Postgraduate research

Bringing together the study of applied medicine and the humanities our structured PhD programme is driven by a desire to inform and support policy and practice, to optimise joint working between partner organisations, and to foster increased understanding and debate within the field of humanitarianism and global health.

As a PhD student at HCRI, you will be surrounded by globally renowned researchers, expert practitioners and policymakers and we welcome applications from students wishing to study in one of the following areas.

Eleanor Davey

I welcome applications for PhD research on the history of humanitarian ideas and practices; the history of human rights; activist and intellectual responses to decolonisation and the 'third world'; and memory studies particularly as they relate to conflict and humanitarian action.

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• Eleanor Davey

Maura Duffy

I welcome proposals for PhD research in the broad fields of politics and social policy in relation to radical social change 'from above and/or below'. This encompasses work that focuses on states and/or grassroots communities in the promotion of social change in Latin America or more broadly and with a focus on education, health, food security and other areas of social policy. I particularly welcome projects that deal with specific areas of community-led social change including the arts and culture, urban agriculture and global health.

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• Maura Duffy

Peter Gatrell

My research and teaching interests fall into two broad categories: population displacement in world history and the history of modern Europe. These twin interests are also brought together in my commitment to the cultural history of modern war. I would welcome enquiries from prospective graduate students in these fields.

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• Peter Gatrell

Jessica Hawkins

I welcome PhD supervision enquiries on the historical sociology of state formation, conflict and development; colonial and missionary “humanitarianism”; state-led humanitarianism; and histories of displacement. I would particularly welcome projects on East African contexts.

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• Jessica Hawkins

Billy Haworth

I welcome applications for PhD research in the following areas:

• volunteered geographic information and/or citizen science
• spatiotemporal experiences of queer or other minorities in disasters/humanitarian crises
• participatory GIS
• critical geography approaches to understanding knowledge production and access

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• Billy Haworth

Roger MacGinty

I welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students who are interested in peacebuilding, and especially the interaction between top-down and bottom-up approaches to peace.

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• Roger MacGinty

Tanja Muller

I welcome proposals for PhD research on any aspect of revolutionary societies and/or post-liberation politics; identity, belonging and transnationalism (in particular in relation to refugees); well-being and aspirations; global health and related fields; and conceptualisations behind and practices of humanitarianism.

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• Tanja Müller

Dylan O'Driscoll

I welcome applications for PhD research on ethnosectarian conflicts, nationalism in conflict settings, power-sharing and/or federalism in divided societies, and post-conflict state-building. I am particularly interested in supervising researchers working on the Middle East and on policy-focused research.

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• Dylan O’Driscoll

Róisín Read

I welcome PhD supervision inquiries and I am particularly interested in supervising on issues of gender in humanitarianism; representation and knowledge production in/for international interventions; and conflict and post-conflict transitions in African contexts, especially South Sudan and Sudan.

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• Róisín Read

Gemma Sou

Gemma is an interdisciplinary researcher who takes a postcolonial approach to disaster studies. She is interested in decolonising discourses and policies in disaster risk reduction and understanding the everyday lives, aspirations, needs and concerns of people living with disaster risk. She also works on the media representations of human vulnerability and is particularly interested in representations of disasters in alternative technologies. Gemma interested in supervising doctoral students interested in postcolonial approaches to disaster studies, grassroots disaster risk reduction and media representations of human vulnerability.

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• Gemma Sou

Bertrand Taithe

I am very interested in supervising students working on the history of the body, French and British cultural history, the history of war and medicine, humanitarianism, French colonial history or the history of 'social explorers' in France and Britain.

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• Bertrand Taithe

Birte Vogel

I have a research interest in topics around peace and conflict studies and international interventions, and how international interveners interact with local populations. I am open to supervising PhD projects in the area of civil society/ NGOs and peacebuilding, local resistance or economics and peacebuilding.

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• Birte Vogel

Postgraduate researchers in the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute pursue a wide range of different topics. 

Our current postgraduate researchers and their thesis titles:

• Amanda McCorkindale - 'Humanitarian Education: The Moments of Humanitarian Learning'
• Anisa Jafar - 'Medical record keeping in sudden onset disasters'
• Benjamin Gittins - 'Adapting to insecurity: the increasing prominence of remote humanitarian management'
• Clare Atterton
• Eric Lepp - 'On the Shoulder of Giants: A study of space, contact and civility in Belfast'
• Ingrid Buer - 'Everyday agency and community coping mechanisms in the presence of police pacification process in Rio de Janeiro's favelas' (working title)
• Isabelle Schlapfer
• Jennifer Chapman
• Kristina Tschunkert - 'The everyday lived experience of peace and conflict: analysing the social impact of humanitarian aid in host-refugee relations in West Bekka, Lebanon' (working title)
• Linda Sanchez Avendaño - 'Childhood trapped between international economic interests and armed groups presence in conflict-and-mining-affected-areas in Colombia'
• Louise Tomkow - 'Forced migration and long-term health'
• Malgorzata Polanska - 'Grey zones: between criminal networks and civil society in Mexico' (working title)
• Margaux Pinaud - 'Home-grown peace: an analysis of the role of civil society actors in ceasefire negotiations and implementation'
• Margot Tudor
• Maria Romero
• Muhammad Munawar Mohamed Hatta
• Nicola Jones - 'The silent consequences of disasters: exploring the management of chronic health conditions in disaster zones'
• Rana Khalaf - 'Dealing with governance during conflict, a key to peace? The case of the Syrian conflict'
• Rebecca Viney-Wood - 'Written across your face: refugees and technologies of identity in historical perspective'
• Samantha Winkler
• Talita Cetinoglu - 'Humanitarian programming: an inquiry into the ethical dilemmas of humanitarian action and the politics of practice'

For more detailed information, view the full profiles of our current PhD students.

PhD students based in HCRI meet regularly in an informal environment to discuss ongoing work and career development. If you are working on a PhD in a relevant area and would like to connect with this group, please email eleanor.davey@manchester.ac.uk