Projects for 2024 entry are now open.
The Department of Geography and Scott Polar Research Institute are pleased to be active and successful participants in the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Cambridge Climate, Life and Earth (C-CLEAR) Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP)
Prospective students who wish to apply for an advertised project are asked to browse the DTP webpages and identify the project or projects that they wish to apply for.
The DTP has divided all its PhD projects into three themes. Members of the Department of Geography and SPRI have projects advertised in all three themes.
From the DTP webpages, you can search: 1) by broad theme (Climate Change and Environmental Processes, Biology and Conservation or Solid Earth and Geological Hazards); 2) by staff member/department (Staff Directory); or 3) by searching for keyword (e.g. ‘Geography’ or ‘Antarctica’).
To help you, we provide links to all the PhD topics involving Geography/SPRI supervisors below.
You may also choose your own topic that relates to the research interests of any member of the Physical Geography/SPRI staff, and that may also be suitable and eligible for funding by the DTP.
Further information on the application process is provided via the DTP webpages, the Geography Department webpages and the University Postgraduate Admissions pages. We encourage all students to apply by the 5th December 2023, which includes references, in order to be considered for all other sources of university funding, alongside the NERC DTP awards. Students may apply up to the 5th January 2024, for consideration for the NERC DTP awards only.
PhD topic listing
- BC508: Understanding forest responses to anthropogenic change by tracking thousands of trees remotely (Lead supervisor: David Coomes, Plant Sciences)
- BC515: Taking plant growth models to a new level through integration with innovative experiments on trees (Lead supervisor: Andrew D. Friend, Geography)
- BC516: Species matters: Impacts of diversity in plant species on ecosystem responses to environmental change (Lead supervisor: Andrew D. Friend, Geography)
- BC518: How the tree got its rings (Lead supervisor: Andrew D. Friend, Geography)
- CE504: Modelling the evolution of surface lakes George VI Ice Shelf, Antarctica (Lead supervisor: Neil Arnold, Scott Polar Research Institute)
- CE508: 3D meltwater storage across Antarctic ice shelves (Lead supervisor: Rebecca Dell, Scott Polar Research Institute)
- CE512: Predicting El Nino: important processes and their representation in climate models (Lead supervisor: Michael Herzog, Geography)
- CE514: Timing environmental responses to warmer-than-present conditions during the Last Interglacial in and around the North Sea (Lead supervisor: Christine Lane, Geography)
- CE516: *Priority CASE project* Structural dynamics of forests from multi-temporal terrestrial laser scanning for radiative transfer (Lead supervisor: Emily Lines, Geography)
- CE517: Providing early warning of the impact of extreme weather events on health service demand in the UK and India (Lead supervisor: Hua Lu, British Antarctic Survey)
- CE524: Reconstructing the geometry of AMOC across multiple timescales (Lead supervisor: Francesco Muschitiello, Geography)
- CE525: Machine learning for automated reconstructions of environmental properties in Arctic marine sediments (Lead supervisor: Francesco Muschitiello, Geography)
- CE526: Using the Sun’s ‘heartbeat’ to measure time in the oceans – a new geochronometer for deep-sea sediment records (Lead supervisor: Francesco Muschitiello, Geography)
- CE528: The impact of meteorological extremes on surface melting of Antarctica’s ice shelves (Lead supervisor: Andrew Orr, British Antarctic Survey)
- CE529: Reconstructing Greenland Ice Sheet decay and global sea level rise during the Last Interglacial warm period (Lead supervisor: Matthew Osman, Geography)
- CE530: Mining the “big data” of Earth’s geologic past through physics-based statistical learning (Lead supervisor: Matthew Osman, Geography)
- CE534: Constraining methane-climate feedbacks past, present and future (Lead supervisor, Rachael Rhodes, Earth Sciences)
- CE535: An ice-free Arctic: why was Arctic warmth amplified during past Interglacials? (Lead supervisor: Louise Sime, British Antarctic Survey)
- CE536: Using proxy biases to assess seasonality and inter-annual impacts of past abrupt climate change (Lead supervisor: Luke Skinner, Earth Sciences)
- CE544: Greenland Ice Sheet velocity response to surface melt, lake drainages, and subglacial hydrology (Lead supervisor: Ian Willis, Scott Polar Research Institute)
- CE545: Evolution of surface ponds on debris-covered glaciers, High Mountain Asia (Lead supervisor: Ian Willis, Scott Polar Research Institute)
- CE548: Monitoring and mitigating the hazards from landslide-triggered glacial lake outburst floods (Lead supervisor: Maximillian Van Wyk de Vries, Geography, Earth Sciences)
- SE519: The Late Pleistocene cryptotephra record of Lake Chala (Kenya/Tanzania) (Lead supervisor: Christine Lane, Geography)
- SE524: Improving reconstructions of global volcanism and solar activity with machine learning (Lead supervisor: Francesco Muschitiello, Geography)