This project seeks to understand more accurately the key issues that challenge what should be a genuinely ‘just transition’ in Scotland’s social housing, including political blocks, financial issues, and architectural questions. The successful applicant will work closely with Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants’ and community union, who have been actively campaigning in Lochend, Edinburgh, with communities experiencing the first rounds of the MTIS retrofitting scheme.

Reading technologies are continually evolving with new tools available to enhance the reading experience as well as make it more inclusive. This research project aims to design and develop reading technologies which transform the reading experience via specific, research-based modifications and innovations to text presentation.

Progressive ataxia is a hereditary or acquired neurological condition that affects the coordination of motor movements, resulting in difficulties with walking, hand movements, communication, cognition as well as many other symptoms such as visual, hearing, digestive or cardiac problems. As the disease progresses, people with ataxia (PwA) become increasingly dependent on carers. This responsibility largely falls to family members.

The University of Edinburgh is inviting applications from suitably qualified graduates for a fully-funded PhD studentship in Education to research the role of multidimensional (dis)advantage across the life course for young people’s attitudes towards school, work and post-school destinations.

Previous ESRC-FCDO funded research in Ethiopia and Nepal showed that concepts such as uncertainty, insecurity, resilience, and marginalisation are not easily translatable across cultural contexts (Johnson et al., 2022). Research was conducted with 500 youth living in fragile and conflict affected environments leading to the publication of datasets on youth and uncertainty. This studentship will use these datasets to develop a new interdisciplinary methodology for the culturally sensitive application of natural language processing, drawing on approaches from human geography, data science, and cultural studies.

This PhD will re-analyse 118 in-depth interviews with 52 disabled people (each interviewed up to three times) from the ‘Welfare Conditionality’ (Welcond) qualitative longitudinal dataset. The aim is to establish original knowledge about how the design and delivery of social security impacts disabled people’s lived experiences of the costs of disability in Scotland and England.

The University of Edinburgh is inviting applications from suitably qualified graduates for a fully-funded PhD studentship in Social Work to develop and amplify the knowledge and understanding generated by an innovative practice project, led by City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) and initially funded by the Scottish Government’s Promise Fund, to establish an effective Parents’ Panel/Advisory Group.

A key public health issue in Scotland is the high and rising number of alcohol related hospitalisations and deaths. Alcohol consumption and its associated harms are strongly socially patterned, making it essential to accurately estimate changes in consumption and harms across subgroups to understand the effects of policy changes, such as the 50p minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol introduced in Scotland in 2018.

This inter-institutional studentship proposal involving the Universities of St Andrews and Edinburgh, developed in collaboration with the James Hutton Institute, will explore van dwelling in Scotland, specifically the relationship between van dwelling and sustainability.

Funding plays a crucial role in shaping both anti-trafficking efforts and the structure of the anti-trafficking sector. However, significant uncertainties remain regarding funding mechanisms within the sector (Sharapov, Hoff, and Mendel 2024) and the factors driving its evolution (Mendel and Sharapov 2021). This PhD project aims to address these gaps by examining how funding influences the development and operations of the anti-trafficking sector.

A unique and exciting opportunity for a PhD studentship is available at the University of Edinburgh. This project will aim to understand, develop and evaluate key messages to increase the fidelity and effectiveness of The Daily Mile™ (TDM), driving sustainable and scalable behaviour change that could impact children across the globe.

This research aims to develop an innovative framework that integrates health-seeking behaviour—the actions individuals take when they perceive a health problem, grounded in behavioural theories, into simulation models used for health systems management. Simulation models are powerful tools for supporting decision-making, allowing for the design, construction, and manipulation of a representation (i.e. a model) of real-world systems to analyse their dynamic behaviours.

This study will explore the role of education, and the place of schools in both seeking to prevent and address IPV amongst young people. It will consider how the issue of IPV among young people is understood and responded to within the school environment and the inter-agency context within which schools can be supported to respond.

Spatially detailed population data products in grid-based format have become increasingly abundant in recent years, contribute to a range of geospatial applications. One application is assessing population exposure to geohazards, by extracting gridded population estimates co-located with potential hazard occurrence zones. Working with collaborators in Peru, this project will use gridded population products to assess exposure to glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs).

The provision of high-quality local public services and infrastructures is a key factor in addressing social and economic inequalities, yet decades of privatisation and outsourcing have led to worsening quality, higher costs, reduced accessibility, and less efficient delivery. In response to these shortcomings, which have been highlighted and exacerbated by recent crises, an emerging pro-public movement is advocating for democratic public ownership and control over local essential goods and services across a wide range of sectors.

Public transport enables access to economic opportunities, services and social networks particularly for lower-income populations who cannot afford to own a private car. Buses play a particularly important role, but services have declined substantially over the past decade in the UK.

Rural homelessness is surprisingly under-researched, especially in Scotland. The vast majority of scholarship on the issue is based on research conducted in North America; the few studies conducted in the UK have largely been limited to England and/or are now very dated. Policy interest in the issue is escalating given a widespread perception that its prevalence is increasing.

Focusing on Glasgow’s Tobacco Merchant’s House (TMH) at 42 Miller Street, the overarching aim of the project is to offer the first focused and full-length study of Glasgow’s involvement in transatlantic slaving economies through a spatialised longitudinal research framework that brings into dialogue historical and postcolonial perspectives.

Are you interested in exploring innovation in school-based education? In collaboration with the World Bridge Federation (WBF), the proposed study will explore the possibilities and potential of the mindsport bridge in primary schools in Scotland.

This PhD will explore the alterity and transformative potential of democratic finance – Community Bonds and Community Shares – in Scotland. This (relatively) new form of finance creates citizen investors by harnessing, and investing, the financial resources of local communities into democratically governed social and/or community enterprises to address local challenges.

We are excited to offer a fully funded PhD studentship in our lab, working in partnership with Skills Development Scotland (SDS). The student will conduct cutting-edge research in the psychology of human-AI interaction, to investigate and determine a range of policy and practice implications arising from the use of generative AI for careers guidance

By improving our understanding of what causes and maintains thought disorder in psychosis, the work in this PhD will contribute towards a longer-term programme of research which aims to develop and test a safe and effective psychological intervention for it. The PhD will be undertaken with the support of a collaborative supervisory team from Edinburgh Napier University and NHS Grampian with extensive experience in academic and clinical research.

Eyewitness evidence is crucial in police investigations, but witnesses often experience trauma, and officers often face pressure and fatigue, particularly when dealing with vulnerable individuals. Trauma-informed practice acknowledges that trauma can influence how individuals participate in interviews, which in turn impacts the interview’s outcome and the overall pursuit of justice. This PhD project seeks to develop a Trauma-Informed Cognitive Interview (TICI) framework to improve witness well-being while maintaining accurate memory recall.

The University of Edinburgh is inviting applications from suitably qualified graduates for an exciting fully-funded PhD studentship in Health Geography. The project addresses the important challenge of understanding the complex place-based factors associated with the spread of COVID-19 infection amongst populations in the UK, using high quality, contemporaneous statistics.

The transition to adulthood is a significant developmental period, not only for young people and their families, but also for policymaking. This is due to the importance of young people’s post-school experiences and decisions for their adult lives, and the negative economic and societal consequences if transitions are challenging (such as reduced workforce productivity and social instability).