PhD Studentship - Protecting Little Ones: Preventing and Reducing Intestinal Infectious Disease in Nurseries using Mixed Methods

Overview

Want to make a difference protecting children? We’re seeking a passionate, innovative student to tackle a critical challenge: preventing and reducing infectious intestinal disease (IID) in nurseries. As disease hotspots, current approaches often fail.

The Problem: IIDs like Shigatoxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) can cause serious illness in children. Existing guidelines don't fully account for human behaviour, influenced by people’s social connections, and resources. Predicting disease spread is difficult due to factors like parent’s age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and nursery layout.

Your Role: As our PhD student, you’ll be at the forefront of developing smarter solutions, working in partnership with UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). You'll use anthropogenic approaches and cutting-edge biological modelling to understand exactly how IIDs spread in nurseries. The project aims to develop improved intervention guidelines to prevent high mortality IIDs, considering what’s realistic and affordable for parents and nurseries.

Training:

Data Deep Dive: You'll analyse data from interviews/focus groups/questionnaires with nursery staff, parents, and health protection teams, uncovering social and behavioural infection risk drivers.

Microsimulation Modelling: You’ll build detailed models simulating people’s daily lives - their decisions, children’s interactions, influence of pets and home/nursery environments – all impacting disease transmission.

Cost-Effective Solutions: You’ll evaluate potential interventions – combining resource-use and intervention-costs, considering cost-effectiveness, user acceptability and feasibility in different settings.

Collaboration is Key: You'll work closely with PPIE representatives, health protection teams, and experts, ensuring relevant, impactful, useful research.

Why Join Us – Policy Impact and Practical Experience?

Your research will directly inform UKHSA guidelines, helping protect vulnerable children from illness. You’ll gain valuable experience in behavioural science, data analysis, socio-economically-driven decision-making, and collaborative research, highly sought-after skills.

Number Of Awards: One

Start Date: Autumn 2025

Award Duration: 4 years

Application Closing Date: 28th July 2025

Sponsor: UKHSA

Supervisors

Dr. Marie McIntyre/Dr Roy Sanderson, Newcastle University

Prof. Wendy Hardeman/David Turner, UEA

Dr. Tom Inns/Prof. Roberto Vivancos, UKHSA

Eligibility Criteria

You must have (or expect) a minimum 2:1 Honours degree or international equivalent in a relevant subject (behavioural science/health psychology/public health/epidemiology/social science/sociology/biology/environmental sciences/microbiology/statistics/veterinary or human medicine).  

Applicants whose first language is not English require an IELTS score of 6.5 overall with a minimum of 5.5 in all sub-skills.

This studentship is only available to applicants with Home fee status (UK and EU applicants with pre-settled/settled status, meeting residency criteria).

How To Apply

All applicants should complete the University’s Apply to Newcastle Portal - https://applyto.newcastle.ac.uk/.

Once registered select ‘Create a Postgraduate Application’.  

Use ‘Course Search’ to identify your programme of study:

• search for the ‘Course Title’ using the programme code: 8020F
• select ‘PhD Biology (full-time)' as the programme of study 

You will then need to provide the following information in ‘Further Details’:

• a ‘Personal Statement’ (mandatory field) - upload a document or write a statement directly in to the application form  
• the studentship code SNES301 in the ‘Studentship/Partnership Reference’ field  
• when prompted for how you are providing your research proposal - select ‘Write Proposal’. You should then type in the title of the research project from this advert. You do not need to upload a research proposal. 

Contact Details

Dr. K. Marie McIntyre

Email: marie.mcintyre@newcastle.ac.uk 

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