Funding

Competition funded (UK/EU and international students)

Project code

ELS50200125

Department

School of the Environment and Life Sciences

Start dates

October 2025

Application deadline

17 January 2025

Applications are invited for a fully-funded three year PhD to commence in October 2025.


The PhD will be based in the Faculty of Science and Health, and will be supervised by Dr Mark Hardiman, Dr Adele Julier and Professor Ian Candy (Royal Holloway, University of London).

Candidates applying for this project may be eligible to compete for one of a small number of bursaries available. Successful applicants will receive a bursary to cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate for three years and a stipend in line with the UKRI rate (£19,237 for 2024/25). Bursary recipients will also receive a contribution of £1,500 per annum towards consumables, conference, project or training costs.

Costs for student visa and immigration health surcharge are not covered by this bursary. For further guidance and advice visit our international and EU students ‘Visa FAQs’ page.

The work on this project could involve:

  • Significant laboratory based work, quantifying and analysing fossil charcoal samples. 
  • Low and high magnification optical light microscopy as well as Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). 
  • Training by experts in Fourier Transform Infra-Red spectroscopy (FTIR).
  • Participation at international conferences.

There is an increasing interest in understanding wildfires in Britain – how they occur, and how frequently they happen. This has, in part, been driven by climate change predictions, particularly how this might alter the expression of fire where their impact is currently limited, such as in Northwest Europe. One of the largest issues in understanding the wildfire ‘weather’ of Britain is disentangling past human related landscape fire activity from natural burning and relationships to abrupt climatic shifts. This project takes a unique approach to this challenge by producing a wildfire history not only for our current interglacial (the Holocene) but for previous analogue interglacial, MIS 11, which occurred before agriculture and the widespread use of fire as an anthropogenic tool allows us to investigate how wildfire history evolves under a climate directly comparable to the Holocene but in the absence of humans.

In order to fully reveal past fire regimes high-resolution charcoal quantification will be undertaken alongside geochemical analysis. The main aim of this project is to, for the first time in Britain, reveal the wildfire regimes over two full interglacial cycles and robustly disentangle the natural vs human caused fire trends. The project aims to:

  • Determine the human impact on British wildfire systems. 
  • Characterize the wildfire signal for the entirety of MIS 11 to understand evolution and relationships with abrupt climatic events. 
  • To fully reveal past wildfire regimes via the use of novel proxy techniques.
     

Entry requirements

You will need a good first degree from an internationally recognised university (minimum upper second class or equivalent, depending on your chosen course) or a Master’s degree in an appropriate subject. In exceptional cases, we may consider equivalent professional experience and/or qualifications. English language proficiency at a minimum of IELTS band 6.5 with no component score below 6.0.

You will need a degree in Geography, Archaeology or Geology (earth sciences, geosciences or equivalent) and have ideally some experience in sediment and/or charcoal analysis. Since the project is predominantly lab-based, you should be happy with working prolonged periods in these environments.

How to apply

Please note that email applications are not accepted. If you have any project-specific questions please contact Dr Mark Hardiman (mark.hardiman@port.ac.uk) quoting the project code.

When you are ready to apply, please use the online application form. Make sure you submit a personal statement, proof of your degrees and grades, details of two referees, proof of your English language proficiency and an up-to-date CV. Our ‘How to Apply’ page offers further guidance on the PhD application process.

If you want to be considered for this funded PhD opportunity you must quote project code ELS50200125 when applying.