General Information:
The ‘Renewing biodiversity through a people-in-nature approach’ (RENEW) project will work with landowners, businesses, and communities to restore woodlands, wetlands and farmland across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. The project will put people at the centre of action on biodiversity renewal and build expertise across different sectors and communities to address the environment and climate crises.
The RENEW project is inherently interdisciplinary and encompasses biosciences, social sciences, politics, humanities, environmental intelligence, biodiversity economics, and conservation and is being managed in collaboration with the National Trust.
A principal goal of the RENEW Studentships programme is to create a new generation of interdisciplinary, solutions-focussed researchers who have experienced a rich culture including fundamental research and engagement with key partners.
The RENEW programme are available for January 2023 entry.
A fully funded RENEW studentship will cover:
• A stipend for 4 years (currently £17,688 for 2022-23 entry) in line with the UK Research and Innovation rates
• Payment of the university tuition fees
• Research and Training costs
The project below is one of a number that is available under the RENEW programme.
Project Information:
Commoners on England’s upland systems are increasingly being asked to deliver public goods, i.e. ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water quality regulation, maintaining biodiversity, and landscape aesthetics. Common land encompasses large tracts of our most well-loved and ecologically rich landscapes, as well as 20% of our SSSIs, and is therefore key to ecosystem service provision and biodiversity conservation within England. Given the imminent introduction of ELMs, tenant farmers and owners of common land are faced with new management decisions that affect the natural and cultural heritage and livelihoods supported by the land.
This PhD project will investigate the consequences of individual and collective farmer decision-making for natural and cultural heritage across large upland commons landscapes. The PhD will be interdisciplinary, developing an integrated understanding of how policy, social capital, environmental change, and digital technology incentivise farmer decision-making, and how the decisions affect the ecosystem services and biodiversity supported by common upland. We will focus on the Lake District UNESCO World Heritage Site, particularly the Buttermere Fells and Kinniside Common. Our partners are working with farmers in these areas to understand how best to incentivise heritage improvement. We will both leverage this growing knowledge and feed back into the farming community and partners.
Aims:
• Co-develop possible management scenarios with commoners, investigating the impact of emerging policy and innovative technology on decision-making
• Simulate future vegetation scenarios across Derwent and Kinniside based on management decisions and climate change
• Model a key ecosystem service (likely carbon sequestration) under management scenarios
• Model biodiversity consequences (breeding bird and rare plant distributions) of management scenarios.
• Model impacts of ELM design for scheme take up on common land, to cover effect of property rights distribution, SSSI designation and farm business drivers.
• Explore how the predictions can be used by tenant farmers and other commoners to inform management decisions, by landowners (i.e. the National Trust) to coordinate management strategically, and to inform the extension of the Farm Carbon Toolkit to common land.
The PhD would be supervised jointly between the University of Exeter, the National Trust (NT), the Foundation for Common Land (FCL) / Centre for National Parks and Protected Areas at the University of Cumbria, and be initially supported by the Our Upland Commons project. The student would be based primarily at U. Exeter’s Penryn campus, but would spend time embedded within the FCL team on the University of Cumbria’s Ambleside campus.
Entry requirements
Applicants should have obtained, or be about to obtain, a First or Upper Second Class UK Honours degree, or the equivalent qualifications gained outside the UK, in an appropriate discipline to the project. Applicants with a Lower Second Class degree will be considered if they also have Master’s degree or have significant relevant non-academic experience.
If English is not your first language, you would need to meet our English language requirements by the start of the project http://www.exeter.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply/english/.
How to apply
The closing date for applications is Tuesday 25th October 2022 2359 GMT.
In the application process, you will be asked to upload several documents. Please note our preferred format is PDF, each file named with your surname and the name of the document, eg. “Smith – CV.pdf”, “Smith – Cover Letter.pdf”, “Smith – Transcript.pdf”.
• CV
• Letter of application outlining your academic interests, prior research experience, and reasons for wishing to undertake the project.
• Transcript(s) giving full details of subjects studied and grades/marks obtained. This should be an interim transcript if you are still studying.
• If you are not a national of a majority English-speaking country, you will need to submit evidence of your current proficiency in English.
Reference Information:
You will be asked to name two referees as part of the application process, please ensure that you include this information, and where possible upload the reference documents. Your referees should not be from the prospective supervisory team.
• Please note that we will not be contacting referees to request references, if you do not upload them at the time of submitting your application you must arrange for them to be submitted to us by the application deadline.
• If your named referee would prefer to send us their document directly please ask them to forward the documents to [Email Address Removed]
• References should be submitted by your referees to us directly in the form of a letter. Referees must email their references to us from their institutional email accounts. We cannot accept references from personal/private email accounts, unless it is a scanned document on institutional headed paper and signed by the referee.
All application documents must be submitted in English. Certified translated copies of academic qualifications must also be provided.
For further information and to submit an application please visit - https://www.exeter.ac.uk/study/funding/award/?id=4536
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