Eight Fascinating Ohio State Doctoral Dissertation Topics

More than 100 doctoral candidates submit their dissertation, a written presentation of years of research in their respective fields, to the graduate school at Ohio State University each semester. Here, eight of the most fascinating topics from this year's cache.

"While Stands the Colosseum: A Ground-Up Exploration of Ancient Roman Construction Techniques Using Virtual Reality"Adrian Tan employed engineering principles to digitally reconstruct the techniques that were most likely used in building ancient monuments.

"Preschoolers' Social-Emotional Competency and Time Spent Outside of School"Emma Merry studied the effect school breaks have on preschoolers developing social-emotional skills and found children demonstrate increases in behavioral concerns during summer months.

"Prejudice Formation and Stereotype Internalization From Media: A Deliberative Moral Judgment Perspective"Morgan Ellithorpe examined how moral judgments formed through media narratives influence attitudes and behaviors.

"Property, Mobility, and Epistemology in U.S. Women of Color Detective Fiction"Julia Istomina points out that figuring out "whodunit" in detective fiction works by minority authors is both a creative and political narrative process.

"Social Network Stability in Borderline Personality Disorder: A Longitudinal Analysis"Sophie Lazarus compared the interpersonal relationships of women with borderline personality disorder to thoseof women without the psychologicaldisorder to better understand the dynamic between borderline and social networks.

"Competing Traditions: Village Temple Rivalries, Social Actors and Contested Narratives in Contemporary China"Tradition-and how it's deconstructed, reconstructed and practiced over time-is at the forefront of Ziying You's dissertation.

"Social Support, Health, and Recurrent Breast Cancer: Understanding Psychological and Biological Mechanisms"Caroline Dorfman examined whether psychological distress and other variables mediated the relationship between social support and health for women with recurrent breast cancer.

"Exploring the World with Volunteered Geographic Information: Space, Place and People"Xining Yang looked into how advances in technology-like smartphones and GPS-are changing how geographic data are produced and circulated.