Interdisciplinary focus
This project fuses social and natural sciences, combining an understanding of coastal ecology with policy. This project will focus on policy interventions to build resilience along the coast in terms of natural/physical resources and human/social capital, which could include intertidal areas, coastal defence, the built environment, trust, connectedness, heritage, civic engagement, and more.
Potential methods include social network analysis, surveys, interviews, focus group mapping, citizen science, participatory action research, and/or sampling soil, flora, or other coastal ecology. The applicant does not need a background in all these fields, but would need to have an interest in learning the appropriate methods for the project undertaken.
Training and support
You will receive support through the Sustainable Transitions training program, which offers interdisciplinary research methods, secondary discipline training, and ongoing development. Doctoral scholars also have access to £2,500 through Proficio for training courses and £10,000 for research and additional training. You may audit relevant courses and will be supported by both the Sustainable Transitions management and your supervisory team.
Additionally, all scholars join the University of Essex’s Centre for Environment and Society, providing events and networking opportunities.
Person specification
This project will be ideal for someone passionate about investigating coastal community resilience and deriving lessons to inform public policy makers. The opportunity would suit a candidate with a degree/background in environmental sciences, marine sciences, policy studies, political science, economics, and related fields. It is not necessary for the candidate to have prior training in data analysis or fieldwork, as this can be provided on the programme.
Research proposal
The project area is broadly defined, leaving scope for the applicant to develop their own specific research proposal as part of the application. The successful candidate will further develop their proposal in close consultation with the supervisory team.
Supervision
The primary discipline supervisor takes the lead responsibility for supervising the project. For further detail relating to supervision see the Guidance for Applicants (.docx) document.
Additional background information
UK coasts provide recreation, transportation, commerce, natural beauty and food for coastal communities. However, they face interrelated challenges from issues such as climate change, coastal realignment, demographic shift and infrastructure development. Managing such issues can be difficult, with coasts and their seas providing diverse meanings and values for their stakeholders and communities. In this respect, coastal residents, users, and managers experience challenges in coherently and meaningfully attending to livelihoods, health and wellbeing, as well as natural biodiversity, ecosystem productivity and conservation. This complexity highlights the need to develop and evaluate fair and transferrable approaches to promote sustainable use of diverse coastal resources. This will be critical to strengthening resilience: the ability to anticipate, withstand, adjust to, and thrive after disruption and change.
Within ARISE, we consider five foundational types of capital resources shown to help coastal communities build resilience: human, social, natural, physical, and financial. Elsewhere, place-based policy interventions have been shown to strengthen these types of capital and help build resilience through developing stronger relationships between people, their location, and their environment. However, examples like education campaigns, enforcement initiatives, and community engagement are often designed through the lens of place-based histories, identities, and community values unique to the place where they are implemented. Such interventions may work in one place, but not the other, or may disparately strengthen certain capitals of local concern at the expense of others.
This studentship will provide a unique opportunity to study the role of community and place based interventions, linking the five capitals at each site. The candidate will benefit from a wide network of expertise within the ARISE project, allowing them to select an interest area within the project.
ARISE: Advancing Resilience and Innovation for a Sustainable Environment, is designed to propose, develop and evaluate an intervention framework to practically address this puzzle. We will gather evidence to develop best-practice intervention methods, applicable across places and regions, focussed on achieving balanced strengthening across each of the five capitals.
Over the first three of four-and-a-half years of the project, we will design and deliver twelve place-based interventions throughout the Norfolk-to-Kent coastlines, including education campaigns, enforcement initiatives, and community engagement events. Before, during, and after each intervention, our research team will monitor and evaluate local impacts of our interventions accounting for each of the five capitals. From the lessons learned, and over the last one-and-a-half years of the project, we will then develop a toolkit of best-practice to achieve transferable and scalable interventions that work across different communities and places while encouraging more balanced approaches to strengthen each of the five capitals.
This studentship is an opportunity to develop unique research within this field and be affiliated to the ARISE project and network. It provides the opportunity to learn novel transdisciplinary approaches that ARISE will foster, and have easy access to data and information for policy and natural capital analysis.
How to Apply
Full details available at Sustainable Transitions Leverhulme Doctoral Training Programme.
Supervisory team references
- Reinhardt, G.Y. and Chatsiou, K., 2020. Using community education interventions to build resilience and avert crises: how accidental dwelling fires decreased in Essex County, UK. In Local Disaster Management (pp. 102-120). Routledge.
- Reinhardt, G.Y., Vidovic, D. and Hammerton, C., 2021. Understanding loneliness: a systematic review of the impact of social prescribing initiatives on loneliness. Perspectives in public health, 141(4), pp.204-213.
- Reinhardt, G.Y., 2019. The intersectionality of disasters’ effects on trust in public officials. Social Science Quarterly, 100(7), pp.2567-2580.
- Stafford, R., Ashley, M., Clavey, L., Esteves, L.S., Hicks, N., Jones, A., Leonard, P., Luisetti, T., Martin, A., Parker, R. and Rees, S., 2021. Coastal and marine systems. Nature-based Solutions for Climate Change in the UK, p.107.
- Heymans, J.S., Hicks, N., Gattuso, J-P, Neukermans, G., Landschützer, P. and Portner, H-O., (2023). Blue Carbon: Challenges and opportunities to mitigate the climate and biodiversity crises. EMB Policy Brief N°. 11, 2023 ISSN: 0778-3590 ISBN: 9789464206203
