Katie Sullivan does University of York dissertation - on Eastenders

English student Katie Sullivan, 20, has written her final essay on the soap's iconic “Who killed Lucy Beale?” storyline.

It gripped viewers for almost a year and culminated with her brother Bobby confessing to killing her.

Katie spent hours poring over the special live episode, aired to mark the show's 30th anniversary in 2015, in which the shocking revelation was made.

And she produced an essay exploring its impact on the characters on screen and viewers, which she's now submitted to tutors at the University of York.

Katie Sullivan with her dissertation. Picture: SWNS

Katie said: "Throughout my degree, I really enjoyed exploring strong and iconic characters and I feel like no one did this better than EastEnders.

"It was such a big deal at the time, it was their 30th anniversary and they produced a live episode.

"So I looked into how it gripped people who wanted to watch it in case they messed up.

"The storyline had been running for almost a year so there was high stakes. I also looked into the impact it had on the characters.

"The storyline was that everybody was a suspect but the big reveal was it was none of them, but her brother."

Katie Sullivan with her dissertation. Picture: SWNS

Katie said she's been watching the BBC show "as long as she can remember" after her mum would always have it on the tele while growing up in Hull, East Yorks.

And she watched the live episode more than 30 times and read its script "back to front" around 30 times too.

But despite this, she still loves the soap and continues to watch it.

She added: "I really wanted to focus my diss on something I was properly interested in and it seemed like the perfect choice.

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"When I started researching I realised there were a lot of articles and journals out there.

"Like anything it did become a chore towards the end, but I still enjoyed it more than I would if I'd done it on something else."

And she even managed to get dissertation supervisor - a lapsed Eastenders fan - interested in the storyline.

She told student newspaper The Tab: “In the beginning, I initially wanted to write a comparison between Shakespeare and modern-day soap opera.

"But my supervisor convinced me to just focus on EastEnders because he said I had enough material.

“He said he hadn’t watched EastEnders in a long time but I do think towards the end he was super interested in the storyline.”