Doctoral Studies

Geography

Welcome to the School webpage for information about postgraduate research in Geography. We offer supervision of research degrees at PhD and MPhil level in areas close to our own varied research expertise. As part of the School of the Environment we are part of a wider research culture, and indeed have thriving research links more widely within the University, so we welcome your inquiries for both discipline-specific and interdisciplinary research. We currently have PhD students of eight different nationalities from Europe, Africa and Asia.

Our research students are mainly Geography graduates, but students from related disciplines are welcomed. Our international research expertise covers a range of themes within Geography. Our human geographers are actively researching issues in the broad fields of population and welfare, social exclusion and health geography, while physical geographers have particular interests in the responses of natural systems to climatic and anthropogenic perturbations, especially in fluvial, coastal and glacial environments. Cross-over between human and physical geography involves societal responses and adaptations to environmental change. We have seen a steady stream of PhDs awarded in geography, supported by Research Councils (ESRC and NERC Case awards), University scholarships, and international governments. We are an accredited ESRC institution for doctoral research.

We have two Research Groups who co-ordinate research activity and host discussion groups and Round Table seminars on a regular basis. Our research students are integral to the activities of these groups:

Human Geography Research Group

Comprising eight academic staff, research assistants and research students, the group's focuses on three inter-related themes:

• Welfare - with a particular focus on issues of mental health, disability, illness and crime.
• Mobility - with significant interest in research on population migration.
• Identity - with a focus on role of cultural institutions in shaping national and migrant identities.

Our internationally recognised work in these fields has several distinctive qualities. It is informed by a range of theoretical perspectives, including post-structuralist, feminist and political-economy approaches, and is methodologically eclectic, involving a range of quantitative and qualitative approaches. Much of the Group's research is also policy relevant and we have strong links a range of public and non-profit sector organisations, including the Home Office, the Scottish Executive, Volunteer Development Scotland, Highland Health Board, Tayside Enterprise and Dundee City Council.

Environmental Systems Research Group

As a research student in physical or environmental geography, you will belong to a research group which carries out high-quality research into coastal and estuarine, glaciological, eco-hydrological and fluvial systems. These are supported by research expertise in remote sensing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Our specialisms have a common ethos; of scientific research which has clear relevance to the needs of society; of contributing to the development of theory, methods and practice through publications in top-quality peer-reviewed journals; of combining observation and measurement by fieldwork and remote sensing with conceptualisation and numerical modelling of environmental systems; and of developing international collaboration in all our core areas of activity. Current PhDs include research into glacier responses to climate change in Europe, remote sensing of groundwater depletion in North Africa, extreme rainfall and landsliding in western Scotland, and insurance industry adaptations to increasing flood risk in the UK.

We have a well-equipped research laboratory for chemical and sedimentological analyses and AMS measurement of radioisotopes. Field equipment includes state-of-the-art meteorological, hydrological, and glaciological equipment for sampling, survey and monitoring work including the recent purchase of a Leica DGPS. We have close links with the Dundee Satellite Receiving Station, the UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Science and Policy, the Italian Glaciological Committee, and the James Hutton Institute.

We welcome informal inquiries to discuss PhD or MPhil research opportunities either to specialist staff, or to the Postgraduate Tutor, Dr Martin Kirkbride (m.p.kirkbride@dundee.ac.uk). Please see the Geography web pages for details including staff profiles and our current research students.

Town and Regional Planning

The University is Dundee is a long-established provider of planning education. Established in 1964, Town and Regional offers a distinctive portfolio of programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels including opportunities for doctoral studies. Town and Regional Planning is part of the School of the Environment and as a result we can offer you contact with a much wider research culture than as a stand-alone department. Post-graduate research students in Town and Regional Planning are members of the Human Geography and Planning Research Workshop, which meets regularly to allow participants to report on their research and exchange ideas and findings.

We welcome applicants with good degrees in planning and planning-related programmes. Successful applicants have access to staff with a range of research interests from which a suitable supervisor will be determined. You will be able to review our website for a more comprehensive range of topics, but the following are indicative of our current research strengths:

Community governance:

This area of our research investigates the role of communities in land use and community planning and builds on our experience of monitoring and evaluating community planning and regeneration on behalf of the Dundee Partnership. Current research interests cover both UK projects and some comparative research in British Columbia, New South Wales and New Zealand. There are also post-graduate taught programmes in these areas.

Sustainable development and instruments of environmental governance:

Our taught degree programmes are professionally-accredited by professional bodies such as the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) and Institute for Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA). These professional bodies consider it essential that sustainability is in-built to professional practice in land use development and the management of our environment. In recent years we have had a number of visiting scholars from overseas working with our staff on evaluating the range of instruments available to planners and environmental managers to allow policies, plans, programmes and specific projects to be assessed for their sustainability. We have strong research interests in environmental assessment techniques, either at a project level (environmental impact assessment) or at the level of policies, plans and programmes (strategic environmental assessment).

Urban conservation and design:

Our highly-successful professionally-accredited taught Masters programme in European Urban Conservation is supported by active applied research projects, both as part of the Tayside Preservation Trust, which has tackled a wide range of traditional Scottish buildings, and across Europe, with a particular current focus on conservation projects in Malta. Students engaged with this area of research would be expected to get a hands-on experience with conservation research and techniques.

These are just a sample of our research strengths: we also work with colleagues in other disciplines in the School that complement our own research strengths. If you decide to apply for admission as a doctoral research student, tell us what your particular areas of interest are, and we will discuss with you whether we can meet your needs even if they appears to fall outside the areas listed above. In the first instance, you should contact Tony Jackson by sending an e-mail to a.a.jackson@dundee.ac.uk.