Biosciences (Restoration Ecology): Fully Funded PhD Studentship in Harnessing Ecosystem Resilience to Inform Woodland Restoration Across Wales

As part of the Restoration Ecology And Dynamics (READY) Doctoral Focal Award, we invite applications to the following PhD project: Harnessing ecosystem resilience to inform woodland restoration across Wales. 

Headline research question: How can the resilience and stability of woodland communities inform management strategies aimed at restoration? 

In this project we will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach including empirical data analysis, experiments, and theoretical modelling to develop science-based management strategies for the restoration of woodland ecosystems. We will collect, and collate from public sources, data on the current status of ecological communities in several woodland patches across Wales, encompassing all taxa. The data will comprise species presence and distributions as well as ecological interactions. These data will be analysed to understand similarities and differences between disturbed and undisturbed patches to assess resilience. If feasible, measures of resilience will be complemented with mesoscale experiments involving connected patches of woodland communities to assess their reaction to change. Data from both experiments and the field will be used to inform computational models considering networks of patches and their species and interactions composition to predict spatial and temporal community structure across restoration gradients, aimed at developing a predictive decision-making framework to facilitate the design of restoration strategies. 

In this project, the student will learn on their own time (i.e. self-learning) and under the guidance of the supervisors, classical ecological theories and methods to mathematically model species interactions networks and communities across spatial scales. As part of the project, the student will extend these methods and make use of classical ecological theories of meta-communities and ecological networks, to develop a decision-making framework to inform restoration efforts across Wales. The framework will bring together ecological theory and modelling with the analysis of publicly available data on degraded and restored ecosystems. Specifically, mathematical dynamical ecological frameworks informed from empirical data will be developed to produce a quantitative picture of ecosystems assembly across spatial scales under restoration. 

Funding duration – 4 years 

Funding Comment

This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition and annual stipend at standard UKRI rates (currently £20,780 for 2025/26). 

Additional research and training expenses will also be available. 

An additional, three-month, funded placement with Welsh Government is included.

International Students

Swansea University is pleased to offer the Swansea University International Postgraduate Research Excellence Scholarship (SUIPRES). This is a competitively awarded Scholarship open to overseas PhD and Professional Doctorate applicants eligible for the international rate of tuition fees who can demonstrate excellence in academic achievement.   

The SUIPRES Scholarship covers the difference between the International and the Home tuition fee for the duration of the PhD/Professional Doctorate programme. Successful candidates will be charged fees aligned to the UK rate per year. The scholarship will be offset against your tuition fee liability  

All International applications will be considered for a SUIPRES Scholarship. You will be informed whether a SUIPRES Scholarship will be offered within your offer letter. 

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