Durham
Action on Natural Disasters is a Doctoral Training Initiative (DTI) that focuses on interdisciplinary research into the causes, consequences, and mitigation of natural disasters. It is born from an understanding that reducing the impact of future natural disasters depends on understanding not only the physical nature of the events that cause disasters, but also the social, economic, cultural, historical, and political factors that shape their impact on communities that are exposed to them.
Its defining feature is a cohort model, in which a group of PhD students drawn from each Faculty (between three and six) work on complementary projects based around a clearly defined theme. The theme will be framed in a way that takes an interdisciplinary perspective on the physical, social and cultural conditions that combine to influence risk and resilience of human populations in relation to natural hazards.
Within each theme, particular conditions of hazard will be chosen as a case study on which the cohort of students will work in partnership. The case study might relate to human exposure to hazardous conditions which continue over an extended period (e.g., volcanic fissure eruptions; seasonal flooding) or to a specific disaster event, which might have already occurred (e.g., the Nepal earthquakes of 2015) or have the potential to occur (e.g., a future eruption of the Auckland volcanic field).
Applications are welcomed from candidates of all backgrounds and nationalities.
The Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience is offering up to three fully-funded PhD studentships, one in each Faculty. The studentship funding includes fees (Home, EU, or International), stipend, and research and training costs. Studentships will be awarded competitively to the strongest applicants, subject to the proviso that we expect to award at least one studentship in each faculty.