The Natural Resources Institute, as part of the University of Greenwich, is pleased to be able to offer PhD supervision on Climate, Environment and Development, as part of the International Development Pathway of the UBEL Doctoral Training Partnership. We are joined in this by selected staff from the Greenwich Business School. This document introduces the training route and our capacity to supervise within it. Potential applicants need to apply through the UBEL website and should read carefully the guidance given there.

Please Note: Some NRI staff are also available to supervise within the Intersectional Gender Inequalities route as part of the Gender and Sexuality Pathway. For further information on this please contact Professor Tracey Reynolds (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.).

Research into relations between development in the Global South and environmental trends (for which consumption patterns in the Global North are largely responsible), including climate change, biodiversity loss, and deforestation, has long formed an important strand of our research work within development studies, strengthened in 2020-21 by several new appointments. To our longstanding research focus on vulnerability, resilience, inequalities and adaptation among the rural poor, including the role of local and national institutions, we have added new research areas, such as the qualitative and quantitative understanding of the climate-conflict-food security nexus, issues around biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation, and relationality, political ecology and transformative change. Colleagues from the Greenwich Business School bring additional expertise, for example in ecological macroeconomics, climate finance, the green economy, and quantitative methods. We have capacity to provide doctoral supervision on all these topics.

NRI’s research initiatives in these areas are coordinated by the Climate Change Research Group and the Political Ecology, Arts & Culture Research Group, within a broader Centre for Society, Environment and Development. NRI researchers have recently published in journals including: World Development, Nature Food, Journal of Agricultural Economics, Global Environmental Change, Climate and Development, Environmental Development, Food Security, Heliyon, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, and Sustainable Production and Consumption. A key indicator of the excellence and impact of NRI research is the engagement of several NRI staff in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), notably John Morton who served as Coordinating Lead Author on Rural Areas for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report and Valerie Nelson who is serving as Lead Author on the current IPBES Transformative Change Thematic Assessment and on the UN Environment Programme GEO 7 State of the Environment Report. For further details see IPBES and IPCC awarded the Gulbenkian Prize for Humanity

NRI has 15 current PhD students working on social science topics related to climate and environment. These students benefit from the wider facilities and opportunities enjoyed by NRI’s 50+ PhD student cohort, including a flourishing NRI Postgraduate Society (NRIPS).

We have a large pool of potential supervisors. Some of these, especially Morton, Martin, Islam, Onaran, Wellard, Shee and Lamboll are experienced supervisors having supervised multiple PhDs to completion. Others listed may be newer to PhD supervision, but have highly relevant research experience and interests. Under University of Greenwich regulations, each research student is supervised by a team of three supervisors, so more experienced staff may act as co-supervisors. Further details of potential supervisors are given below, please follow the links to their webpages for a fuller account of their research interests.

For discussion on proposed projects for a UBEL application, please contact at most two of the named supervisors below, following the guidance on the UBEL website. For more general queries, please contact Professor John Morton: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Supervisors

Indicative Research Interests

  • Impacts of and opportunities for adaptation to climate change among the rural poor
  • Pastoralism and livestock-environment interactions
  • Anthropology of science and science-policy interfaces

For further information, see Professor John Morton's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Household strategies for food security
  • Policy and practice for agricultural research and innovation
  • Community-based natural resource management
  • Urban environmental issues
  • Gender

For further information, see Professor Adrienne Martin's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Green economy
  • Care economy
  • Gender, income and wealth distribution
  • Social and ecological sustainability

For further information, see Professor Özlem Onaran's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Adaptation and vulnerability/resilience to climatic changes
  • Attitudes and behaviour relating to agri-environmental issues and climate-smart agrifood innovations
  • Climate finance justice
  • Climate-conflict-development nexus

For further information, see Dr M. Mofakkarul Islam's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Social, institutional and policy aspects of agricultural innovation
  • Agriculture-climate change interactions at farmer and community levels
  • The agriculture-nutrition nexus, from household gender relations to policy

For further information, see Dr Kate Wellard's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Innovative microinsurance and risk-contingent credit instruments
  • Poverty, agricultural development and sustainable intensification
  • Agriculture and food value chain analysis
  • Applied econometrics

For further information, see Professor Apurba Shee's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Climate change responses
  • Agro/wild biodiversity management
  • Governance and service delivery in agriculture

For further information, see Richard Lamboll's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Conservation Agriculture/sustainable intensification
  • Farm-level economic analysis and simulation
  • Agriculture and food value chain analysis
  • Neuroscience-development studies interfaces

For further information, see Dr Baqir Lalani's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Environmental/resource and agricultural economics, particularly in relation to land and water resources
  • Values of nature and economics of biodiversity
  • Water governance and water justice
  • Indigenous Peoples’ food systems

For further information, see Dr Pamela Katic's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Post-growth economies
  • Decoloniality
  • Transformative change, biodiversity, human-nature relations and relationality
  • Food and land politics and meanings
  • Transdisciplinarity
  • Gender & intersectionality

For further information, see Professor Valerie Nelson's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Ecological macroeconomics
  • Climate finance
  • The links between climate policies and gender equality
  • Quantitative research methods

For further information, see Dr Nikolaidi Maria's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • The climate-conflict-fragility nexus
  • Conflict economies
  • The transnational nature and spillover effects of climate conflict, especially in transboundary river basin territories
  • Peace-prosperity dimensions and pathways

For further information, see Dr Uche Okpara's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Geographies of regional and rural innovation
  • Community engagement and stakeholder participation in co-creation and development of low-carbon and climate-resilient food systems

For further information, see Dr Laxmi Prasad Pant's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Feedbacks and dynamics of social-ecological resilience
  • Transformations to sustainability
  • Agency, power, and gender dynamics
  • Institutional interplay in natural resource governance
  • Diverse and hybrid knowledge systems

For further information, see Dr June Po's Profile

Indicative Research Interests

  • Climate, environment, and their linkages with development economics
  • Food security/poverty reduction in developing countries
  • The socio-economic impacts of environmental policies: economics of extractive industry

For further information, see Dr Luca Tasciotti's Profile

* Available only for co-supervision

Co-supervisors

NRI is pleased to offer interdisciplinary co-supervision across the social science-natural science boundary. An indicative list of potential supervisors from an environmental science or agricultural science background is found below

Discipline/Research Interests

  • Crop Ecology
  • Production and sustainability of tropical agri-systems
  • Innovative cropping practices, with a focus on crop production, nutrient cycling, and soil properties

For further information, see Dr Lucie Büchi's Profile

Discipline/Research Interests

  • Agroecology
  • Understanding tradeoffs between agricultural production, ecosystem services, and biodiversity
  • Agroecology of coffee

For further information, see Professor Jeremy Haggar's Profile

Discipline/Research Interests

  • Resource Management and Environmental Science
  • Spatio-temporal analysis of forest/agricultural land use change using secondary and remotely-sensed data
  • Environmental and human impacts on ecosystems and society

For further information, see Dr Truly Santika's Profile

Discipline/Research Interests

  • Sustainable Agri-Food and Postharvest Systems
  • Transforming food systems and urban-rural interdependency
  • Reducing food loss and waste
  • Agricultural adaptation to climate change

For further information, see Professor Tanya Stathers's Profile

Discipline/Research Interests

  • Environmental Science
  • Generation and use of indicators of sustainability including environmental impact and lifecycle assessment across different sectors

For further information, see Professor Dr Conor Walsh's Profile

Discipline/Research Interests

  • Agri-Environmental Modelling
  • The impact of climate and environmental factors on plant physiology, phenology, crop yield, food security, and the carbon cycle

For further information, see Professor Dr Huiyi Yang's Profile

The window for preliminary applications for PhDs starting in autumn 2025 is now open, with a deadline of 2 December 2024.