The Lutz Double Funnel for Historical Analysis: A Tool for Developing Student Term Papers

Every semester, I am always asked in seminars how to narrow down a term paper, contextualize it within the current state of research, structure it, and implement all of this into a text with a compelling argument. In this blog post, I present the “Lutz Double Funnel for Historical Analysis,” a tool that I have successfully used in teaching for several years. The double funnel visualizes the process of developing a term paper and offers a framework for educators and students to clearly illustrate the complex requirements of written assignments in history studies.

Suggested citation: Lutz, Martin. "The Lutz Double Funnel for Historical Analysis", 2026, translated from the German original published at the Geschichtswissenschaftsdidaktik Blog, 2023, url: https://sites.google.com/view/martinlutz/the-lutz-double-funnel. 

Thanks to Marc Abernathy and Sara Gojowczyk for their assistance. 

1. Developing a term paper

Term papers or theses still constitute the central form of assessment in the discipline of history, at least at my Institute of History at Humboldt University of Berlin, where I have been teaching for around ten years. There are, of course, numerous writing guides in book formi and resources from writing centersii, some of which are specifically tailored to the needs of history and humanities students. In addition, there is a broader body of academic literature dealing with stylistic and argumentative approaches to academic writingiii, as well as pedagogical writing guides for educatorsiv.

I use this literature to provide students with as much support as possible, even though time is a very limited resource in a specialized seminar and my support cannot replace a dedicated writing workshop. I also use exemplary term papers from my previous courses and other available reference examples, such as those in the student journal "Die junge Mommsen"v at the Institute of History at HU Berlin.

However, even with these resources and orientation literature as a foundation, writing often remains abstract for many students, especially in their early semesters—that is, what, exactly, “narrowing down,” “sharpening,” and “focusing” look like in concrete terms when conceiving and writing their own term papers. Paul Nolte’s Die Seminararbeit. Hinweise zur formalen und inhaltlichen Gestaltung (The seminar paper: Notes on formal and content-related design) is excellent for use in teaching, but it does not address the conceptual aspects of developing a research design for a term paper.vi It is this challenge of reducing complexity and making a term paper manageable that presents a sometimes insurmountable hurdle for many.

2. Reducing complexity and establishing an analytical structure

For this reason, I have developed a model to clearly illustrate the process of writing a term paper or thesis, from beginning to end, and to convey the fundamental principles of academic work. The starting point is the idea that the past represents an almost infinite space of possibilities for term papers, which in turn must be carefully reduced to a 10-, 15-, or 20-page text. At its core, the funnel model (see Figure 1) is about reducing complexity in the development of a term paper.

To illustrate this, I like to use a quote from the religious historian Martin Riesebrodt, who defines the core task of academic work as follows:

Researchers, ultimately, are not needed to reproduce or even increase the complexity of the world; rather, they should strive to conceptually structure, understand, and explain the chaos of phenomena, however provisional and imperfect this may be.vii

But how can complexity be reduced for a term paper without getting completely lost in the chaos of phenomena and the various approaches to structuring them? The “Lutz Double Funnel for Historical Analysis” begins with the overarching theme of a course. Typically, topics are determined by the instructors, and a term paper should somehow be situated within this framework. In the example, this overarching theme is “Industrialization and Social Change in the 19th Century.” This is an introductory course for first-semester students that I have been teaching for several years.

This overarching theme is examined in my seminar from different perspectives and is addressed using general foundational literature. This includes both content-relevant literature on the history of industrialization as well as theoretical and methodological literature on how history can be studied using various analytical frameworks. It demonstrates how, for example, social history, everyday history, gender history, business history, or cultural history pose very different questions about the past, operate with different methods, and require different sources.

Building on these foundations, students seek out their own specific topics, subjects of study, and research periods for their term papers—and they usually find them. But then the worries and concerns begin: Is my topic “small” enough? Is my timeframe too broad? How does my narrowed-down topic relate to broader discussions, and how do I then specifically connect it to the current state of research? 

             3. Applying the double funnel

The upper part of the double funnel expresses this demanding task of continually narrowing down the analytical approach (see Figure 2). Students are invited and encouraged to follow their own interests. In the example, a student was interested in the role of women during social change processes in the 19th century; specifically, in the construction of the bourgeois “housewife.”viii In several steps, she further narrowed down and structured this subtopic, including selecting an object of study (the work of a bourgeois female author), formulating a knowledge-oriented research question (how was the image of the “housewife” constructed?), choosing an analytical perspective (gender history), and determining a period of investigation (the second half of the 19th century).

The student thus continually narrowed down the upper part of the double funnel, achieving an enormous reduction in complexity. This was central to the conception of the term paper in order to first establish a basic framework for the analytical approach. In the textual implementation, the student explained these conceptual steps in the introduction.

After this narrowing down is complete, the term paper passes through the eye of the needle of source analysis. Here, students in my research-oriented teaching perform an independent, source-based, and critical historical analysis. Here, they work with sources that are placed in relation to the historical context and relevant academic literature. Here, they follow the path from the research question to the answer in the term paper.

Once the source analysis has been completed, the double funnel widens again. In the lower section, an interpretation of the results is undertaken in individual steps. First, the aim is to formulate an answer to the specific research question based on the source work that has been conducted. Then, the perspectives of inquiry are broadened: What conclusions can be drawn from the analysis—in this case, on the construction of the bourgeois “housewife”—for social change processes during industrialization? To the author in this example, the conclusion was a “structural oppression of the female population.” What analytical added value did the gender-historical approach bring to the subject of investigation? It was able to reveal hierarchical gender structures and a gender-based division of labor. And finally—at least for advanced master’s students—how can the results of the investigation be used for theory-building? In this example, it offers points of connection to a feminist economic critique.

The lower part of the double funnel thus not only ties back to the research question posed at the beginning; it is also intended to illustrate that small-scale knowledge acquisition in an often very short historical term paper should be embedded within broader research contexts.

4. Designing term papers as a learnable work technique

I have been using the “Lutz Double Funnel” since the winter semester of 2020/2021 in all courses where term papers are required as written assignments. Over the past few years, the model has been tested, evaluated, and improved in practice with several hundred students. It has also been incorporated into the methods exercise “Writing History Academically,” which I developed a few years ago with colleagues at the Institute of Historical Studies at Humboldt University of Berlin and integrated into the curriculum.

I make no claim to the originality of the double funnel; similar visualizations exist, for example, with the “hourglass.”ix What is important to me is making the complex requirements of a historical term paper transparent, clear, and thus more manageable. Given the increasing social, international, cultural, and other forms of diversity among our students, it is crucial that students are well supported in acquiring the core competencies of academic work and writing. Writing a term paper is not a gift that one either has or does not have. It is a technique that can be learned, and perhaps the “Lutz Double Funnel for Historical Analysis” can serve as a tool to support this learning process.

Translated from the German original:  Der “Lutz'sche Doppeltrichter zur geschichtswissenschaftlichen Analyse”. Ein Werkzeug für die Entwicklung studentischer Hausarbeiten. Geschichtswissenschaftsdidaktik (February 15, 2023). Retrieved on February 23, 2026, from https://doi.org/10.58079/peiu.

i Friederike Neumann: Schreiben im Geschichtsstudium (UTB 4843). 2nd fully updated edition. Opladen/Toronto 2021; Martin Lengwiler: Praxisbuch Geschichte. Einführung in die historischen Methoden (UTB 3393). Zurich 2011.

ii Exemplary for a German-speaking university is the Frankfurt Writing Center: https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.starkerstart.uni-frankfurt.de/82720027/PortalStartPage 82720027, accessed on Jan 20, 2023. In English-speaking courses, I like to refer to the Harvard College Writing Center, especially its digital resource collection: https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/, accessed on Jan 28, 2023.

iii Judith Wolfsberger: Frei geschrieben. Mut Freiheit & Strategie für wissenschaftliche Abschlussarbeiten. 4th ed., Vienna, Cologne, Weimar 2016; Valentin Groebner: Wissenschaftssprache. Eine Gebrauchsanweisung. Konstanz 2012; Markus Krajewski: Lesen Schreiben Denken. Zur wissenschaftlichen Abschlussarbeit in 7 Schritten (UTB 3858: Schlüsselkompetenzen). 2nd revised edition. Cologne 2013; Martha Boeglin: Wissenschaftlich arbeiten Schritt für Schritt. Gelassen und effektiv studieren (UTB Arbeitshilfen 2927). Munich 2007.

iv Swantje Lahm: Schreiben in der Lehre. Handwerkszeug für Lehrende (UTB 4573). Opladen and Toronto 2016; Anja Centeno Garcia (Ed.): Textarbeit in der geisteswissenschaftlichen Lehre (Forum für Fachsprachen-Forschung Vol. 129). Berlin 2016; Sarah G. Hoffmann/Björn Kiehne: Ideen für die Hochschullehre. Ein Methodenreader (Fokus gute Lehre - Transferideen aus den Berliner Hochschulen Vol. 1). Berlin 2016.

v https://www.junge-mommsen.de/, accessed on Jan 30, 2023.

vi Paul Nolte: Die Seminararbeit. Hinweise zur formalen und inhaltlichen Gestaltung. Berlin 2009. https://www.geschkult.fu-berlin.de/e/fmi/bereiche/phm/arbeitstechniken/arbeitspapiere/Nolte_Seminararbeit.pdf, accessed on Jan 30, 2023.

vii Martin Riesebrodt: Cultus und Heilsversprechen. Eine Theorie der Religionen. Munich 2007, p. 12. Ludolf Herbst's introduction is also very well suited, especially for first-semester students: Ludolf Herbst: Komplexität und Chaos. Grundzüge einer Theorie der Geschichte (Beck'sche Reihe 1526). Munich 2004.

viii The paper was submitted in the winter semester 2021/2022 under the title “Das bisschen Haushalt. Wie wurde das Bild der Hausfrau im 19. Jahrhundert konstruiert? Eine Betrachtung anhand Henriette Davidis’, Die Hausfrau” in my introductory course “Industrialization and Social Change in Germany in the 19th Century” at HU Berlin. I thank the author for permission to use the term paper for this blog post.

ix The Rosalind Franklin STEM Ambassadors: Scientific Writing - Hourglass Method. The Rosalind Franklin STEM Ambassadors 2023, https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.rosalindfranklinstem.com/scientific-writing, accessed on Jan 25, 2023.