Background and literature review

I’m grateful to Sumona Mukhopadhyay for giving me this assignment write-up, which I used with slight changes.

Please submit a 1–2 page PDF discussing currently relevant related work to your thesis. The goal here is not simply to summarise your chosen papers, but rather to specifically tie them to each other and to your proposed thesis work.

Select at least 5 papers to discuss in detail. There may be other peripheral references that you don’t dive into too deeply.

Your description should address:

• Summarise the papers and their key contributions to the state of the art. Do this in your own words.
• Discuss in detail how the works you’ve chosen relate to your current thinking about your thesis project. What do you hope to improve on from the chosen papers?
• Include references.

How to choose papers to summarise

You’ll want to choose papers in your area that roughly meet one or more of the following criteria:

• They provide important fundamental background knowledge that is important for understanding your research area and/or your proposed topic.
• They describe solutions to the same or similar problem that you aim to solve with your thesis, and you aim to improve on them in some way.
• They describe methodological approaches that you plan to use or adapt.
• There may be other reasons to include papers in your literature review. Discuss with me if you’re not sure.