We welcome applications for funded 4-year PhD studentships to start in September 2021. This is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious, talented and enthusiastic researcher to conduct interdisciplinary research in order to advance thinking within the area of blue-green humanities through researching UK strategy, public policy, and governance of flooding and coastal erosion.
Dealing effectively with floods and coastal erosion is a key strategic priority for the UK governments. The Environment Agency is revising its National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy, the Welsh Government is revising its National Strategy for Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency is due to update its Local Flood Risk Management Plans and Flood Risk Management Strategies in 2022.
Diverse communities are affected by extreme flood events, as others face the effects of coastal erosion on homes and livelihoods in what are often already economically deprived coastal communities.
Issues of risk and uncertainty, diversity of population, geography and local cultures present governments, their agencies, and their critics with a hugely complex policy issue. Work in cultural political economy (Sum and Jessop, 2013, for example) suggests that simplification of complex policy issues is inevitable and necessary for governance practices, but that reality will always ‘bite back’.
Using methods of critical discourse analysis to engage with and critique UK strategy, public policy, and governance of flooding and coastal erosion this project addresses the broad research question: To what extent is UK discourse of flood and erosion policy fit for purpose?
In doing so, the project will aim to critically map-out and analyse UK flood and coastal erosion policy, framing contemporary policy in its historical context and showing how flood discourses have changed over the last 50 to 70 years.
Contact for enquiries
[Email Address Removed]
Find out more through our webinar
Watch this recording of our webinar, to help you find out more about the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures. Hear from programme leaders, project supervisors and researchers, including answers to questions posted in the Q&A. Watch here
If you just want to find out more about this research proposal, watch the presentation by the Lead Supervisor here.
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