Community engagement in active travel

GALLANT aims to work with up to five communities in Glasgow to develop multi-level (infrastructure-, social/community-, individual-focused) interventions to promote active travel for short journeys. A key aspect of this work will be to understand the mechanisms through which communities coalesce and act collectively to embrace walking, wheeling and cycling practices. This PhD takes as its starting point models of socio-technical transitions to sustainability (e.g., the multi-level perspective¹), collective action² and thresholds of collective behaviour³ to explore ways in which local stakeholders and actors respond to, engage with, adapt and collectively adopt (or not) opportunities to promote walking, wheeling and cycling for local journeys. It will also seek to understand perceptions of cost and benefits to different end-users and how these influence active travel adoption. This PhD will be jointly supervised by academics from GALLANT’s active travel and community collaboration teams. It will develop a new theory of change to describe the core components and processes (including key actors) through which novel initiatives are adopted and integrated into local social norms and practice.  

The successful candidate will demonstrate skills and experience in qualitative data collection and analysis, including interviews, focus groups and observations. They will have experience of working with communities to deliver active travel interventions. They will also demonstrate the capability to work in a multi-disciplinary team and the application of social science theory to describe and understand the complexity of human behaviours.  

To be classed as a UK/Home applicant, candidates must meet the following criteria:

• Be a UK National (meeting residency requirements), or

• Have settled status, or

• Have pre-settled status (meeting residency requirements), or

• Have indefinite leave to remain or enter.

All applicants must have or expect to obtain a first-class degree (2.1 or equivalent) in an appropriate discipline. This may cover, but is not limited to, earth sciences, social science, mathematics, engineering, computing, physics, bio- and chemical sciences.

We champion Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, believing that this is the way to increase research productivity and quality and to enhance societal and economic impact. Likewise, the University of Glasgow and our external partners are fully committed to EDI principles.

We support applications from under-represented backgrounds, childcare support for conference attendance, flexible working for carers and promote a work-life balance.

For enquires related to EDI, please address to GALLANT EDI Champion, Dr Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay via the GALLANT-phd mailbox.

How to Apply: Please refer to the following website for details on how to apply: https://www.gla.ac.uk/gallant. For studentship enquiries, please contact [Email Address Removed].