Global Health Research Seminar: designing and planning your global health master's thesis

Description

The crises of the present moment urgently call for imaginative thinking beyond disciplinary boundaries; disruption and decolonization rather than refining or rebranding existing institutions. The seminar is meant for those who want to use the thesis as an opportunity to explore, to think, to create, to collaborate. This graduate research seminar uses a participatory, learner-driven approach to build research skills for students. While initially developed for students planning to do their master's thesis in the global health track, the seminar will be relevant to students in other tracks and disciplines. In an age of social media and burgeoning AI, the seminar takes ethnography - understood as participation and observation of real-world life - as a starting heuristic for developing research with the potential for real-world impact. Inspired by Peterson and Olson's multidimensional approach to ethnographic research design, the course emphasizes collective concept work - an iterative process of assembling diverse research concepts within a congruent framework of inquiry. The primary objective is that students finish with a clear road-map for their thesis and the conceptual skills needed for designing, collecting, analyzing, and writing up research. These skills will also be highly useful for future careers as thought leaders in the public and private sectors (i.e. government, non-governmental organisations, and industry). A central focus is developing robust conceptual frameworks. Rather than treating conceptualization as a solitary or mysterious process, we will work collectively to imagine, map, and refine the key concepts for orienting your research. Through iterative exercises in concept mapping, literature engagement, and peer feedback, you will develop the skills to create projects with clear intellectual significance and methodological congruence. Throughout the course, attention will be paid to ethical and political considerations, starting with those specific to global health but applicable to international studies more generally: acknowledging health and social inequalities, decolonization, gender, and structural racism. Key principles include health as a human right, health equity and social justice, evidence-based practice, inclusive governance, and humility.