Research areas
RA1: Global Health Innovation
RA1 Leads: Prof. S. Harding (KCL); Prof. M.R. Jarvelin (ICL); Dr G. Russo (QMUL)
Innovating health through cultural, social, biomedical, and technological perspectives to tackle inequalities and reshape global health systems.
This Research Area explores the intersections of health, society, and culture across diverse contexts and health system maturities. Research investigates the determinants of health and behavioural outcomes, with a strong focus on how social and cultural understandings of disease, lived experiences of illness, and practices of medical pluralism shape health interventions and outcomes. Attention is given to the ways in which cultures of medicine influence public trust, access, and equity, as well as to the political and ethical implications of bioscience and biomedicine, including debates around biopolitics and biosecurity.
The area examines both global and local healthcare markets, the governance of services, and the reform of health systems in pursuit of universal health coverage. Researchers also engage with the design and evaluation of complex interventions, considering how they address persistent health inequalities and multidimensional crises. Mental and physical health are explored across the life course, alongside the role of environment and geopolitics in shaping vulnerabilities and opportunities for health. Health informatics and digital technologies are examined as transformative forces that both enable and challenge existing systems. By integrating biomedical, cultural, political, and technological perspectives, this Research Area seeks to foster innovative approaches to global health governance and practice.
——————————————
Harnessing health data to tackle inequalities, improve care, and inform innovation worldwide.
In RA1, data are drawn from a wide range of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed sources to address pressing challenges in global health. Quantitative evidence may include clinical trials, epidemiological studies, public health records, biomedical data, and large-scale surveys. Qualitative data, such as interviews, focus groups, ethnographies, and case studies, provide crucial insights into health behaviours, patient experiences, and community perspectives. Ethnographic approaches, in particular, may involve dynamic and evolving methods, producing smaller but richly textured datasets that challenge conventional notions of evidence.
Innovation in global health increasingly relies on integrating diverse sources of evidence. Digital health technologies, mobile applications, wearable devices, and real-time monitoring systems generate new forms of data that can be combined with traditional public health and clinical sources. Documentary and policy data, including WHO reports, national health strategies, and international development frameworks, also form an essential part of the evidence base.
Doctoral research in RA1 is expected to combine methodological rigour with reflexivity, ensuring that design and evidence are aligned with research aims. Projects are encouraged to embrace interdisciplinary and collaborative approaches, using methods not only to generate findings but also to critically examine the assumptions and knowledge structures that underpin global health research. Ethical considerations, including equity of access, cultural sensitivity, and data governance, are central. This orientation supports innovative and impactful research that contributes to improved health outcomes globally.
RA2: Business Analytics, Management, and Applied Economics
RA2 Leads: Dr D. Chilosi (KCL); Dr P. Demirel (ICL); Dr G. Demirel (QMUL)
Advancing sustainable business and policy through analytics, global market insights, and innovative approaches to management and economics.
This Research Area examines the social and economic processes that shape organisations, markets, and institutions within an increasingly interdependent global economy. A central concern is the evolving relationship between states and markets, and the ways in which this relationship exerts influence on trade, competition, and regulatory frameworks. Research in this area investigates how international business, global trade, and value chains are transformed by shifting institutional arrangements, technological innovation, and digitalisation, and how these changes reconfigure organisational strategies, operations, and the organisation of work.
A further concern lies in understanding how knowledge is generated, shared, and diffused within and across firms, sectors, and regions, and how social capital and networks – social, economic, and financial – foster entrepreneurship, innovation, and resilience in the context of rapid economic and social change. Combining insights from applied economics, advanced analytics, and management studies, this Research Area explores decision-making, resource allocation, and performance evaluation, with important implications for both organisational practice and public policy. Ultimately, it seeks to illuminate how organisations and institutions operate in complex environments, and how analytical and managerial tools can contribute to building more sustainable, equitable, and effective economic systems at both global and local scales.
——————————————
Harnessing organisational and economic data to understand markets, shape strategy, and inform management practice.
Data in RA2 span qualitative, quantitative, structured, unstructured, and mixed formats, reflecting the diversity of economic and business research. Primary sources include interviews, surveys, and direct observation, while secondary data may come from government and institutional archives, financial accounts, corporate reports, market indicators, and international databases such as those of the OECD, IMF, and World Bank. Increasingly, digital trace data from e-commerce platforms, financial technologies, and consumer behaviour analytics provide timely and fine-grained evidence.
Alongside these, qualitative evidence remains vital. Case studies, interviews, and ethnographies of organisations, supply chains, or markets are used to understand managerial practices, workplace dynamics, and decision-making processes. The expansion of digital storage has also made available new sources such as webpages, images, videos, and sensor data, while in rare cases, platform data such as credit card transactions or social media activity can be accessed for research.
Doctoral projects in RA2 are expected to combine robust research design with rigorous empirical analysis, applying methods such as econometric modelling, operations research, machine learning, and network analysis, either independently or in combination. The choice of data and methods should always be guided by the research question. Transparency, accessibility, and the ethical use of economic and organisational data are emphasised throughout, and students are encouraged to develop critical awareness of the assumptions and limitations underpinning different forms of evidence.
RA3: Language, Culture, and Education
RA3 Leads: Dr. Melissa Clackin (KCL); Dr Camille Kandiko Howson (ICL); Dr S.Holmes-Elliot (QMUL)- On Leave; Prof Colleen Cotter (Interim QMUL)
Exploring how language, communication, and education shape identities, power relations, creativity, and opportunities for social transformation.
This Research Area examines the role of communication and creative production in shaping identities, institutions, and social life. Research investigates how language and discourse constitute political and cultural realities, whether through everyday interactions, media representations, or policy frameworks. By analysing the interplay among language, mind, and society, scholars explore how meaning is constructed and contested, how power is embedded in discourse, and how identities are negotiated across diverse contexts. Education is a core concern, with research extending from global and national education policy to pedagogy, assessment, and the teaching of STEM subjects.
This area pays close attention to how language mediates relationships among learners, teachers, and institutions, and how it both reflects and reinforces broader social inequalities. At the same time, it considers how language and cultural practices create possibilities for inclusion, creativity, and transformation. Sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and cultural studies provide key methodological tools, while comparative approaches illuminate how local experiences of language and education connect with global processes. By linking linguistic, cultural, and educational inquiry, this Research Area offers critical insights into how communication and learning shape societies and foster cultural and intellectual development.
——————————————
Harnessing linguistic, cultural, and educational data to explore communication, identity, and learning.
RA3 recognises a wide spectrum of data, with no hierarchy of value or sophistication: what matters is alignment with research aims and questions. Quantitative approaches may involve measuring brain activity through EEG or fMRI, analysing acoustic properties of speech, recording reaction times, or examining the frequency of linguistic features. In education, large-scale administrative records, assessment scores, questionnaires, and learning analytics often support experimental or statistical research. Conversely, qualitative approaches may draw on ethnography, discourse or policy analysis, multimodal interpretation, and narrative accounts of classroom or community practice.
Methods of data collection are equally diverse, including experiments, surveys, tests, interviews, participant observation, timed classroom observations, and the analysis of texts, corpora, and visual media. In many projects, the same dataset may be analysed in multiple ways—for example, interview transcripts coded thematically or quantified for linguistic utterances—reflecting the interdisciplinary ethos of the field.
Doctoral projects in RA3 are expected to combine robust research design with methodological rigour, whether using quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches. Reflexivity and critical awareness are emphasised throughout, ensuring that students consider the assumptions underpinning their chosen methods and use diverse forms of evidence to advance understanding of language, culture, and education.
RA4: Environment and Sustainability
RA4 Leads: Dr Z. Shabrina (KCL); Dr A. Sivakumar (ICL); Dr G. von Graevenitz (QMUL)
Understanding environmental change, urban transformation, and sustainability by integrating cultural perspectives, ecological systems, and technological solutions.
This Research Area addresses the interconnections between ecological systems, social practices, and built environments, with particular attention to cultural understandings of environmental change. It investigates how communities interpret, experience, and respond to environmental challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and struggles over natural resources. It explores how policies, technologies, and institutions are designed and contested in efforts to achieve more sustainable futures, while recognising that these processes are deeply embedded in social and cultural contexts. Great emphasis is placed on urbanisation and urban transformation, with research examining the politics of urban growth, the role of infrastructure, and the implications of environmental stress for public health and well-being.
The area also engages with political ecology and the social dynamics of energy transitions, paying close attention to the distributional effects of environmental change. Quantitative approaches such as environmental analytics and climate risk modelling are combined with qualitative methods that foreground cultural perspectives and local knowledge. By integrating these approaches, this Research Area not only examines the technical and policy dimensions of sustainability but also highlights the values, practices, and imaginaries that shape how societies envision and work toward sustainable futures.
——————————————
Harnessing environmental and social data to address ecological challenges and advance sustainability.
Data in RA4 are wide-ranging, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of environmental and sustainability research. Quantitative sources may include climate records, natural resource and energy-use statistics, pollution measurements, economic valuation metrics, and survey data on attitudes, behaviours, or willingness to pay for environmental goods.
Qualitative sources are equally important, including stakeholder interviews, focus groups, participatory workshops, and ethnographic case studies that reveal governance challenges, cultural practices, and local experiences of environmental change. Documentary and archival sources, such as policy texts, corporate sustainability reports, NGO publications, and historical land-use or government records, provide vital institutional and regulatory context.
Spatial and visual data, including GIS, remote sensing, and satellite imagery, are widely used to track land-use change, biodiversity loss, and ecosystem services, while digital sources such as social media debates or online discourse capture public engagement with environmental issues. Data can also vary by scale: small-scale data (e.g., household surveys, fieldwork observations) offer local detail; large-scale national or regional statistics enable comparative analysis; and big data (e.g., sensor networks, climate model outputs, global imagery) allow real-time monitoring of complex systems.
Doctoral projects in RA4 are expected to combine robust research design with reflexive attention to how evidence is produced, accessed, and governed. The choice of data and methods should always be guided by the research question. This approach encourages innovation in the use of diverse sources while promoting transparency
RA5: Global Order and Security
RA5 Leads: Dr J. Marshall (KCL); Dr William Proud (ICL) ; Dr S. Plonski (QMUL)
Uncovering power, resistance, and inequality in global politics through critical perspectives on security, conflict, and transnational justice.
This Research Area examines the dynamics of conflict, violence, and insecurity in the contemporary world, adopting an interdisciplinary and multi-scalar perspective. Central to its focus is a critical engagement with the structures of empire, colonialism, and racial capitalism that underpin global relations, as well as the ways in which these structures are resisted, reworked, and challenged. Research pays particular attention to voices and communities that are often marginalised in conventional accounts of global politics, including migrants, indigenous peoples, racialised groups, women, queer and trans communities, and working-class or rural populations. By foregrounding these perspectives, the area highlights the lived experiences and struggles that are central to the making and unmaking of global order.
Methodologically, this Research Area is committed to approaches that “disrupt the present,” uncovering the material, discursive, and institutional systems that sustain violence while also exploring forms of care, solidarity, and resistance. Themes include critical security studies, international development, policing and border regimes, and transnational movements for liberation and justice. Students and researchers are encouraged to connect global frameworks to grounded empirical inquiry, thereby linking abstract structures to everyday experiences. The area ultimately seeks to advance more inclusive and ethically engaged understandings of global order and security.
——————————————
Harnessing diverse data to understand conflict, power, and the changing dynamics of global security.
RA5 approaches data as embedded in systems of power, including imperial, colonial, racial, and gendered structures. While projects in this area may draw on both quantitative and qualitative sources (e.g., conflict databases, demographic and economic indicators, policy archives, interviews, ethnographic fieldwork), this RA emphasises complexity, interconnection, and the situated nature of evidence. Data are understood as relational and contingent, shaped by power dynamics, and projects are expected to reflect critically on these conditions.
Quantitative and qualitative methods may both be used, but RA5 often prioritises inductive, in-depth, and evolving engagements with data, especially ethnographic approaches that capture lived experiences of violence, exclusion, and resistance. Data may be encountered, experienced, analysed, and curated as fragments or patchworks, with smaller and constantly shifting datasets recognised as valuable sites for interpretation. Researchers are also encouraged to innovate by reframing materials, spaces, or practices not traditionally considered data, thereby challenging dominant assumptions about what counts as knowledge.
Doctoral projects in RA5 are expected to interrogate how power relations shape the production and use of data, and to reflect on the ethical and political implications of methodological choices. This approach supports research that not only generates empirical insights but also unsettles conventional modes of knowledge, contributing to more reflexive and just social science.
RA6: Public Policy and Governance
RA6 Leads: Dr. Francesca Vantaggiatto (KCL); Dr N. Van Zalk (ICL); Dr A. Elliot-Cooper (QMUL); Dr Garry A. Gabison (QMUL)
Designing and evaluating policies through data, behavioural insights, and comparative perspectives to strengthen governance and public institutions.
This Research Area explores how governments and public institutions design, implement, and evaluate policies, and how these processes can be improved to respond to complex social challenges. A key strand of research addresses the growing use of machine learning, predictive analytics, and large administrative datasets in shaping public decision-making. While these tools offer new opportunities for impact assessment and forecasting, they also raise significant ethical and practical questions, including issues of accountability, transparency, and bias. Complementing this focus, research in this area examines behavioural public policy, considering how insights from behavioural science can inform interventions that are both effective and equitable. Comparative and global perspectives allow for analysis of how different states and systems influence citizen behaviour and deliver services, with attention to how outcomes vary across diverse populations.
The area also critically engages with the governance of public services, exploring how institutions can adapt to meet societal needs while promoting fairness and efficiency. By integrating empirical analysis with normative reflection, this Research Area contributes to the development of policies that are evidence-based, ethically grounded, and responsive to citizens, thereby strengthening the capacity of governments to address pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges.
——————————————
Harnessing policy and governance data to inform decision-making and institutional change.
In RA6, data span qualitative, quantitative, and mixed formats. Quantitative sources may include economic indicators, demographic statistics, public health records, and electoral datasets, alongside digital trace evidence from online platforms or social media. Qualitative sources are equally important, ranging from elite interviews and policy documents to archival research, ethnographic encounters, and participatory fieldwork.
Methods of analysis are varied, encompassing statistical modelling, econometric analysis, computational techniques, data visualisation, and qualitative interpretation. These may be combined to address complex questions of governance, institutional performance, and political economy. Distinctive to RA6 is the recognition that evidence is always shaped by social, political, and historical contexts, requiring researchers to critically reflect on how data are produced and used.
Doctoral projects in RA6 are expected to be grounded in rigorous research design and empirical analysis, while also exploring innovative methodological applications. Researchers are encouraged to use data reflexively, question dominant assumptions, and generate insights that contribute to more nuanced understandings of governance, development, and public policy outcomes.