About the project or challenge area

As environmentally and socially focused projects succeed in business and economic terms, a body of evidence gathers to demonstrate that pursuing environmental and social goals could also be financially rewarding. This research will focus on learning from success and failure examples of projects that set out to foster sustainability (particularly the environmental, social, personal, or political aspects of it) through engineering.

A learning framework will be developed to:

(i) inform engineers on what the good/poor practices and patterns have emerged from the past successes/failures;

(ii) how and where these practices and patterns can be reused;

(iii) what outcomes could (probably) be expected within each new context from the said reuse.

The key aim of the project is to support learning and spread of sustainability-enabling practices and patters in engineering socio-technical systems.

Why choose this project?

By undertaking this project you will:

• Have an opportunity to inform (Software) Engineering discipline on the sustainability impact of the software products (through dissipation of own work via conferences and workshop publications);
• Work as a part of an international research team, participating in meetings and collaborations across the world;
• Co-author research paper and reports (and, as appropriate, attend international conferences to present own work);
• Work with industrial and community partners to better understand their own successes and failures, and help share and promote their successes.

About you

Background in Software Engineering is advantageous, but not required, as is familiarity with qualitative and quantitative analysis methods. Good command of English is essential as interviews and case studies will be conducted.

How to apply

All students can apply using the button below, following the Admissions Statement (PDF, 188kB). Please note that this is an advertised project, which means you only have to complete Section A of the Research Statement.

This project is not funded, for further details please use this link.

Before applying, we recommend getting in touch with the project's supervisors. If you are interested in this project and would like to learn more about the research you will be undertaking, please use the contact details on this page.