The Forest Edge Doctoral Scholarship Program at University of Birmingham 2018, UK

The Forest Edge Doctoral Scholarship Program at University of Birmingham

The Forest Edge Doctoral Scholarships programme will offer 20 Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships at the University of Birmingham over the next three years.

The Forest Edge will offer a comprehensive training programme to develop researchers and help to prepare you for post-PhD life in industry, academia, and other sectors. 

Each doctoral project will identify a major theme and a dominant cross-link, binding it to other projects (see 'Themes' below). Some of our advertised projects will be multi-disciplinary and some interdisciplinary; but all will be different to the projects normally associated with the Research Council, challenging doctoral researchers and their supervisors alike.

The Forest Edge programme is partially funded by a £1,050,000 grant from the Leverhulme Trust. Each Scholarship covers maintenance costs (at Research Council levels), tuition fees, and research and training expenses for the doctoral student over three years. 

Scholarship value and duration

The award comprises:

• Full payment of tuition fees at Research Councils UK fee level for the year of entry (£4,270 in 2018/19), to be paid by the University;
• An annual maintenance grant at current UK Research Councils rates (the national minimum doctoral stipend for 2018/19 is £14,764), to be paid in monthly instalments to the Leverhulme Trust Doctoral Scholar by the University.
• All studentships will come with a minimum of £3,000 Research Training Support Grant. This can be increased, if there are justified project costs, up to a maximum of £12,000. Supervisors should indicate from where any further costs necessary for the project will be sourced.  

Funding is available for UK or EU students only. 

The tenure of the award can be for up to 3.5 years (42 months). 

Themes

Projects, setting out from strongly scientific, social science, or cultural perspectives, align with one of the following themes:

1. Values and meanings – How (historically, currently, and in the future) do the ways we value forests influence their form, function, and, indeed, their existence?
2. Change drivers and resilience – Which ‘tipping points’ and ‘great leaps forward’ emerge from the adaptation of forests to changing environments? Can we design interventions to enhance forest resilience?
3. Communication cascades – How does communication at molecular, ecological, and social scales determine the functioning of forests? To what extent can we safely alter communication within and across scales to promote beneficial outcomes?

Cutting across these themes are two further, cross-linking, perspectives:

1. Scales of space and time – How far must forests extend, and how long must they persist, to perform specific cultural, socio-economic, or ecological functions?  How can human and forest time and space scales be reconciled
2. Complexity: how patterns emerge - Where and when do critical sites and situations appear in forests? How can models that embrace complexity enhance our understanding of ecosystem processes?

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/pgr/bifor-phds.aspx?utm_source=ARMACAD.info&utm_medium=ARMACAD