Current calls

Lead supervisor: Prof. Clare Holdsworth c.m.holdsworth@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr. Ben Anderson b.anderson@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr Richard Waller r.i.waller@keele.ac.uk

Village halls are the social heart of rural communities, hosting events, societies and local decision-making. There are an estimated 11,000 such halls across England, many of which were built in the early to mid-twentieth century. As a result, many of these buildings now rely on ageing and inefficient infrastructure. Yet, as rural areas confront new environmental, social and economic challenges, village halls hold significant potential to evolve beyond their traditional roles, becoming adaptable and transformative community assets for a more sustainable future. Unlocking this potential will depend on how effectively these halls can be adapted to meet modern energy and sustainability standards.  Retrofitting village halls for sustainable energy use could not only reduce emissions and running costs but also enable them to function as hubs of rural resilience. Improved energy systems, renewable generation and/or digital connectivity could support new uses such as micro-industry spaces, shared co-working facilities and community energy centres. In times of disruption, such as power outages or extreme weather events, energy-independent halls could provide vital off-grid power and shelter.

This project is directly relevant to SURF principles of developing community-led solutions for sustainable rural futures. You will have the opportunity to integrate social, technological and environmental challenges and solutions, promoting a more-than-human perspective.

For this project you will work with our project partners, who are actively involved in retrofitting village halls to explore the options, barriers and benefits of village hall retrofits, examining how technical innovation and community engagement can together redefine the role of village halls for sustainable rural futures.

Possible research questions:

1. How can village halls be retrofitted to meet contemporary energy and sustainability standards while preserving their cultural value?
2. What technical, social and organisational barriers do village hall retrofit projects face?
3. How can community-led approaches shape the development and resilience of village hall retrofits and what resources do communities require to deliver successful projects?
4. How do rural social identities influence the location and viability or village hall retrofit projects.

There is scope to develop this project in different directions, from a more technical to a social science approach; though the essence of this project is to consider the environmental, economic and social challenges and benefits of retrofits. This project is open to applicants from a broad range of backgrounds including: geography, sociology, environmental studies, sustainability science or engineering, heritage and conservation.

Project Partner:

Charge my street: a social enterprise which installs and operates community EV chargepoints, raising money through community shares. All profits are reinvested with a view to growing the EV chargepoint network.

Lead supervisor: Dr Tory Milner, v.s.milner@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Prof. Ceri Morgan, c.m.morgan@keele.ac.uk

Ecosystem services are the benefits and services that individuals derive from natural resources (see Millenium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005), and are classified into provisioning, regulating, and cultural services. River systems support and deliver a wide range of Ecosystem Services, such as fresh water, food, fibre, fuel, biochemical substances and genetic materials. Regulating the Ecosystem Services provided by river systems include the improvement of water quality and the moderation of climatic extremes, such as floods and droughts. Cultural Ecosystem Services include aesthetic, educational, recreational and spiritual services.

The global distribution of intermittent rivers and ephemeral streams is increasing due to drying climates and increased human demands for water, with many perennial rivers contracting and drying for part of their length. This wetting and drying cycle causes a mixture of flowing (lotic), ponding (lentic) and dry habitats that expand and contract throughout a year. Spatial and temporal variability in flowing, ponding and dry habitats are likely to change the provision of Ecosystem Services at local and landscape scales. An association lack of fresh water and deteriorations in water quality have strong impacts for agricultural, domestic, and industrial use, as well as on regulating services.

The supply of cultural services also differs based on the flow phase. The flowing stage provides recreational opportunities for fishing, rafting and other watersports, whilst many individuals value and/or find beauty in aesthetic attributes of perennial rivers and streams. In contrast, ponding and dry phases offer different recreational activities, such as walking or riding in dry riverbeds. Dry channels often become major tourist attractions, which may boost local revenue in rural landscapes.

Possible research questions:

1. What, and whose cultural Ecosystem Services are enhanced, reduced or lost when flows cease?
2. What is the perception of the public and individuals working in the agricultural sector to the flowing, ponding and dry phases of intermittent rivers and streams? Specifically, what natural river elements and features do individuals find aesthetically pleasant and why?
3. Do changes in cultural Ecosystem Services (e.g., recreational activities) during the dry stage impact tourism and the rural economy?

This project aims to work with and empower rural communities in addressing the sustainable management and conservation of intermittent rivers. This project is also characterised by the more-than-human approach by advocating whole system approaches to rural problems by linking landforms, ecology, and culture and adopting an interdisciplinary approach. To answer the research questions, a combination of public perception and sociological surveys will be undertaken, which may include questionnaires, interviews, a solicited diary method, and a public participatory GIS method. Lastly, data from social media, including user-generated and spatial content, comprising texts and photographs may also be used to provide useful insights into society’s perception and preferences, such as the aesthetic appreciation of landscape elements.

Project Partners

Environment Agency

Lead supervisor: Prof. Zoe Robinson z.p.robinson@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Prof. Paul Sissons p.sissons@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Prof. Jonathan Statham

The UK’s land use and agriculture sector is critical to the UK’s response to climate change yet faces workforce challenges in terms of skills gaps, aging workforce, and limited policy attention, requiring understanding of key leverage points in the green skills ecosystem to drive the necessary transformation.

This PhD is situated in the essential role of green skills in ensuring a just transition for the rural workforce and unlocking the benefits of the rural to climate mitigation and adaptation. Yet there are upskilling and reskilling needs within the rural workforce, and new approaches to encourage new entrants into the sector, lowering average age and increasing diversity are required.

This research will involve co-production with key stakeholders in the rural skills ecosystems, including post-16 education skills providers, local authority skills and employment teams, and the rural workforce, amongst others, to surface key emergent issues, and identify priority sectors for deeper focus. Further analysis of these sectors will explore learner perspectives of green skills development including learner motivations and barriers to green skills development; training provider perspectives to further understand barriers and opportunities to rural green skills development; and pathways to support rural green skills development. The research will develop a systems map, incorporating the more-than-human through consideration of how factors such as new technologies, climate impacts, place characteristics such as physical geography influence the skills system, and help identify leverage points for skills system transformation.

Possible Research Questions:

1. What are key relevant leverage points such as institutional barriers, shortages, or training bottlenecks within the English land use and agriculture skills ecosystem?
2. How might an appropriately skilled workforce be developed to support climate mitigation, adaptation and a just transition?
3. What skills, old and new, are necessary to support a green transition?
4. How does skill demand interact with more-than-human environments, including for example physical geography, (micro-)climates, climate change, or new technologies?

This PhD is rooted in Sustainability Transitions, bringing a transdisciplinary supervision team including a non-academic partner, and academics with specialisms in sustainability science and education for sustainability, sustainable livestock agriculture and business and economics. The transdisciplinary nature of the PhD means we welcome applicants from a wide range of discipline areas interested in the role of the rural workforce in a sustainable future.

Project Partner

This PhD will work with RAFT (Research, Advanced Breeding, Food futures, Training) Solutions as a project partner, an SME with 20 years of experience of agricultural training.

Lead Supervisor: Dr Elliot Carter e.carter2@keele.ac.uk

Co-Supervisor: Dr Ian Oliver i.oliver@keele.ac.uk

Co-Supervisor: Dr Philip Catney p.j.j.catney@keele.ac.uk

Global warming is projected to cause extreme disruption to society and human health by 2050 if left unchecked. Much recent attention has fallen on carbon capture and storage as a means to reduce anthropogenic CO₂ emissions and avoid such an outcome. One promising approach is carbon capture and mineralisation (CCM), whereby CO₂ is reacted with rocks, locking it up in solid minerals which will remain stable for millions of years.

Development of CCM in the UK would necessarily involve activity in rural communities such as Northern Ireland or Scotland, where suitable rocks (e.g. basalt) are abundant. This might offer potential opportunities including new local industry and skills, as well as broader benefits through limiting the damaging effects of climate change. However, implementation would also entail new uses of land, and potential risks to rural communities such as increased noise, disruption and disturbance or even pollution of groundwater resources. Moreover, there is ongoing ethical debate over whether carbon capture is the right response to the climate crisis at all.

This interdisciplinary project would engage with these issues to better understand the feasibility, risks and ethics of CCM in rural landscapes and communities. The project focus and approach will be guided by the candidate’s interests but will include a combination of desk and laboratory studies, alongside active engagement with potentially affected communities. By synthesising data from a variety of methods, this project will ultimately seek to answer the key questions around carbon capture and mineralisation: Can we? Should we? And, if so, how?

Methodologies might include laboratory, field or desk studies of the potential and feasibility of mineralisation in the UK, qualitative surveys and focus groups with communities and stakeholders, co-cocreation of lab research questions with stakeholders, assessment of potential ecotoxicology

Possible research questions

1. What is the technical feasibility of carbon capture and mineralisation in the UK?
2. How do rural communities weigh the opportunities and risks of carbon capture against the climate crisis?
3. Can specific applications of carbon capture and mineralisation (e.g. mine waste remediation) make it more socially and/or economically feasible?
4. Is carbon capture a remedy for climate change or a distraction from real change?

Project Partner

Institute of Quarrying

Lead Supervisor: Prof. Ceri Morgan, c.m.morgan@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr Dan Allen, d.allen@keele.ac.uk

Whilst rural geographies remain marginalised within Geography, the rural is the main setting for a major trend in contemporary creative writing, namely what has been termed 'new' nature writing. 'New' or contemporary nature writing of the last fifteen years or so typically combines memoir, travel, and a concern with the environment, and is to be distinguished from 'old(er)' nature writing by its diversity in terms of author identities. Critically and publicly acclaimed texts of the twenty-first century offer engagements with UK rural landscapes on the part of GEM (global and ethnic majority) writers (e.g. Lindo, Burnett), LGBTQIA+ writers (Bradbury, Hulme), working-class writers (Carthew), and disabled and chronically ill writers (Atkin, Kenward, Harkness). Mobilities, notably walking (with 'walking' defined as a more-than-bipedal practice, see Keating and Porter) are a key feature of contemporary nature writing, as showcased in the recent scandal around the 'truth' of Raynor Winn's bestselling, The Salt Path (2018). Interconnections between humans and other-than/more-than-human(s) are another important theme (e.g. Donaldson, Liptrot). Writers engage with environmental concerns thematically and/or formally. They might attempt to write in modes that decentre the human voice, as in geopoetics (White, Magrane), offer other-than-human perspectives (Richardson), and/or adopt hybrid forms to echo the interconnectedness of species and sites (Burnett).

This project engages with contemporary nature writing ecologies, criticism, and theory to produce a creative nonfiction manuscript and a short critical or critical-creative dissertation. Public engagement, consultation, and participation are built into the project’s design: the student might walk (on foot, or by other means) a coastal or other path in stages, using the journeys as prompts for their own creative writing, and offering creative geohumanities activities or events along the way. These activities might include readings of work-in-progress, creative writing workshops, short walk-alongs or artwalks with local community members, coffee-chats (cafes-causeries), focus groups/town hall discussions, or other public engagement or participatory events at set points on the route.

The project brings together approaches and methods from arts, humanities, and geography, notably creative writing, human and other-than-human geographies (rural geographies, animal and plant geographies), and participatory arts.

Possible research questions

How does contemporary nature writing mediate and/or inform lived experiences of rurality?

How can nature writing contribute to debates around environmental and community sustainabilities?

Lead Supervisor: Dr Dan Allen d.allen@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr Ben Anderson b.anderson@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr Peter Lawrence p.j.lawrence@keele.ac.uk

With Defra’s May 2025 plan for nine new UK reservoirs by 2050 - the first major projects in 30 years - this interdisciplinary study reimagines reservoir development through a more-than-human lens. Amid a 90% loss of UK wetlands and 19% species decline since 1970, it reframes reservoirs as contested landscapes entwining human water security with the agency and vulnerabilities of animals and ecosystems. Blending ecology, environmental humanities, and ethics, it employs multispecies methods (including ethnography and bioacoustic monitoring) to challenge anthropocentric rural planning, co-designing sustainable solutions that foster multispecies flourishing in a changing climate. We seek candidates from ecology, geography, humanities, or related fields, passionate about interspecies justice.

Possible research questions:

1. How can new UK reservoirs be designed and managed as multispecies landscapes that actively support human and non-human lives rather than treating non-human species as externalities to be mitigated?
2. What forms of agency, vulnerability, and relationality do non-human beings (e.g., otters, wading birds, amphibians, bats, fish, invertebrates, riparian plants) already enact or anticipate in the proposed reservoir sites, and how can multispecies methods (bioacoustics, eDNA, more-than-human ethnography) make these legible within planning processes?
3. What ethical and governance innovations are required to recognise reservoirs as contested commons co-constituted by human water security and non-human claims to habitat, movement, and flourishing?

Lead Supervisor: Dr Christian Devenish c.devenish@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor : Dr Katie Wright-Bevans k.wright-bevans@keele.ac.uk

For generations, natural heritage across the UK’s rural landscape has become increasingly impoverished due to decisions in land use. A growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem services and the place of biodiversity within economic systems has led to efforts to restore nature across rural areas where farming occupies over 70% of land use.

Rewilding is currently a buzzword within rural biodiversity conservation, but with attention biased towards large-scale schemes relying on capital from outside farming income, such as tourism. This is not viable across most rural landscapes, where small-scale approaches are required, both sanctioned by the rural communities and functioning alongside farming practices.

Restoring nature alongside farming is vital to efforts to meet environmental targets in the UK with new opportunities currently in place post-Brexit. Funding schemes exist to increase productivity and manage land to benefit biodiversity, for example, the Countryside Stewardship Higher Tier (CSHT). One major way to make small-scale approaches have a larger outcome than the sum of the parts is to connect them. However, connectivity between farms is currently not contemplated in most schemes.

This PhD will investigate community-led processes within Staffordshire farming communities to self-organise an optimum and scaleable ruleset to join up environmental agricultural schemes, taking into account practical, cultural, natural and economic factors. This will be facilitated by partners within the farming communities through the Local Nature Recovery strategy. The PhD will focus on two major areas: research to find the biological priorities for connecting the landscape, combining species information from different sources with spatial data on land use; and community psychology methods, such as world café, with farming communities in order to identify scope for biodiversity conversation from the ground up and facilitate self-organisation.

Possible approaches for this project include community psychology methods, scalecraft conceptualisation, GIS methods to map ecological connectivity, and biodiversity surveys.

Possible research questions

1. What is best configuration of landscape-scale environmental stewardship interventions to optimise biodiversity in agricultural landscapes?
2. How can farming communities organise themselves to create more ecologically joined-up landscapes for their benefit and biodiversity benefit?
3. How can approaches in this study be scale up?

Lead Supervisor: Dr Aisha Junejo a.junejo@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Prof. Simon Pemberton s.pemberton@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Prof. Sandra Woolley Sandra Woolley - Keele University

The overall aim of this research project is to investigate how new technologies can support the delivery of the “30-minute rural concept,” ensuring that essential services and opportunities are accessible within a 30-minute journey for rural residents.

Modern technologies have been identified as playing a prominent role in facilitating sustainable rural transport. However, co-ordination remains an issue, alongside issues of reliability, accessibility and safety. Leveraging demand-responsive transport may address travel needs, along with combining active mobility with public transportation and increasing public transport efficiency. Nevertheless, the 30-minute rural concept is silent on the behaviours and mobility needs of rural residents in different rural contexts.

Via an intersectional approach – and which particularly prioritises age and gender given issues of accessibility and safety for many rural populations - the PhD will i) map existing mobility patterns of rural residents in different rural areas and challenges therein; ii) explore the potential for new technologies to address such challenges to enhance rural mobilities; and iii) generate new simulations of potential future mobilities via new technologies. In turn, the project will co-design new mobility apps and digital platforms to enable multimodal travel that reflects local contexts and user needs. The research will also produce scalable models that reduce isolation, improve access, and support sustainable development.

The project embodies SURF’s guiding principles by viewing mobility not just as a human concern but as part of a broader rural ecosystem, aiming to foster inclusive, sustainable, and digitally connected futures for all rural inhabitants. It aligns with the SURF themes of Lifestyle and Livelihood by addressing how transport accessibility shapes everyday life and economic wellbeing. By integrating community-led approaches and adaptive technologies, the research will promote sustainable, inclusive mobility ecosystems that enhance lifestyle and economic resilience in rural areas.

Possible Research Questions

Through a mixed-method participatory research design involving computer-based simulations of current and future mobility scenarios, co-designed workshops with residents and surveys and interviews, this project will answer the following questions:

1. How can new technologies enhance rural mobility for rural residents?
2. How can diverse transport modes be integrated to meet rural needs?
3. What journeys are essential for different rural residents, where are the gaps, and how can they be addressed?

Lead Supervisor: Prof. Toby Bruce t.j.a.bruce@keele.ac.uk

Farmers are having to adjust their crop pest management practices as the availability of insecticides decreases. Innovation is needed beyond pesticides. This is due to evolution of resistance, increased legislative restrictions and awareness of off-target effects of pesticides on biodiversity. There is an opportunity to develop biological and habitat management approaches, but alternative approaches can be more difficult to implement and require a change in culture and lifestyle from previous overreliance on insecticide sprays.

The student will gain experience of interdisciplinary approaches spanning the natural sciences (insect-plant interactions) and social sciences (socioeconomics of crop protection and production). The project will collaborate with conservation organisations and farming organisations. There are knowledge gaps about the future of crop protection that the project will fill to advance science and benefit rural society.

Potential disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches include exploring the range of options available to farmers using a systematic literature review and review of industry information sources, semi-structured interviews to survey farmers current practices, plans for the future and views on changes. There may be opportunities to co-design innovative practices for pest management in collaboration with farmers, environmental and farming organisations, or to engage in on farm field experiments with agronomists and innovative farmers affiliated with the project. Another option might be to analyse how farm business performance and livelihoods are affected including farm subsidies, and provide a policy brief for policymakers and/or co-produce practical recommendation toolkits for farmers.

Research Questions:

1. How can crops, developed as a package with pesticides in the Green Revolution, be protected from pests when pesticides are no longer available?
2. How do farmers view pest management?
3. Which options are viable and preferred by farmers?
4. What are the constraints to wider adoption of new solutions?
5. How can options for the future be increased and improved?

Partners:

Nature Friendly Farming Network, ADAS, Agrii.

Lead Supervisor: Dr Ben Anderson b.anderson@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Rosa Fernandez-Martin r.fernandez.martin@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr Tory Milner, v.s.milner@keele.ac.uk

For over two decades, heritage scholars have grappled with how the industry might respond to a changing climate. Significant attention has been paid to how older structures might cope with new environmental demands, the role of the more-than-human in heritage (re)presentation, and indeed, how to rethink preservation, and instead embrace heritage that lets the environment in (See DeSilvey, 2017; Historic England Research Report Series no. 85/2022).

These issues are pressing for some of our most significant sites of early industrialism. Britain's Industrial heritage is often rural, and much of that water-powered, making use of fast-flowing rivers and streams. Such sites have always been prone to flooding, and infrastructure was, to an extent, built to cope; but the extent, number, and rapidity of flooding in an era of climate change now threatens some of the UK's iconic sites, among them the World Heritage Site at Ironbridge, while cycles of drought, heat, and sudden rainfall threaten buildings in other ways. These environmental risks are also shared by nearby human residents, and their other-than-human neighbours, so that engaging with these risks is an opportunity to connect World Heritage Sites to their local more-than-human contexts. This project could integrate perspectives from Heritage Studies, Heritage Conservation, History, Geography, Hydrology or Ecology. Interdisciplinary questions might focus on the impact, history or understanding of flooding and its representation in the heritage environment, or the climate- or hydrological-heritage of places such as Ironbridge. A successful student would work with partners at Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, but also develop options to examine other sites where relevant.

Research Questions:

1. How far have heritage sites and organisations worked alongside their immediate more-than-human communities to manage the new, unpredictable environmental risks that have emerged over the last 30 years?
2. What has been, and might be the role of protected heritage sites in managing at-risk bio-diverse sites?
3. How might environmental risk and climate change be integrated in the history of sites as told through their heritage presentation and community engagement practices?
4. Are there citizen-science approaches to understanding flood risk and impact in heritage-rich but high flood risk environments?
5. How successful are risk-mitigation strategies for heritage assets such as those at Ironbridge?

Project Partner

 We developed this project alongside Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust.

Lead Supervisor: Dr Najmul Haider n.haider@keele.ac.uk

Co-supervisor: Dr Shivanand Hegde s.m.hegde@keele.ac.uk

Project Summary Emerging infectious diseases remain a global concern, with many originating from environments where human, livestock, and wildlife activities overlap. Rural areas in the United Kingdom present several of these interfaces, yet they are not well understood in relation to zoonotic risk. This project aims to understand how different forms of rural waste create contact zones between people, livestock, and wild mammals, and how these shared spaces may support the circulation of zoonotic pathogens, that is, pathogens that can be transmitted from animals to humans.

The research focuses on two rural waste environments: 1) household waste areas within rural villages and 2) livestock-related waste sites on dairy and small farms. These include manure storage sites, feed waste areas, and pits used for the disposal of dead animals. Such locations attract mammals, including rats, mice, foxes, rabbits, and squirrels, and may facilitate the movement of pathogens associated with livestock, wildlife, and human waste.

Infrared camera traps will be used to record mammal presence and behaviour at these sites. Environmental and biological samples, such as faeces, fur, and saliva traces, will be collected each month, along with samples from the surrounding environment. Swabs will also be taken from bait stations that are designed to attract mammals into brief contact. These samples will be screened for zoonotic pathogens associated with rural waste systems, including Leptospira, Campylobacter, Salmonella, hantaviruses, and coronaviruses.

Structured interviews with residents and farmers will provide insight into everyday waste practices, livestock management, and local views of wildlife. This project fully engages with the SURF themes by examining these environments as multispecies landscapes and by involving rural communities as active contributors to the research.

The project draws on environmental science, ecology, epidemiology, microbiology, and social science. It combines ecological field observation, laboratory-based pathogen detection and both quantitative and qualitative research with rural communities. The interdisciplinary design follows a One Health perspective by linking human, animal, and environmental processes within shared rural waste environments. This approach supports a more-than-human understanding of these settings and aligns strongly with the SURF principles.

Research Questions

1. How do different forms of rural waste influence mammal activity and behaviour?
2. How do household and farming practices shape contact between livestock, wildlife, and people?
3. Which zoonotic pathogens are present at these rural waste interfaces?
4. How do rural waste and wildlife practices affect ecological interactions and the potential for disease transmission?