SPAA and CWAS held a workshop on How to Choose a Research Topic to help students in their preparation for proposal submission due next semester. On the 20^th of November 2019, the 11^th Workshop had Professor Zhao of UESTC SPAA and a guest lecturer Dr. Slawomir Raszewski from the University of East London deliver their presentations. Professor Zhao presented first with her lecture on Research Paper Writing: Key Notes for Young Researchers. She highlighted that the title is the first part of a thesis that draws the attention of the readers to the research problem being investigated. Therefore, it is very import to have a good title which is expected to be captivating, informative and organized in a clear and concise manner. Professor Zhao gave some guidelines and examples of what a good title looks like and handed over to Dr. Slawomir Raszewski to continue with the lecture.

Dr. Slawomir Raszewski is a Senior Lecturer at the University of East London whose research interests are International Political Economy and Management of natural resources, Sustainability, Energy Policy, and Strategy. He gave his lecture on how to choose a research topic in the areas of Governance and Strategy. In agreement with Professor Zhao’s presentation, he encouraged students to be sincere in the area of their interest, be sensible, and show their capability to carryout research and the practicability of conducting the desired research. He highlighted that, key to choosing a topic is to understand why you want to carry-out the research. The topic should be relevant and should be able to solve a problem in the real world. He concluded this 11^th  workshop by advising students to engage their research supervisor through-out their research journey.

The 12^thWorkshop was held on the 26^thof November as a continuation of the 11^thworkshop. The presenter for this lecture was Professor Zhao. She started by revising key points from the previous lecture and continued to present on the key notes in research paper writing and key elements of abstract writing. She suggested to the students present to clearly define their topics so that they are not too broad or too narrow and should not cover too many field or countries. Professor Zhao highlighted that the key elements of an abstract are the research target, research method and the research conclusion. These elements will help bring out the full summary of the thesis. She also gave hints and additional notes on choosing a topic related to Public Management and shared examples of what a good abstract looks like.

 The students present appreciated the presenters of the 11^thand 12^thWorkshop series and the tools they got to prepare for their proposal and thesis writing expected of them in the coming semester.