International Development / Public policy phd research topic

[Nou8]

Hello, 

I'm a Masters in Finance students, graduating this month, and planning on applying for phd programs in UK and Canada, in International development or public policy. Being a public health sector employee, Im considering a phd research where 4 fields intersect (International development, Public policy, health sector, refugee crisis). Any ideas or recommendations?

[TK2]

Health economics would seem to be your issue, with a finance background...I'm in the middle of figuring out research proposals for UK/Canada as well, and I've been adjusting them slightly depending on who I'm talking to. Find the general topics you're interested in (Google Scholaring something like "health provision to refugee populations" might be a start) see what the latest research there is and who's writing stuff that interests you, and then look at those people's body of work (not since the dawn of time maybe, but last few years) and see if something sparks for you, and write a proposal accordingly - not carbon copies of what they're doing, but topics it looks like they could be supervisors on and they would be interested in. 

Another note is that if you're looking at the current refugee crisis and into development in general, a lot of the most current/urgent research is being done by, or through, NGOs and bodies like UN, WHO, WB, etc. So maybe dig into the research and policy papers issued by Amnesty or the International Organization for Migration, see if they're relevant to topics you're interested in, or if you see some striking question that is going unaswered you could be working on in a similar context - maybe there's a lot of research on health care policy for refugees in camps, but not so much on refugees who are living in cities, for example, so that could be a research proposal. Then look at who wrote them - they're likely to be academics acting as consultants or getting funded through them, or even if not the individual, see if they're associated with a project or a research group at a particular institution - and repeat step one.