Studentships
IAPETUS2 will support at least 16 fully-funded postgraduate studentships at one of our partner organisations in 2022.
All of our doctoral research projects are supervised by mixed teams of world-leading researchers, with members of staff from across our partner organizations involved in each.
Applications for 2022 are now open. Please see our list of projects and our How to Apply page to start your application.
Deep beneath the Ice: Seismic Imaging of the Antarctic mantle
Investigating records of Earth’s precursors in the early Solar System using Cr, Ni and Zn isotope compositions of meteorites
From geo-resources to energy storage: how do underground lithologies respond to thermo-mechanical coupling?
Impacts of El Niño on the climate-food nexus: understanding the controls and geomorphic implications of flooding on food production in northern Peru
Reconstructing Holocene climate change in the tropical Andes
Time travelling with ancient DNA: revealing past adaptations of plants to changes in atmospheric temperature and CO2 levels
Reconstructing the late Cenozoic history of the Japan Sea using diatom isotopes
Tectonic and hazard implications of a very complex piece of crust: Seismic Imaging the Sea of Marmara, NW Turkey
Holocene climate change in the southern Caucasus: reconstructing climate variability from the sediments of Lake Sevan
How does submarine melting affect marine-terminating glaciers?
Drivers of extreme high temperature events over Antarctica
The effects of climate warming and heatwaves on in situ benthic marine community development
Ocean-land response to freshwater forcing in the North Atlantic: Using the 8.2kyr Event to understand future climate change.
Transforming fractures – coupling deformation, heat and fluid flow within the Earth’s evolving oceanic lithosphere
Tracking Deep time Glacial Intervals
Temporal ecology in the Anthropocene
Using life histories to forecast how coldblooded animals respond to environmental change
Floral preferences of bumblebees across a range of European climates
Combined sewer overflows and their contribution to legacy faecal pollution in rivers
Environmental ecology of human pathogens at the beach
Disentangling the Genotype Palaeoproxy Challenge in the Humboldt Current System and Beyond.
It’s green light for algae! The molecular secrets of growth and biomass production under green light
Maternal care as a provider of adaptive behavioural, neural, and morphological diversity
Landscape scale effects on biodiversity in temperate and polar seas
Investigating the impact of glacial meltwater plumes in Greenland’s fjords
Testing for adaptive divergence in the microbiome under warming conditions: the case of sticklebacks from geothernal habitats
Using remote sensing and machine learning to explore the spatial patterning of poverty and inequality
Wood burning in Scottish homes: air pollution exposure, behaviour change and health
What’s in your basement? Controls on post-orogenic extensional basins
The Shackleton Range of East Antarctica: unravelling a complex geological history via an integrated geochronological, geochemical and geophysical approach
The Molecular Blueprint for Marine Biomineralization in a Changing Climate
Vegetation cover, slope and nutrient availability in tundra ecosystems
Exploring the genetic and dietary mechanisms of urban/rural divergence in a potentially self-domesticating animal
Living on the edge: ecology, movement and response to climate by goldeneye on the limit of their range
Extreme Temperatures Beyond Net Zero
Tectonically-driven oxidant production in the hot biosphere
Southern Ocean Microplastic Flux: Ecosystem and Carbon Impacts
Does climate change impact directly on breeding seabirds?
Understanding sea-level changes in the Mediterranean over the Common Era
Individual recognition in anemonefishes — causes and consequences of interspecific variation
Applying social network and personality trait analyses to understanding and managing human-macaque sympatry in urban Singapore
Can soil animals protect soil carbon in a warmer and drier world?
Rewilding: How does the cessation of livestock grazing affect upland food-webs?
Assessing the environmental and ecological drives of interannual variability in the life histories and population dynamics of icefishes (Family Channichthyidae) around the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia.
Tracking past grounding line retreat from onshore rates of ice sheet thinning
Modelling social-ecological systems to improve Atlantic salmon conservation
Scotland’s salt marshes in a changing climate
Understanding ULVZs: Anisotropy around the mantles most mysterious structures
Tracing battery metal (Li + Sn) mobility in granitic systems
New Design Methodologies for Open Pit Mines of Reduced Carbon Footprint for the Extraction of Green Economy Metals
Peatland restoration in practice: Evaluating methodologies for a fair price of restoration
The elemental and isotopic partitioning behaviour of nitrogen during magmatic differentiation
Healthy peat microbiota
Anthropogenic contaminants in alpine glaciers: assessing the environmental risk of contaminant accumulation and future release
Causes and consequences of parental age effects on offspring quality
Oceans, ice sheets and tectonics: investigating climate evolution in the Gulf of Alaska
Indian-Atlantic Ocean circulation connections during climate changes of the past
Beavers and climate change mitigation in freshwater systems
Decoding glacial landscapes using automated geomorphological mapping and machine learning
Is the onset of plate tectonics linked to enhanced recycling of bioessential nutrient?
Microbial migration and adaptation through glacial loss
Maximising urban green infrastructure for surface water flood management: an evidence-based approach
Sediment cover and erosion dynamics in bedrock river channels
Human-driven habitat change: impacts on Herring Gull populations and shifting conservation conflicts.
Exploring the landscape beneath the Antarctic Ice Sheet and its influence on ice behaviour
Snapshots of climate variability in the Central Pacific over the last 500ka from drowned Hawaiian coral reefs
Controlling the Earth’s climate by silicate mineral weathering
Integrating traits in polymorphism aware trees to better model speciation
Ice core records of past major volcanic eruptions and their climatic response
Links between mitochondrial function and social behaviour in a warming world
Restoration of riparian habitats on sugarcane plantations for bird diversity, bird – regulated ecosystem services and climate change mitigation and adaptation in rural tropical landscapes, Tanzania
Investigating the role of sexual conflict in parasitoid-host eco-evolutionary dynamics
A Changing Climate, A Changing Arctic: Investigating biogeochemical cycling in the Canadian High Arctic
Freshwater marl lakes: the unsung hero of Blue Carbon.
Utilising digital technologies to map river thermal habitat availability for key indicator freshwater species: a decision-support conservation tool for best-practice riparian woodland management
Soil carbon and biodiversity response to Scottish Highland rewilding
Where, when and why do Lesser Black-backed Gulls forage in cities?
Modelling landscape-level approaches for mitigating the evolution of pesticide resistance
Reconstructing Arctic climate change and its impacts on reindeer populations
In hot water: How will climate-driven water level changes impacts lakes?
How come peatlands exist when there are not enough electrons?
Investigating the role of structural and stratigraphic heterogeneities in regionally extensive mudstones in controlling vertical and lateral fluid migration in sedimentary basins
Post-copulatory sexual selection in insects: exploring new mechanisms of male and female mate choice
Defining environmental regulation of gut microbiome health and welfare in domestic animals
Of insects and men: Biomolecular study of fossil insects to trace human movement, trade and environmental impact in the past
The importance of location of origin for wildflower seed mixes
The preservation of volcanic ash from Iceland in northern Scotland
Modelling oak response to climate change and disturbance
Breaking the ice: insights into the evolution of plate tectonics from numerical modelling of Europa’s ice subduction
Investigating past changes in Greenland melting and its impacts on ocean circulation as a key to the future.
Using ecoacoustics to assess the biodiversity value of woodland creation sites
Making space for coastal change in cities: Which reclaimed land can we let go? (UrbanCoastAdapt)
Magmatic processes in mushy systems via coupled stable-radiogenic strontium isotopes
Novel geological sources of crop nutrients for tropical agricultural systems in rift valleys
Make your hyporheic bed: tracing silicon supply to glacial waters from the pro-glacial landscape
Constraining the conditions for greenhouse gas release from permafrost soils
Do redox-sensitive elements drive carbon dioxide release from high latitude rivers?
Climate-changing volcanic eruptions from magma source to ice core archives: a sulfur isotope perspective
Using metal isotopic compositions to track near surface hydrologic cycling of anthropogenic inputs in North East England
Peat-forming seasonally flooded forests of the Peruvian Amazon: distribution, carbon storage, and long-term ecology
Mud Volcanoes as windows to subduction zone processes; slab devolatilisation and mantle serpentinisation in the Mariana forearc
Ecosystem multi-functionality in tropical heath forests
Sulphur Landscapes: Isotopes and the Mining Environment (SLIME)
Detecting the signature of environmental change in partially observed ecological networks
Genomic and behavioural mechanisms driving the evolution of a novel visual signal in smoky rubyspot damselflies
Migratory patterns, diets, and death in stranded British odontocetes revealed through molecular and isotopic signatures
Carbon capture and storage: can a transdisciplinary framework for environmental impact assessment deliver a fair and equitable net-zero carbon future?
Identifying the genetic basis of local adaptation in a keystone freshwater species
Active deformation and landscape evolution in the western Ordos, northern China
Nutrient release from riverine particulates in estuaries
Constraining the geological evolution of the western portion of the Midland Valley: implications for its geothermal and H storage potentials
Nutrient behaviour accompanying afforestation in Iceland and France
Building the molecular tools to monitor the success of biological control for schistosomiasis
Neodymium stable isotopes in rivers and the oceans
Relict landscapes as archives of past climatic and tectonic conditions
Squeezing the middle ground: nature-based solutions and the hydrology of marginal lands
Understanding the role of the tropical Indian Ocean on regional and global climate over the last 2000 years
Geomicrobiology and environmental metagenomics of mercury-cycling bacteria
Microbial production of climate cooling trace gases in wetlands
The Cameroon Volcanic Line and the intraplate volcanism enigma
Sea ice, seesaws, and CO2: million-year to millennial climate and productivity change in the polar oceans
Impact of environmental change on the dynamics of freshwater zooplankton and their parasites
CO2 change and climate sensitivity in warmer worlds
Future Seas: Intraspecific variability in the ecological and transcriptional stress responses of intertidal ecosystem engineers
Constraining the climatic impact of mystery volcanic eruptions
Controls on organic carbon burial in fjords – a case study from an extreme glacial lake outburst flood in Elliott Creek (BC, Canada)
Phanerozoic CO2 and Mass Extinctions
Uncovering the Critical Metal Concentrations in Mine and Metal Processing Wastes: A data driven microstructural approach
Arctic forest change in a warming climate
Coastal climate resilience: exploring the value of geodiverse and biodiverse hotspots
Nitrogen pollution in rivers and coastal environments
Mandrills and microbes II: the gut microbiome
What are the genetic targets of sexual selection underlying rapid phenotypic divergence among species?
Developing the macroalgae (seaweeds) as indicator species for marine mortality events: an -omic approach
Controls on CO2 storage in the glacial ocean
Building a biological invasion risk network for UK Caribbean Overseas Territories
Quantifying the impact of woodland restoration on rodent communities and their pathogens
The rocks of the future: how do anthropogenic rocks form?
Bacteria: our geo-hazard defence soldiers
Novel reconstructions of seawater chemistry and carbon over the last 100 Myr
Understanding the importance of phytoplankton resting stages in algal bloom formation and climate change resilience in Loch Leven
Genetic differentiation and local adaptation of multivariate phenotype in a boreal sentinel species
Conservation in a dynamic landscape: metapopulation ecology of the endangered tansy beetle
Does rewilding improve ecosystem resilience?: a soundscape perspective
Examining the causes of large mammal extinction in the Alaskan interior since the Late Quaternary using lake sediment geochemistry
Exploring the tectono-magmatic evolution of Mesoproterozoic giant sill and dyke complexes
Towards the design of a digital twin for biopile remediation of hydrocarbon contaminated soils.
From energy geostructures to urban heat islands: how subsurface interfaces will respond to temperature variations?
A Layered Perspective on the Ocean Carbon Cycle
How soil characteristics affect the efficiency of energy geostructures?
Drone and satellite remote sensing to support catchment scale monitoring of biocontrol of invasive plant species.
Welding of hot pyroclasts in volcanic environments
Past ocean oxygen and pH changes
Sintering and 3D printing of lunar regolith to make building materials on the Moon
Bridging the 100 km gap: improving coastal sea-level change projections
Understanding the role of animals as predators of disease vectors: An overlooked ecosystem service?
Tracking past sea-level change In Western Scotland with a novel multi-proxy approach
Subside down: improving global patterns of vertical land motion
Understanding public awareness, attitudes and perceptions of invasive non-native species and their management in the UK
Climate change impacts on coastal rockslope erosion
What controls post-seismic rock-slope instability?
Mitigating the impact of LED streetlighting on insects
Population dynamics, behaviour, and spatial distribution of grey seals during the breeding season at the Farne Islands.
High Resolution Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction from Lake Suigetsu, Japan
Occupancy, density and the ecology of terrestrial British mammals
Adaptation to an anthropogenic habitat: Integrated modelling of ecological and physiological impacts on chacma baboons
Citizen science and the ecology of urban mammals and birds
Evolution of pendant nests: do birds build to reduce predation risk?
Financial Support
IAPETUS2’s postgraduate studentships are tenable for up to 3.5 years, depending on the doctoral research project the student is studying and provides the following package of financial support:
- A tax-free maintenance grant set at the UK Research Council’s national rate, which in 2021/22 is £15,609.
- Full payment of their tuition fees at the Home rate;
- Access to extensive research support funding; &
- Support for an external placement of up to six months.
Part-time award-holders are funded for seven years and receive a maintenance grant at 50% of the full-time rate.
Eligibility & Requirements
Eligibility is under UKRI Terms and Conditions, which means that UK and International candidates may apply. For International Students, UKRI only pay the equivalent of home fees, so please check with the host organization (University) making the award what the circumstances are with any differential between home and international fees.
For more on the UKRI eligibility Terms and Conditions, see here
A list of frequently asked questions on NERC/UKRI studentships, including eligibility criteria, can be found here.
IAPETUS2 is looking for candidates with the following qualities and backgrounds:
- A first or 2:1 undergraduate degree, or have relevant comparable experience – we welcome applications from those with non-traditional routes to PhD study; &
- Potential to carry out excellent research, as demonstrated by individuals with a passion to follow a career pathway in environmental research or applications.
IAPETUS2 Training Package
IAPETUS2 provides training for PhD students both as part of the cohort of IAPETUS2 students (and with continuity from the IAPETUS1 cohorts), and at the Host Organizations in which the project is based, and by providing access to external courses. We use the Vitae Researcher Development Framework to plan training in order to fit into NERC’s Strategy for Providing Postgraduate Skills in the Environment Sector.
Each IAPETUS2 student will:
- Be registered for a separate qualification, a Postgraduate Certificate in Environmental Methods, which will recognize the transferable skills training and non-project-specific training undertaken.
- Have access to cohort-based activities at three points in the year: Induction in November, our SCENE Research Methods course in January, and our Annual Conference in May
- Have access to more specialized training courses (recent examples include isotope geochemistry and advanced statistics with R), with some of those courses the result of specific requests from our students
- Carry out Entrepreneurship training in the form of a “Mini-MBA”
- Take part in virtual discussion groups with the rest of the cohort at different times in the year
- Have access to funded placements, which can be student-led or designed by end-user partners