PhD in Physical Geography
There are many opportunities for carrying out a PhD in Physical Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences, with several different funding routes.
A list of currently available projects is shown below. This list is not exhaustive, so if you have another idea or project in mind, please contact one of the supervisors listed below, other potential supervisors or the postgraduate admissions tutors to discuss and develop further.
NERC GW4+ DTP Projects 2021
The application deadline is 11:59pm on Friday 8th January 2021. To apply for this programme, you must select 'Faculty of Science' and then 'NERC Great Western Four plus Doctoral Training Partnership (PhD)' within the online application form. You should refer to the project and supervisor in your application, indicate in the funding section that you will be funded by the GW4+ DTP, and choose the correct school of study. Please note that although an applicant may be successful in being nominated by a supervisor for a particular project, they are not guaranteed a studentship until they have been successful following an interview.
Further particulars of the programme including eligibility for international applicants (including EU) can be found here.
| Project title | Supervisor(s) |
|---|---|
| Impact of accelerating Greenland ice melt on ocean circulation and global climate | Professor Jonathan Bamber |
| Catastrophic flooding under climate change | Professor Paul Bates |
| Warming without Warning? Investigating the understudied impacts of climate change on extreme heat in Africa | Dr Rachel James |
| Improving predictability of flash droughts and their impacts in East African drylands | Dr Katerina Michaelides |
| Exploring the future of the marine N2O cycle | Dr Fanny Monteiro |
| Dates, rate and fate of coastal pollution in the last century using new 210Pb techniques | Dr David Richards |
| Genome evolution of marine cyanobacterial symbionts | Dr Patricia Sanchez-Baracaldo |
| Climate change’s impact on extreme UK drought and flood risk | Dr Peter Watson |
| Frozen-in: characterising the micro-environment of ice inhabiting microbes | Dr Christopher Williamson |
Other PhD projects (including China Scholarship Council studentships)
These are suggested projects for which we currently have no funding. They would be ideal for holders of scholarships (including the China Scholarship Council), or self-funded students. This list is not exhaustive, so if you have another idea or project in mind, please contact one of the supervisors listed below, other potential supervisors or the postgraduate admissions tutors to discuss and develop further.
| Project title | Supervisor(s) |
|---|---|
| Closing the Ocean Carbon Cycle | Professor Paul Valdes |
| Caves as a window on land-atmosphere coupling in the carbon cycle | Dr David Richards |
|
Evolution and diversity of novel marine nitrogen-fixing organisms and their impact on global climate |
Dr Fanny Monteiro |
| Developing regional scale hydrodynamic models | Dr Jeff Neal |
|
The impacts of land use change on climate, data and model analysis |
Dr Jo House |
|
Using observations from space and the deep ocean to uncover the ocean's role in climate change |
Dr Rory Bingham |
| Atmospheric methane on the rise: investigating the drivers of methane’s abrupt changes | Dr Anita Ganesan |
| Hydrology and hydraulics of the Amazon floodplain | Professor Paul Bates |
| Current and future European flood risk | Professor Paul Bates |
| Palaeoenvironmental controls on the accumulation of hydrocarbon source rocks in Paratethys | Dr Rachel Flecker |