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  Sustainable Finance towards Macro-Stewardship: Investor and NGO engagement with companies on environmental and human rights


   Centre for Environment and Sustainability

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  Dr W Wehrmeyer, Mr Ian Christie  No more applications being accepted  Competition Funded PhD Project (UK Students Only)

About the Project

Scholarships are available for up to three projects in Sustainable Finance, to support the development of an appropriate global and national financial architecture and governance provision towards sustainable development. See details of the other projects available.

About this project

In their respective roles, institutional investors and NGOs alike have been pushing for some time towards improved macro stewardship and governance on environmental and human rights. This project aims to identify patterns and drivers where these efforts have been particularly successful at systemic change, hopefully with the view of how such engagement strategies can be placed into a normative or even regulatory framework and scaled up. A particular dimension is the engagement and interaction between institutional investors and NGOs towards change in the broader operating environment as both often engage with the same companies but with different means and a different scale, but historically, they typically do not combine their effort or seek synergies. This project will see Aviva Investors as one institutional investor, but will not be limited to it.

See details of the other projects available.

Likely supervisors are Dr Walter Wehrmeyer and Ian Christie.

About the Centre of Environment and Sustainability

The Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES) is an internationally-acclaimed centre of excellence on sustainable development. Established in 1992 by Emeritus Professor Roland Clift, the centre is now being led by Prof Richard Murphy.  

Our research uses interdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of complex systems, integrating the engineering and science-based disciplines with insights from the economic and social sciences, and from this develop action-oriented, policy relevant responses to long-term environmental and social issues. The impact of our research and teaching is enhanced by our work in close partnership with diverse businesses and industry on sustainable innovation and implementation issues in practice. These activities inform our teaching (undergraduate, masters, doctoral) to enable our graduates to develop the leading-edge knowledge and skills needed for successful careers in all aspects of sustainability. We provide a friendly and supportive environment in which innovative thought and creativity are strongly encouraged and in which our internationally and culturally diverse group of students and staff can flourish.

The studentships are funded by Aviva Investors, who will be an active partner in the project throughout.

Starting in January 2023 or April 2023.

Entry requirements

Open to candidates who pay UK/home rate fees. See UKCISA for further information.

You will need to meet the minimum entry requirements for our PhD programme: 2:1 or better in a suitable subject area.

How to apply

Applications should be submitted via the Environment and Sustainability PhD programme page. Applications should be submitted via the Environment and Sustainability PhD programme page. In place of a research proposal you should upload a document stating which one of the three topics you wish to apply for, and why.


Business & Management (5) Engineering (12) Environmental Sciences (13) Law (22) Mathematics (25) Politics & Government (30)

Funding Notes

Standard ESRC stipend (£16,062 p.a. for 2022-23) and UK fees.