Anando Ghosh
Department, Institution: Institute for Global Health
UBEL Pathway: International Development (Global Health & Development)
Supervisor: Prof. Audrey Prost
Contact details: anando.ghosh.23@ucl.ac.uk
About Me:
Anando Ghosh trained in clinical psychology in India and Asian studies in the UK where he was a Felix scholar based at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
My Research:
Project Title: Mental Health, Migration and Mahāyāna: mapping the effects of the Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning programme at the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamshala.
Drawing insights from global health, education and medical anthropology, this interdisciplinary PhD project will use a realist lens to understand the effects of a complex school-based psychosocial and educational intervention called Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning (SEEL) at a Tibetan refugee community school in India. Rather than seeing effects in isolation of context, realism gives primacy to the meaning-making mechanisms employed by social actors who under the influence of contextual factors make particular decisions in response to the intervention, thereby making programmes successful in these settings. The project has three components— (1) a realist systematic review of evaluation literature on SEL interventions for refugee and displaced children, (2) stakeholder analysis of social actors involved in designing, implementing and evaluating the intervention, (3) and multi-method qualitative research using a grounded theory approach to understand how the intervention is understood, contested and negotiated by the target population. Besides contributing to the emerging body of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of SEL interventions in low-resource settings, this innovative project will help develop a middle range theory for the SEEL intervention which can be tested and refined in other refugee contexts by the partner organization namely the Centre for Contemplative Sciences and Secular-based Ethics, Emory University.
Key Words: school-based mental health programmes, complex interventions, realistic review, stakeholder analysis, grounded theory approach, refugee, displaced & migrant children, low-resource settings
Impact of My Research:
The study will contribute to an emerging body of empirical evidence on the effectiveness of social-emotional learning programmes in refugee contexts as well as other diverse educational settings (formal, non-formal, informal) to better address children’s psychosocial needs, a topic of significant concern following the COVID-19 pandemic (UNICEF, 2021).
From a theoretical perspective, this innovative study will promote the use of interdisciplinary approaches in global health evaluation research concerning complex interventions to allow broader consideration of likely mechanisms in low-resource settings with distinctive socio-cultural norms.
From a methodological perspective, this project will encourage the use of a realist design in evaluation research to better understand how contextual factors shape causal mechanisms and drive intervention outcomes.
Programme designers and policymakers, equipped with this knowledge, will be in a better position to appreciate on-the-ground realities of what works, how, for whom and in what context in order to effectively design and support contextually-robust community health interventions.