PhD/DPhil...thoughts, world?

I promised recently on “Ramblings with Rebecca” that we are going to do a Latin Week – introducing and defining some of the legal phrases I’ve stumbled upon. They will probably have nothing to do with each other or have any kind of relevance, really…just fun concepts that have become everyday language in my life.

In the meantime, though, I am writing up proposals for my PhD…and so today’s “Ramblings” episode was a fairly personal ramble of “HELP! WHAT AM I DOING?!?”

I am currently debating:

-Institution. Where should I go? Current top three are Cambridge, King’s College London, and Oxford.

-Topic. Food, water, environmental resources, justice, Middle East. That’s the general idea, but there are a *lot* of potential topics in there, and I do need a very specific set of research questions.

-Advisor. Probably the single greatest impact on my PhD/DPhil experience is the faculty member who will most directly oversee me.

-Discipline. Anthropology, international relations, public policy, development, human geography. So many options. Name that social science! This is probably more a question of going with whichever department my chosen advisor is in.

As of right now, I am planning to apply:

-PhD, Human Geography, Cambridge, where I would focus on food security issues.

-PhD, Human Geography, King’s College London, where I would focus on virtual water, hegemony, trade relations, and local actions vs. macro discourses.

-DPhil, Public Policy, Oxford, where I would focus on how national policies can better harness environmental resources as peace and regional cooperative mechanisms.

Any thoughts on any of this would be greatly appreciated, as I am still massively wrestling with all of the above…