Close

The research student experience: Faculty of Public Health and Policy

The Faculty of Public Health and Policy provides a vibrant, interdisciplinary environment for research students who have an interest in the social dimensions of health care and health services in the UK and internationally. Covering a wide range of traditional academic disciplines – including anthropology, economics, history, psychology and sociology - it also embraces more health-related areas of expertise, such as social and environmental epidemiology, intervention science and policy & organizational studies.

These different approaches are distributed across the faculty’s three departments – Health Services Research and Policy, Social and Environmental Health Research and Global Health and Development. Whilst much of the public health research focuses on the UK and European context, a great deal of our research is conducted in low- and middle-income settings, such as Sub Saharan and Southern Africa, South East Asia and South America.

Our Research Degree students come from all over the world. Some have progressed directly from a Master’s degree, while others already have relevant work experience but want to strengthen their research skills and knowledge base. The many seminars and workshops held each week ensure that, beyond the traditional student-supervisor team relationship, staff and students continually converse with each other, producing a lively and enduring intellectual community.

As a consequence, research students are here not only to develop their own area of expertise, but engage in debate across different disciplines, methodological approaches and theoretical orientations. It is the interdisciplinary and collaborative nature of the work conducted in the Faculty that gives it a unique identity, and provides students with a broader context for their own work.