Research opportunities at IDPM
While the Institute welcome applications for research degrees focusing on any of our areas of expertise, IDPM staff is currently particularly interested in supervising research degrees on the following topics.
If you are interested in pursuing a PhD on any of these topics please contact the relevant member of academic staff following the links below.
- The social impacts of protected areas.
- The nature, causes and consequences of environmental change, particularly in rural, semi-arid Africa.
- The dynamics of local resource management
- ICT (information and communication technology) and small, medium & micro enterprise (SMME) development in developing countries.
- Information and communication systems (ICS) and poverty reduction in developing countries.
- IT sector microenterprise and development.
- ICTs and mountain communities.
- Success and failure of health information systems for development.
- Environmental impact of the IT sector.
- Theorising middle eastern politics.
- Understanding large-scale social change.
- Understanding the causes of conflict.
- Pluralist analysis of the causes of labour-market participation including informal and formalised self-employment.
- The "analysis of women's labour market participation" and how it is changing.
The social impacts of protected areas
The last few decades have seen a remarkable expansion of protected area networks to cover more than 10% of the land surface of the planet. There has, however, been little work by social scientists and anthropologists to explore the consequences of this expansion for rural peoples. The safeguarding of valuable resources, landscapes and cultural heritage can have many positive impacts. Conversely where protected area establishment entails eviction and displacement they can cause impoverishment. Currently systematic investigations of these impacts are few. Consequently our ability to learn how to encourage the positive aspects and mitigate the negative is limited. I am promoting new research and networks which begins to address these issues.
The nature, causes and consequences of environmental change, particularly in rural, semi-arid Africa
The environmental histories of conservation areas in East Africa which are alleged to have been overgrazed. We established hypotheses to test between competing explanations, and assembled data from diverse sources - oral histories, archives, livestock censuses as well as remote sensing - to attempt to refute these hypotheses. This research underlined the power of hegemonic environmental narratives, often in the absence of good data, and the importance of incorporating diverse data when testing these explanations.
The dynamics of local resource management
This can be a useful means of finding out about environmental change. The histories of resource management provide insights into the way people have coped with, or failed to cope with, or caused environmental change. But they are also interesting in themselves as meeting points of traditional and formal rule, as the site of complex identity politics, and as means of understanding environmentalisms. The current wide interest in devolution makes local resource management particularly significant.
ICT (information and communication technology) and small, medium & micro enterprise (SMME) development in developing countries
Use of ICT (information and communication technology) is expanding rapidly in all developing countries. The greatest impact has been felt in the enterprise sector particularly amongst SMMEs. New technologies such as mobile cellular, the Internet and email have the potential to transform communications and improve information and market access, as well as bringing significant managerial, social and cultural changes. At present, the area is under researched, and there remains a wide range of possible approaches for developing a PhD proposal. Four possibilities are as follows: a) look at the evolution of enterprise information systems (IS) – possibly looking at the interplay between informal and formal IS – this could be allied to theories of enterprise growth and transition. b) assess ICT adoption, implementation and management issues concerning SMMEs in a developing country context making use of innovation and/or diffusion theory. c) assess the role of e-commerce in enabling greater market penetration for developing country SMMEs possibly focusing on the institutional mechanisms that can assist e-commerce development. d) investigate the impact of mobile cellular in the informal sector.
Information and communication systems (ICS) and poverty reduction in developing countries
Both information and communication (and increasingly new ICTs) have an important role to play in poverty reduction in developing countries. Effective information and communication systems (ICS) can help the poor in many different ways: to access and participate in markets; by providing information to farmers, health workers and educators to assist decision making and aid social protection; and through empowering the poor. There are a large amount of possible topics that arise from this under-researched area. For example: a) assess how ICT initiatives (such as tele-centres) are impacting upon rural micro-enterprise development and income generation – possibly using an impact assessment framework to consider wider social and cultural factors. b) assess the role of improved ICS in assisting food security and/or rural diversification possibly using a livelihoods framework to address both institutional and market-related factors. c) to understand how the intermediary institutions and agents that commonly interact with the poor, can make more effective use of ICS including use of new technologies.
IT sector microenterprise and development
Dr Richard Heeks & Dr Richard Duncombe
The IT sector (software, hardware and related IT services enterprises) is one of the fastest-growing in developing countries. The knowledge base about this sector, though, is heavily skewed. Most analyses have focused on medium- and large-scale enterprises in a few "star" sectors such as Indian software or East Asian hardware. This PhD focuses, instead, on IT sector microenterprises: those employing up to ten staff which may be registered or unregistered (i.e. formal or informal sector). The specific focus of the PhD is open since a range of enterprise-related issues remain as yet unknown. Three sample possibilities follow. First, issues based around models of enterprise lifecycle or stages of growth, considering whether this sector has particular characteristics – such as lower rates of failure – than seen in other sectors. Second, issues based around developmental impacts. This could, for instance, use the livelihoods framework to analyse whether microenterprises have avoided some of the 'enclave' issues faced by larger IT sector firms. A third possibility is that the PhD might focus on the competitiveness of microenterprises using a critical application of, say, Porter's theories or resource-based theory to investigate both the relevance and implications of such theories to the size, sector and developmental setting of these firms.
ICTs and mountain communities
Communities in mountain regions are shaped by their location and context. A particular feature has been their relative isolation and exclusion, not just in physical terms but also from metropolitan-dominated circuits of financial, social and political capital. Historically, the opening of communication links such as roads has reduced isolation but has also enabled external exploitation of the natural or human capital of these communities. This PhD investigates whether or not the patterns seen with traditional communication links are being repeated with the growing extension of digital communication links to mountain regions. It is likely that this issue will be investigated via a network-based approach drawing generally on Castells' concept of the network society and more specifically on frameworks such as actor-network theory and/or social network analysis.
Success and failure of health information systems for development
Dr Richard Heeks & Dr Sarah Atkinson
Health systems management and reform in developing countries relies on the introduction of new health information systems (HIS). Yet the failure rate for HIS initiatives is high, undermining health system improvements. This PhD will develop an understanding of HIS success and failure. To do this, it must beyond simple prescriptive models and draw on a deeper conceptual understanding of systems and change. This understanding is likely to be drawn from theories of the sociology of technology. These, for example, help understand the particular tensions that face HIS in developing countries, which sit at a crossroads of many competing worldviews: of Western vs. indigenous knowledge systems; of medical vs. care rationality; of "technicism" vs. "humanism". The overall aim will be to develop a better conceptual and practical understanding of health information systems for development.
Environmental impact of the IT sector
Dr Richard Heeks & Prof. Colin Kirkpatrick
The IT sector – software, hardware and related IT services – sometimes projects a "clean and green" image that contrasts with the "dirty" image of traditional heavy industry. Work to date on the IT sector's environmental footprint – especially in developing countries – has been limited. However, there is evidence for environmental concerns, from upstream and downstream consumption of natural resources to the heavy growth in international travel associated with global outsourcing. This PhD will evaluate the environmental impact and practices of the IT sector. The specific focus is open but the study is likely to apply impact assessment methods developed by the School of Environment and Development's Impact Assessment Research Centre. It may also draw on models from organisational behaviour and institutionalism that enable us to understand why and when sector managers choose to adopt more environmentally-sustainable practices.
Theorising middle eastern politics
The analysis of the Middle East, like many ‘area studies’, is often accused of lagging behind theoretical developments. Perhaps owing to a wariness of deploying ‘Western’ analytical frameworks and a predominance of archivists and linguists amongst regional specialists, bland empirical approaches to understanding social processes and events are frequently preferred to more sophisticated analyses. As a consequence, more explicitly theoretically orientated endeavours are commonly regarded as academically inferior to studies involving greater contact with ‘primary’ sources. Indeed, the very relevance of ‘theory’ to the area specialist has been questioned.
The result of such an empiricist stance is twofold. Firstly, Middle Eastern Studies, as a discipline, suffers from a lack of theoretical depth. Few contemporary scholars are committed to deploying analytical frameworks developed from established international, social, and political theory. Secondly, the work of those that are using these tools remains unread by many working outside the immediate confines of the discipline and largely ignored within the discipline itself. The impact of such mutual closure is thus felt at many levels, both local and international, with academics, journalists, development practitioners and politicians all affected by the resultant insularity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Western academia's understanding of ‘the political’. There is, therefore, both urgency and opportunity for doctoral level research to make an original contribution to our understanding of Middle Eastern political processes and formations.
Understanding large-scale social change
Since the mid-1960s there has been a revival in what may be called the ‘macro-historical’ sociology of Durkheim, Marx and Weber. Writers such as John Hall, S K Sanderson, Gary Runciman, Michael Mann and Anthony Giddens have turned to the analysis of large-scale historical transformations in order to understand more fully the character of contemporary social phenomena such as stratification, nationalism and statehood. The result has been a rich and diverse literature which both draws on a wide-range of disciplines – from socio-biology to financial history – and offers researchers numerous avenues of further work.
A key area where such approaches could be fruitfully deployed is development studies. Yet here they have, quite unjustifiably, made little impact. Few analyses have used the work of historical sociologists and fewer still have sought to compare the historical trajectory outlined in this literature to a non-Western case. Consequently, considerable scope exists for doctoral research to use this mostly quite Euro-centric literature to illuminate processes of large-scale historical change in the developing world and to offer an original analysis of where key similarities and differences may exist between Western and non-Western development.
Understanding the causes of conflict
Over the last ten years, many academic and popular debates have converged over the study of violent conflict. A key reason for this is the growing cost of warfare to civilian populations and its accompanying media attention. Of the 500 or so major wars which have occurred during the last three centuries, those occurring within the last one hundred years have been the bloodiest. Of these, non-combatants have absorbed ever-increasing proportions. During the 1960s, for instance, civilian deaths accounted for 52 per cent of the total fatalities, but by the early 1990s this had reached 92 per cent.
Yet there is little widespread understanding of the causes of violent conflict. It is most often analysed and discussed as an existent problem assumed to be an inevitable part of human interaction. In some cases (particularly those influenced by post-modernism), there has even been a tacit withdrawal from attempting to specify causality. For many, this is both depressing and retrogressive. Causality is at the heart of the social sciences and attempting to understand the origins of violence continues to make up a fundamental responsibility of researchers. At present, then, there is an opportunity for doctoral level research to re-engage with the literature on conflict causality and to reassert its analytical importance. This may be at a purely conceptual level or in applied form with a regional, state, or sub-state focus.
Pluralist analysis of the causes of labour-market participation including informal and formalised self-employment
This would study women and men in different social classes, possibly in two neighbouring countries. It would use both secondary datasets and local qualitative research. It would integrate these by assuming that the social structure is implicitly affecting people whilst their explicit _reasons_ for doing things are also very important. I always see the discourses in which people discuss their actions as embedded in the social structure, whilst also constructing and developing that structure. So we have a self-transforming system. The researcher can have an economics, sociology, anthropology or political science background. They should have an established interest in the study of economic life or livelihoods. The shift toward "formalised self-employment", and how that is distinguished from more informal occupations, is the main focus.
The "analysis of women's labour market participation" and how it is changing
This study can be either historical comparative, covering 2-3 decades and examining the different region of India or of another country, or comparative based mainly upon the case-study metohd. In either case a systematic comparative analysis of the case-study material will be used. Systematic case-study methods are becoming more common and are already well established in Europe and the Nordic countries. I can send you references but see for instance www.compasss.org (sic) for details. We would apply one of these methods to the study of women's employment. It is important to notice the mixed feelings people have about women working: their earnings and status may be appreciated, whilst their absence from 'home' is seen by some as problematic. The tensions that are being created by the modernisation of huge countries like India are the topic of this research. It is essentially a sociological topic, but the methodology includes the use of both quantitative and qualitative data.