IB Internal Assessment Topics List

Links: 2010 IA Guide 2017 IA Guide Internal assessment Topics List

2010 IBIA Exemplars 2017 IBIA Exemplars IBIA Main Page

Here is a list of potential topics to help get you started. This is not a mandatory list! You may choose a topic off this list and futher refine it for your IA or develop one on your own

  1. King Leopold II and the Belgian Congo

  2. Kaiser Wilhelm II and the 2nd Reich

  3. The Young Turk Movement

  4. Armenian Nationalism

  5. German-Turkish relations, 1900-1915

  6. Mexican Revolution 1911-1924

  7. H.M.S. “Dreadnought” and the Naval Race

  8. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05

  9. Communist upheaval in Germany , 1916-1919

  10. Easter Rebellion of 1916

  11. Mutiny in the trenches, 1916-1917

  12. World War I and German East Africa

  13. Allende-Pinochet-Chile

  14. Verona Telegram-Cold War and Soviet Code

  15. Peron and Argentina

  16. Czech Revolution 1945-48: Benes and Masaryk

  17. The Impact of World War I on women in the workplace

  18. The English Suffragette Movement

  19. Mustafa Kemal and the Turkish Republic

  20. The Locarno treaties of 1925, and Stresemann

  21. German Depression, 1920-23

  22. The Lateran Treaties of 1929

  23. The Washington and London naval conferences

  24. Dag Hamerskjold and the Congo

  25. Hitler’s “Weltanschauung”

  26. Nixon and China

  27. Nazi Germany and the Catholic Church during the war

  28. Nazi Propaganda

  29. The Ethiopian Crisis of 1935

  30. The Nuremberg Laws of Racial Purity

  31. The Spanish Civil War

  32. Basque seperatism

  33. Russo-German Non-Aggression Pact of 1939: The Deadly Embrace

  34. Leo Blum and the French Popular Front

  35. Hitler and the “Final Solution” – the Fleming Thesis

  36. Albert Speer: Role in continuing war

  37. The John Maynard Keynes Thesis

  38. Iceland in World War II

  39. Julius Streicher and Der Sturmer

  40. The Terrible Secret : the Laqueur Thesis

  41. Auschwitz and the Allies : the Gilbert Thesis

  42. Vidkun Quisling and Nazi Norway

  43. Project T-4 (Euthanasia)

  44. Russo-Finnish War of 1940

  45. The “Prague Spring” and Dubcek 1968

  46. Women and the War Effort – World War II

  47. Chaim Rumkowski: the Judenalteste ( Lodz )

  48. I.G. Farben Trials

  49. Action “Reinhard”, Chelmno, Belsec

  50. Paper Walls – the Wyman Thesis

  51. Chiang Kai-shek and the Burma Road

  52. Influenza Epidemic 1918-1919

  53. Irish nuetrality during World War II

  54. Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (story of a French village)

  55. German Youth Resistance to the Nazis

  56. Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

  57. Henri Petain and the Vichy Government

  58. Andrei Sakharov and Soviet Repression

  59. Myth of French Resistance during World War II

  60. Non-Germans in the S.S.

  61. Swiss neutrality in World War II

  62. Soviet Purge Trials

  63. Willy Brandt and Ostpolitik

  64. Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture

  65. Six Armies at Normandy – Keegan Thesis

  66. Potsdam and Yalta Conferences

  67. Hitler of History – Lukacs theory

  68. Gandhi and Indian Nationalism

  69. French and the Vietminh

  70. Suez Canal Crisis, 1956

  71. Hungarian Revolution 1956

  72. The EEC and the Council of Europe: European federalism

  73. Nassar and Arab Nationalism

  74. Algerian War of Independence

  75. Apartheid in South Africa

  76. Charles de Gaulle and Modern France 1945-62

  77. Julius Nyerere and African Socialism

  78. Muhammed Jinnah and the Moslem League

  79. Changing Role of Women in India

  80. Republican government in India : Nehru to Indira Ghandi

  81. Sun Yat-sen and the 1911 Revolution

  82. The “Great Leap Forward”

  83. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

  84. China ’s Involvement in the Korean War

  85. Cambodian Genocide

  86. Herzl and Zionism

  87. Sykes-Picot Agreement on the Middle East 1916/Weizmann and Balfour Declaration/McMahon Pledge (COMBINE)

  88. Rise of Islamic Fundamentalism

  89. Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution

  90. The Iranian Revolution of 1979

  91. Saddam Hussein and modern Iraq

  92. Soviet Gulag System

  93. Aryan “science”

  94. Lysenkoism – Russia , China

  95. Choice by student/teacher

  96. To what extent did the successes of the Berlin Blockade and Airlift overshadow the negative outcomes for the Western Powers?

  97. An Investigation into Tiananmen Square discussing the heroes popularised in Western Media and Deng Xiaoping’s "martyrs."

  98. Was the crossing of the Luding Bridge in May 1935 a great communist victory against tremendous odds, or a minor skirmish exaggerated by the Chinese Communist Party for propaganda purposes?

  99. Kent State: Was it the turning point in the Vietnam War?

  100. What were the causes of the Boston Massacre 1776?

  101. An oral history study on the role of women living in post-World War II Britain.

  102. Why did the Special Operations Executive send aid to Tito’s communist Partisans?

  103. The German Occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II.

  104. How far were Republican divisions responsible for their loss in the Spanish Civil War?

  105. Was Hitler's "euthanasia" policy distinctively Nazi?

  106. Cinema as History: Sir Richard Attenborough's Gandhi

  107. An examination of the Greenham Common Peace Protesters

  108. Triumph of the Will: Art, Propaganda or documentary?

  109. To what extent did David Low's cartoons accurately reflect public opinion in Britain in the years before World War II?

  110. To what extent is the 2004 film Finding Neverland historically accurate in its account of the life of J M Barrie?

  111. To what extent did Louis XVI’s execution contribute to the "Terror" in France 1793?

  112. What was the cause of the Rwandan Genocide?

  113. To what extent does the film I Shot Andy Warhol faithfully portray the events of Andy Warhol’s shooting on the 3rd of June 1968?

  114. What were the reasons for the Allies bombing of Dresden in the Second World War and were they justified in destroying this city?

  115. How and why did the reports of the American newspaper The New York Times and the British newspaper The Times differ in their reports of the Soviet and American administrations during the Cuban Missile Crisis?

  116. How did an admiration of Italian Baroque architecture and ancient mythology become reflected in the design and construction of the Palace of Versailles?

  117. To what extent does the film Amadeus accurately portray the final illness and death of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?

  118. Did the Bielski Otriad experience the same internal and external conflicts portrayed in the film Defiance?

  119. How useful is the art of George Grosz to the historian of Weimar Germany?

  120. Does oral testimony substantiate the view that life in East Germany got worse following the fall of Nazism?

  121. How successfully did Hitler promote the ideal of the family in the Third Reich?

  122. How did newspaper reports on the death of Kennedy vary, and how reliable were they?

  123. How and why did the accounts of the storming of the Winter Palace in october 1917 differ in the film October and in the book A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924?

  124. How, when and why was the church/mosque/temple of [name] build and what can be learnt from the town of [name] in a defined period?

  125. How significant was Fidel Castro’s role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962?

  126. To what extent do the film The Charge of the Light Brigade and the book The Charge: The Real Reason Why the Light Brigade was Lost agree on the apportioning of blame for the failure of the charge of the Light Brigade?

  127. To what extend was the involvement in the United States government and the CIA responsible for the downfall of Salvador Allende?

  128. What were the real motives for the different views held by Churchill and Chamberlain during the years previous to World War II?

  129. A study of the Women’s Army Corps during World War II

  130. “Mao’s swim across the Yangtze River inspired the renewed cult of Mao and provided an image of Mao as a leader for a new revolutionary generation.”

  131. To what extent can Nixon’s Vietnamization policy be considered a success?

  132. Did the Soviet Union assemble missiles in Cuba in 1962 solely to protect Cuba from invasion?

  133. An investigation into the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989.

  134. Although the Night of Long Knives was characterised by the Nazis as Hitler taking a "courageous action which saved the German Volk from civil war,” he was motivated more by a desire to eliminate threats to his own supremacy within the Party and earning the loyalty of the Army.

  135. Was the Berlin Wall built simply to deny freedom to East Germans under Soviet rule or did it serve a greater purpose?

  136. An examination of the significance of British politics in the responses to the Jack the Ripper cases in the 1880s.

  137. How effective was the Marshall Plan was in reconstructing Europe?

  138. Why was Margaret Sanger a successful public advocate for birth control in the United States?

  139. What were the social, economic and political impacts of the launch of Sputnik on the US and USSR at that point in time of the Cold War?

  140. A study of why the United States became involved in Vietnam.

  141. Victim or aggressor: An examination of German motives in 1914.

  142. Who emerged on top from the Cuban Missile Crisis?

  143. How successful were the Soviet Five Year Plans?