• A new research programme at Keele University will bring together researchers from across the University to tackle the multifaceted issues facing rural communities in Britain. 
• The Sustainable Rural Futures Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme (SURF) has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust to understand and solve the real-world problems faced by those who live and work in the British countryside. 
• SURF will recruit a raft of new PhD researchers to study a range of topics like peat restoration, artisan quarrying, sustainable transport and energy, the rural housing crisis, and rural poverty. 

Collaborating across disciplines 

Keele University researchers from across the humanities and social, physical, and environmental sciences have come together to establish a new doctoral scholarships programme to tackle the multiple challenges facing rural communities in modern Britain. 

Funded by a £2.2m grant from the Leverhulme Trust, the Sustainable Rural Futures Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme (SURF) will provide up to 21 PhD Scholarships for researchers to study topics ranging from access, solar farms, and youth transitions, to biodiversity entrepreneurship, adventure, and rural diversity. 

As well as the issues facing British wildlife, highlighted by the prominent “Save our Wild Isles” campaign, rural communities in the UK face a wide variety of complex and multifaceted problems, often exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, Brexit and climate change.  

The Leverhulme Doctoral Scholars will offer insight into such problems as engrained land management structures, declining and difficult to access rural services, inadequate rural housing and transport provision, agricultural profitability and hidden rural inequality. 

Solutions for rural communities 

This programme aims to tackle this growing sense of rural crisis by bringing together an interdisciplinary team of humanities scholars, ecologists, environmental scientists, geographers, geologists, social scientists, economists, psychologists, astrophysicists, and technologists, to support the next generation of innovative rural researchers. 

SURF’s scholars will work alongside rural communities to develop replicable real-world solutions which will allow them to prosper, live healthier and more sustainable lives, and preserve their heritage and traditions. 

Professor Clare Holdsworth, Director of SURF, said: “We have allowed the problems of rural areas in Britain to suffer from relative neglect for too long. I am absolutely delighted to be leading this essential Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme, which will refocus our attention towards the many challenges for rural people in Britain.” 

Dr Ben Anderson, Deputy Director of SURF, said: “I am thrilled at the opportunity to help direct a new generation of rural researchers. A healthy, prosperous, and sustainable rural domain is crucial to any positive vision of a future Britain; SURF will help to tell us how that can be achieved.” 

Paul Miner, Head of Policy and Planning, CPRE: The Countryside Charity, added: “Our rural areas face some major, if often little understood, challenges. Key among these are low average incomes, a severe shortage of housing people can afford, and a lack of sustainable transport options. Our countryside is at the same time a unique environmental resource and an increasingly important place for peace and quiet and recreation. How we reconcile these challenges and functions is of critical importance. The Sustainable Rural Futures programme is thus very timely, and we look forward to working together over the coming years.” 

Professor Mark Ormerod, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost at Keele University, added: “I am delighted by this prestigious Leverhulme Trust award to establish this exciting new cross-institutional Doctoral Scholarships Programme in Sustainable Rural Futures, reflecting the genuine research expertise we have across the humanities and social, physical and environmental sciences in this crucially important area.”