and carrying out fieldwork
• Demonstrate skill in finding relevant literature and theories
• Demonstrate skill in positioning him/ herself according to a scientific paradigm & theory. 

• The students will gain competences in analysing empirical data by means of appropriate usage of relevant theoretical concepts. 
• The students will acquire experience with developing research design, e.g. formulating proble statement and rearch question. 
  
• Demonstrate competence in reflecting on one’s own positioning in the field and in solving ethical challenges. 
• Demonstrate competences in discussing criteria of validity and evaluating their methodological designs

• Select, argue for and structure a precise and relevant problem within market and management anthropology.
• Formulate problem statement and research question
  
• Present the results of the analysis in a way that fulfils the identified knowledge gap
• Evaluate the scientific validity of the results as well as the implications from a market & managerial perspective.

Self-study and supervision.

The topic for the bachelor project can be developed in cooperation with a company or an organization, or fieldwork in a local consumption or market system setting. It is an empirical project which is based on ethnographic fieldwork during the students’ semester abroad. For cases in which a student was unable to collect appropriate and adequate data for the bachelor project during the semester abroad, he or she may collect data through alternative methods, including but not limited to secondary sources and/or netnography conducted upon their return. The demand for collection of data also applies to students who choose later to work in pair; a joint bachelor thesis must be built on the merging of two data sets or supplementing primary and secondary data sets. 

The student works independently with a topic of own choice as the purpose of the course is that the student gets an opportunity to demonstrate the skills that are described in the goals description. As support for this independent work, supervision is provided and the academic sustainability of the project is secured though a demand that the topic must be approved by the supervisor.

There is also an opportunity for the students to work in pairs for their bachelor thesis. In this case, the fieldwork data collected individually by the members of a group should be combinable, either by studying the same topic in two different fieldwork sites (a comparative study) or by studying two complementary topics in the same fieldwork site.

The workload of the Bachelor thesis per student is equivalent to 20 ECTS = 540 working hours.

The student is responsible for registering for 2nd and 3rd examination attempt.