Funded PhD Studentship: DTC GEO 25 - Dwelling through Rural Second Homes: in depth examination of British rural second home owenership

Swansea University is a UK top 30 institution for research excellence (Research Excellence Framework 2014), and has been named Welsh University of the Year 2017 by The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide.

Swansea Science DTC is a community committed to undertaking world-class research that has a positive impact globally and we have a fully-funded PhD scholarship for 2017/2018 entry.

We are recognised as one of the foremost global centres for teaching and research in human and physical geography. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) Geography at Swansea was ranked joint 9th in the UK for research impact and 11th in the UK for research environment. Our research environment (how the Department supports research staff and students) and the impact of our research (its value to society) were both judged to be 100% world leading or internationally excellent.

Our internationally active research staff and large community of postgraduate researchers create a dynamic and inspirational environment in which to study. You will also benefit from our exceptional facilities, including: a powerful workstation for all Earth Observation postgraduates; ‘Blue Ice 2’ supercomputer, containing 600 cores and 1.2TB memory distributed over 50 nodes with 33TB data storage, used mainly for climate and glaciological modelling; specialist laboratory suites for stable isotope ratio analysis; tree ring analysis; extraction and identification of organic compounds; pollen extraction and analysis; rainfall simulation; tephra analysis; soil and sediment characterisation.

Description of Project:

To the general UK public, rural second homes tend to be represented as controversial expressions of consumption, yet they have been relatively little studied since the 1970s. Notably, there is a neglect of how British rural second home owners consume their properties, work more fully developed within Nordic countries, where second home ownership is more ubiquitous and less intrinsically politically contested. The PhD will draw inspiration from these Nordic projects to examine in depth how British rural second home owners consume their properties, their importance for identity and dwelling and the extent to which second home consumption engages with the whole rural environment.