Oh, first comment! I studied Classics and wrote my dissertation on the Romanisation of Britain.. Essentially meaning the shift in culture, technology, religion, etc that occurred post-Roman conquest.
"Pagan Criticism and Christian Self-Definition in the Second and Third Centuries A.D."
Mine was historiographical, looking at Richard Knolles' 1603 Generall Historie of the Turkes and orientalist discourse in Stuart histories in general.
I basically compared two contemporary saints and sought to clarify how seventh-century doctrinal disputes in Byzantium had some pretty major consequences for the West, even as far away as in Anglo-Saxon England. I concluded that both saints used Rome as a symbol for their opposition to the status quo in Byzantium and Northumbria respectively and that there were some pretty concrete connections between the two men, which is quite neat since medievalists rarely venture outside their specialist area.
I love these types of questions because they make me feel like my thesis is more relevant than it ^actually^is...
To answer your question, though, I did a structural analysis of the bankruptcy of a newspaper during the newspaper crisis of the seventies. I tried to move away from the qualitative interpretations that were usually given - which actually put the cause of the bankruptcy down largely to the declining quality of the newspaper. My interpretation was more quantitative, focussing on the economic crisis of the seventies, the rising prices of resources due to globalisation and most importantly on the inherent problems of the (newspaper/media) market. I also tried to gauge if anything could've been done to save the newspaper in question, to which the answer was a resounding no.
Focussing on this relatively small event gave me a lot of insight not only into the the newspaper industry then and now, but also on the economy at large. It was really interesting (to me)
Japanese rearmamament post WWII
Frank Aiken, the United Nations and Algeria: A study of Franco Hibernian relations in the United Nations during the Algerian War.
If you had told me in first year I'd do my thesis on modern political history I'd have laughed in your face. Always assumed it would be something military. Funny how that happens with theses.
Early medieval weaponry and magic - still a work in progress :)
I argued that the desegregation of the modern American military actually occurred a bit earlier than the history books would have you believe (World War II instead of the Korean War).
In the closing months of World War II several divisions fighting in Europe experimented with employing "negro" platoons alongside white platoons. Attrition naturally caused some of these units to become integrated unofficially, if not "officially".
In retrospect I think my heart was writing checks my sources and definitions couldn't quite cash. However the constant self-critique required to reach my current conclusion about my own work is why I love history.
People who put on fat suits and giant leather phalluses, then made sex and fart jokes, danced around and sang in order to win a competition and honor their deities 2,500 years ago.
Used comparative research to show how the potato famine wasn't just exclusively an Irish-British affair, nor the direct result of British policy. It served as a catalyst for far-stretching changes in the political and socio-economic sphere in many Central European countries and exposed glaring weaknesses within the contemporary socio-economic structure and the laissez-faire ideology.
I dropped out of masters history and took up law shortly before 9-11. My proposed thesis was a review of Islamic sectarianism, specifically Shiite eschatology and the more esoteric flavours such as the assassins and various other interesting crews. I was roundly excoriated for the irrelevance and pointlessness of such an endeavour. The next person in line proposed a study of gender in the dental industry between 1930 and 1980. This was praised to the skies. At that point I left academic history and never came back.