THIS unlucky student's dissertation was stolen just weeks before the university deadline.

Sean Ferguson lost 20,000 words - and months of hard work - when burglars snatched his laptop computer.

Sean, a politics student in his third year at the University of York, had saved back-up copies of his work on disks - but the burglars stole them too.

Today, Sean, 20, made a desperate appeal for his work to be returned.

He said: "That computer had more than half of my dissertation and three assessed essays saved on it. I'd been working on them for months, and there were more than 20,000 words on there. The laptop is worth a lot of money - but the work saved on it is only valuable to me.

"The official deadline for my dissertation is five weeks away, and if I don't get it back I'll have to start again from scratch. All the research I'd done, all my notes - everything was on that computer and those disks."

Sean had been working on his dissertation, What Does Marx's Theory Of The State Have To Contribute To Radical Political Strategy?, in the university library, and took all his reference books and back-up disks home with him in a sports bag.

Sean returned home with the computer and the bag and after cooking left the kitchen door open to clear smoke from the room. But he forgot to lock it before going to sleep. When he woke up the next day, the laptop and bag were gone.

But burglars stole his Sony notebook computer, worth about £1,200, and the bag full of books from his house in Heslington Road last Thursday.

Sean said: "The university has been very sympathetic. They have already offered me an extension on one of my essays, and said I can delay handing in my dissertation as well if I need to.

"I have a printed-out copy of one of the essays, so I'll be able to type that one out, but everything else I'll have to re-write from memory. It's absolutely devastating to lose all that work. I made copies of everything, just to be safe, but now they are gone too.

"I just hope that whoever stole my computer and bag is reading this. I would urge them to return my work - even throwing the back-up disks over the garden wall would be enough."

Updated: 10:10 Thursday, March 31, 2005