PhD Studentship - Adapting for Change: Deliberative Approaches to Farm System Climate Adaptation in the Usk Valley

The Countryside and Community Research Institute CCRI is an acknowledged centre of excellence in the domains of agri food and land based business and sustainable rural community development. Its work on resilience, innovation and transformation, fostering effective approaches, methodologies and understandings to address grand challenges, including for rural resilience, is world leading and internationally recognised through research excellent assessments and metrics.

The new PhD will be part of a growing and important body of work in the research group to develop new methodologies to work with farmers and rural communities to debate, deliberate and develop practical actionable solutions for climate change, including on going work using climathon and hackathon methods, citizen science and deliberative methods, and new PhD studies applying serious games to support climate adaptation and resilience.

The studentship is funded through the Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences WGSSS ESRC DTP, a highly prestigious and dynamic doctoral training partnership, connecting scholars and PhD students in the CCRI to universities across Wales, all of whom are actively analysing and working on rural resilience topics. The CCRI and WGSS will thus give the successful student access to a wide and varied community of scholars and PhD students working on rural climate resilience challenges.

About the PhD project and the role

The Countryside and Community Research Institute at University of Gloucestershire are delighted to offer a fully funded Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences WGSSS ESRC DTP studentship in the Environmental Planning Pathway starting in October 2026.

The collaborative studentship is entitled:

Adapting for change: deliberative approaches to farm system climate adaptation in the Usk Valley in collaboration with Welsh Government and UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology

The Supervisory team consists of: Professor Damian Maye, Dr Philippa Simmonds and Dr Aimee Morse, Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, Dr Sarah Jones, adviser, Welsh Government, and Professor Bridget Emmett adviser, UKCEH.

The PhD aims to: firstly, understand perceived impacts of climate change on farms and their business models in the catchment; secondly, deliberate using qualitative and catchment level climate data in a climate fresk strategies for climate adaptation farm and catchment scales; and thirdly, share findings and recommendations for learning with farming rural policy advisors and to validate a climate fresk climate adaptation game for Welsh farming systems.

The PhD will utilise the farming community's tacit knowledge and local climate data for the River Usk catchment in south Wales, to develop a climate fresk to translate everyday farming realities into a set of strategies for climate adaptation across the farming system.

The PhD will adapt a method called Climate Fresk https://climatefresk.org/world/, a serious game designed to inform the public about climate change and consider solutions for the future. Here, an adapted version will be designed to engage farmers in connecting their farm systems

Key dates

Closing date: 6th May 2026

Interview date 14th May 2026

How to apply:   

Applications should be received no later than Midnight on 6 May 2026, including all required documents. Due to the volume of applications received, incomplete applications will not be considered.    

All applications should be submitted to Chris Rayfield, crayfield@glos.ac.uk, stating the reference 2022 072 04 Application as the subject.

Incomplete applications or applications received after this specified time will not be accepted.

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