PhD Studentship in Environmental Science

Project title: Vegetation-fire interactions in Africa during the Holocene

Supervisors:  Sandy P. Harrison, Sarah Ivory, I. Colin Prentice

Project Overview:   Records of past environmental changes provide an opportunity to understand how ecosystems, and the services they provide, have responded to climate changes outside the range experienced in the recent historical past; this understanding is useful in anticipating how ecosystems might respond to future changes. Pollen records from sites across Africa, for example, document fundamental changes in vegetation during the past 12,000 years. The drivers of these changes are complex, involving multiple interactions between climate, human activity, and natural disturbance including wildfire. Previous attempts to document and analyse the causes of vegetation changes across the African continent through time have been hampered by limited data availability. The ever-increasing amount of pollen and charcoal data now available, coupled with advances in reconstruction techniques, provide a basis for a new continent-wide synthesis of vegetation and wildfire changes during the Holocene. The goal of the PhD is to reconstruct vegetation and wildfire regimes across the African continent during the Holocene, and to use these reconstructions to analyse the causes of the observed changes and the relative importance of climate change and human activities as drivers of these changes on different timescales.

The PhD project is expected to start May 2026. The student will be part of the SPECIAL group, an interdisciplinary research team based in Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Reading. The PhD is funded through the Horizon Europe grant to the project “Ecological Archaeologies of the Afrotropics (EcoArch)” and the student will have the opportunity to interact with other members of the project based in the University of Oslo, Penn State University, and research centres across Africa. Although the PhD is computationally based, there may also be opportunities to participate in EcoArch fieldwork activities.

This project would be suitable for students with a degree in environmental science or a closely related discipline, with well-developed quantitative and programming (R, Python) skills, familiarity with palaeoenvironmental data, and an interest in environmental modelling applied to solving real-world problems.

Eligibility:  Open to students worldwide. Applicants should have a good bachelor’s degree (minimum of a UK Upper Second (2:1) or equivalent)/master’s degree in environmental sciences or a related discipline.

Funding Details:  Funding for 3.5 years, stipend (£20,780 p.a) and international fees via Horizon Europe, Synergy grant “Ecological Archaeologies of the Afrotropics (EcoArch)”, project 101224871

How to apply:  

To apply click the 'Apply' button above and create your account, and use the link sent by email to start the application process

*Important notes*

• 1) Please quote the reference ‘DRC26-007’ in the ‘Scholarships applied for’ box which appears within the Funding Section of your on-line application.
• 2) If the application system prompts you to submit a research proposal, please paste in the project title and move on to the next step in the application.

Application Deadline:  March 15^th 2026, for an envisaged start in May 2026

Further Enquiries:  Sandy P. Harrison (s.p.harrison@reading.ac.uk)

Please note that, where a candidate is successful in being awarded funding, this will be confirmed via a formal studentship award letter; this will be provided separately from any Offer of Admission and will be subject to standard checks for eligibility and other criteria. 

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