About the Project
There has been limited exploration of human-marine, coastal, estuary or wetland relations from critical and relational perspectives. More-than-human approaches recognize agency as being not solely a human attribute, but something that is distributed across assemblages amongst humans, non-humans and vital objects. These entanglements and interdependencies are increasingly researched in terrestrial settings, such as forests, rivers and farming, but have been less well explored with respect to ocean and coastal wellbeing, biodiversity and health. There are specific features of oceans and coasts which distinguish them from land-based contexts, such as the invisibility of deep oceans to humans and the divergences in sensory worlds of their inhabitants or the liminal, changing nature of estuaries and coasts. Both are deeply affected by human extractivism and appropriation such as trawling of the seabed, pollution, as well as existing and projected effects of climate change, such as increasing sea heatwaves and sea level rise and coastal erosion. Climate change is driving major damage to biodiversity and species losses, but there are also rapid changes already occurring within ecosystems with species on the move, such as stinger jellyfish blooms moving into UK coastal waters due to warming seas, and a need to protect and restore important species such as seagrass which support ecosystems and are important in climate adaptation.
Interdisciplinary research is needed to explore these rapid changes according to different ways of knowing and relating to oceans and coastal bodies of water. This might involve ethnographic research informed by critical social science theory (e.g. metabolic flows, critical residue, feminist and decolonial). For example, a critical metabolic approach might analyse flows of labour and capital, biophysical, chemical and energy flows, discourse, norms, data and surveillance, including digital measurement and regulation as these shape ocean / coastal governance and governmentality. Ethnography might focus on specific species and their relations to humans and other non-humans in oceans / coasts in terms of how they are rendered by dominant biopolitics and bioregulation in terms of socio-materialities. Questions of ocean/coastal multi-species justice can be explored through ethnography and participatory and arts-based approaches. Pluriversal, decolonial, explorations provide insights on ocean/coastal futures which entails open-ended learning journeys, co-construction of imaginaries, and joint more-than-human design and strategies processes. Diverse methods can be employed to explore changing human-marine / coastal relations, including ethnography, participatory and arts-based methods, as well as qualitative and quantitative methods. Given growing uncertainties and turbulence in marine and coastal socio-ecologies and growing international recognition of the need to recognize plural onto-epistemologies and values, questioning dominant colonial modernities which are a key underlying cause of socio-ecological damage, exploring ocean and coastal futures can include more speculative approaches, such as creative writing, participatory workshops and arts-supported embodied experiences on the topic of radical ocean futures. These can complement or challenge foresight and technical scenario development and contribute to convivial ocean and coastal futures involving greater multi-species justice. Critical reflection is also needed on the role of environmental movements in the UK in shaping rights of nature for watery entities beyond rivers, and how a collective consciousness is developed through new myths and ritual-making and the extent to which this is inclusionary or exclusionary and/or capable of challenging the deep underlying causes of unsustainability in marine environments. Engaging with policy processes, work on the Ocean Decade, is also within scope, for analysis as central to marine governance and discourse, but also in terms of being a boundary object for explorations of Ocean futures and potential adaptations which are less constraining within existing structures and framings. This PhD would also contribute to and create synergies with an ongoing UKRI funded project – Transformative Action for Resilient Coastal Communities (TRACC) that works across 4 regions of the UK (Clyde, Mid North-Wales, the Humber, Loch Foyle, N. Ireland) as well as building on the insights from an ongoing EU Horizon Project (Transformative Change for Biodiversity and Equity) which is working in a coastal region of Colombia (Santa Marta) and/or an initiative on the River Medway. It also builds upon an emerging collaboration with the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) and its climate modellers and socio-oceanography experts. The project would have a UK focus, but it could also be complemented by research in coastal regions beyond the UK.
Funding Notes
Bursary available (subject to satisfactory performance):
Year 1: £20,780 (FT) or pro-rata (PT); Year 2: In line with UKRI rate; Year 3: In line with UKRI rate
In addition, the successful candidate will receive a contribution to tuition fees equivalent to the university’s Home rate, currently £5,006 (FT) or pro-rata (PT), for the duration of their scholarship. International applicants will need to pay the difference between the International and UK home student tuition fee rates for the duration of their scholarship
References
Nelson, V. (2025) ‘From Control to Care: Trans-Hegemonic Approaches to Just-Sustainability Transformations’. Environmental Science and Policy; Nelson, V., Garner, B., & Prado Cordova, J. P. (2024). Exploring decolonial and relational paths to sustainability. Global Social Challenges; Haraway, D. (2016) ‘Staying with the Trouble’, Duke University Press; Gesing, F. (2019). Towards a more-than-human political ecology of coastal protection: Coast Care practices in Aotearoa New Zealand. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 4(2), 208-229; Bellacasa, M. Puig de la (2017), University of Minnesota Press.
