From a CHD Student - Choosing a Topic

Tim Cohn and his father at National History Day 2014

Choosing a topic was always something that I thought was particularly exciting.  Every year, NHD selects a very broad theme that gives tremendous topic selection leeway to students.  This is a great opportunity for you to pick an area of history that you find interesting, or something you have never had the opportunity to previously study.

To start, I created a list of broad ideas that I could connect easily back to the yearly theme.  This list was always very broad, but it was meant to develop a sense of what area of history I was most interested in for that year.  Once I made a choice about the time period, event, invention, person, or anything else, I then began to narrow the scope to make my project manageable.  This can be difficult for many people because it is tempting to take on too “big” a topic.  However, it is important that you keep a narrow enough focus when selecting your final topic so you can go in depth with your research, and so you can make your thesis and conclusion really targeted.  When a topic is too broad, it becomes easy for the project to deviate from the annual theme.  
​
​Once you find an angle that best fits your interests and the theme it is helpful to create a project title. This should both capture the point of your project and incorporate an element that ties the project to the theme — for example, if the theme is about taking a stand in history, you should state who or what group is taking a stand directly in your title.  After that, you have a topic! 

​
​Tim Cohn

---