Help on Dissertation Formation - Thoughts

The Dilemma: I am currently attending grad school in the UK and working at a BB. While I'd love the luxury of dedicating all my time to research and reaching out to academia for discussion on corporate finance in efforts to pin down a thesis topic, I have an obligation to work long hours and keep contributing to my team.

Because of the struggle to find time to allocate to my research, I'm reaching out to the wonderful crowd of WallStreetOasis visiting, reading, and criticizing or complimenting discussions to help me out.

I'm interested in the recent discussions on behavioral markets. We all know the world economy as we knew it 2 years ago doesn't exist in the same form. We've witnessed volatility in the past 2 years, maybe 3, never seen before on such magnitude. Consumer confidence was destroyed and we all witnessed our friends & families lose their jobs and or worry about losing their jobs; either way kicking job security out the door.

All the ups and downs, the regulation changes that came and are coming will shape the future of the economy and corporations, IB's, HF's, PE firms, etc.

My aim is to identify a specific area of IB's and identify what are the future developments in that area. This area I'm interested in is corporate finance. How are Structured Lending, Leveraged Buyout, M&A, etc. going to be moving forward and continue to add value to corporations? How are they still going to be a service to pay huge fees for? How are IB's going to gain competitive advantage in these areas moving forward?

I understand I'm focusing on a huge area and I'm trying to narrow down my thoughts. I'd appreciate any thoughts on the economy, thoughts on new theories gaining ground such as George Soros' "Theory of Reflexivity" and how those ideas will form the new economic demographics. There's no denying all the changes we've witnessed and I'm interested in what everyone thinks.

Apologies for any vague statements, I'm trying to gather all thoughts and typing as fast as I could so I can get back to work.

Thank you in advance.