Faculty: Business and Law
Supervisors: Dr Swetketu Patnaik, Dr Christopher O'Kane, and Prof Emanuele Giovannetti
Interview date: 28 March 2022
Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 seeks to ensure health and well-being for all, at every stage of life. In this respect improving health of the poor and neglected, in particular, assumes critical significance. More than 90% of annual deaths from diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, dengue, encephalitis and hepatitis, which are categorised as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) occurs in low-income countries.
In contrast to NTDs, which affect a sizable population of the world, diseases categorised as orphan or rare diseases (ODs) affect fewer than 200,000 individuals, mostly in high-income countries. Increasingly the development of new drugs or medical solutions for such diseases are championed by medical foundations, which bring together numerous organisations to create and manage product development partnerships. We posit that remediating NTDs and ODs is a matter of equity, compassion and humanitarianism at large.
Complexities underpinning development of drugs for NTDs and ODs remain unexplored in contemporary organisation and management research. The primary aim of the research is to explore the formation and evolution of medical foundations / product development partnerships established for the development of drugs for neglected tropical diseases and orphan diseases.
The research aims to adopt insights from meta-organisational and ecosystem perspectives to explore and analyse structural and relational issues that underpin these inter-organisational arrangements. This PhD research will employ a processual approach and adopt qualitative research design, including a range of methods to collect data such as semi-structured interviews, workshops, and observations.
The project supervisory team collectively has considerable experience in research about, and involvement with, collaborative development of new bio-pharmaceutical products including NTDs, and involvement with pharmaceuticals professional bodies and learned societies that provide a rich network of collaborators and influencers intent on informing public health policies.
If you would like to discuss this PhD research project prior to application please contact swetketu.patnaik@aru.ac.uk
Apply online by 27 February 2022.This successful applicant for this project will receive a Vice Chancellor’s PhD Scholarship which covers Home tuition fees and provides a UKRI equivalent minimum annual stipend for three years. For 2022/3 this will be £15,609 per year. The award is subject to the successful candidate meeting the scholarship terms and conditions. Please note that the University asserts the right to claim any intellectual property generated by research it funds.