Vacancies

We're now recruiting PhD studentships for a September 2025 start under the theme of Moulding the Future.

This year we are advertising seven supervisor defined projects, plus the opportunity for students to submit their own project ideas, and will ultimately award studentships to those whose experience, project and approach best fit with LCAB's aims. The projects are:

• Women and biodiversity: gender and the making of the Kew Fungarium, 1900-1950 (Department of History)
• Variations in carbon stocks and trade-offs with other ecosystem services in the Kruger National Park, South Africa (Department of Biology)
• Re-imagining the waters: rewilding opportunities and sustainable harvest in Haweswater and Ullswater (Department of Maths)
• Ecosystem services valuation and biodiversity (Department of Environment and Geography)
• Exploring vernacular environmental narratives in the Irish Folklore Collection (Department of History)
• Informing evidence-based perspectives and scenarios on past, present and future landscapes in North Yorkshire (Department of Archaeology)
• Securing biodiversity through a transdisciplinary approach to small island waste management (Department of Biology)
• Moulding the future - student pitched project providing insights into how we can build a better Anthropocene

Find out more and apply

Understanding the complexities of biodiversity change
In this project, you will use global data bases of different types (e.g. long-term recording at particular locations, and comparisons of more-versus-less transformed environments at a given time) to assess the impacts of past, current, and future human interventions and/or policy directives (e.g. protected areas, water protection act, restoration law) on biodiversity.

Supervisors: Inês Martins and Colin Beale
Funder: Fully funded by the Royal Society and covers UK fees and a tax-free stipend for 4 years 

Find out more 

Genetic consequences of climate change-induced range shifts in Aricia butterflies
Investigating what happens when historically geographically separated but related species come into contact due to climate-driven shifts in their distributions. This studentship will examine the extent to which hybridisation is taking place, the evolutionary consequences of this and ultimately assess the likelihood of survival of the northern species.

Supervisors: Kanchon Dasmahapatra, Rachel Pateman and David Roy
Funder: Fully funded by NERC ACCE+ DLA and covers UK fees and a tax-free stipend for 3.5 years 

Find out more

A biodiverse future for woodlands in the presence of deer
One of the factors contributing to poor woodland condition is browsing and grazing by deer. It is likely that the deer are therefore contributing to failure of many woodland species to recover. In this PhD, you will develop new methods for quantifying deer populations and woodland structure, integrating data from drone surveys with citizen science and spatial modelling. 

Supervisors: Piran White, Colin Beale, Michael Pocock and Diana Bowler
Funder: Fully funded by NERC ACCE+ DLA and covers UK fees and a tax-free stipend for 3.5 years 

Find out more

• guidance in developing and refining your research proposal along with advice on appropriate funding scheme
• additional salary to extend the fellowship duration beyond the initial funding period (fully funded fellowships)
• salary to support a postdoctoral research associate linked to the fellowship (fully funded fellowships)
• salary match funding, which may be split with home departments (part-funded fellowships)
• co-supervision of a PhD student associated with the Centre.
• mentoring a postdoctoral research associate in the Centre
• eligibility to bid for further LCAB research funding to support, for example, pump-priming activities, academic visitors to the Centre, short-term buy-in of skills or internal placements.