About the Project
One full scholarship is available in the School of Geography in 2026. This scholarship will cover full UK home fees, maintenance, and associated fieldwork costs.
This fully funded PhD place provides an exciting opportunity to pursue postgraduate research in a range of fields relating to climate change, adaptation, and behavioural modelling, working with both Indigenous knowledge and science approaches in the Arctic.
The Arctic is undergoing transformative climate change, with profound implications for transportation systems. The lengthening of the shipping season in the Arctic Ocean is well-documented, with warming temperatures also compromising the operating period and safety of winter roads. Less studied are the more informal transportation networks involving use of unmaintained trails on frozen lakes, rivers, ocean, and the frozen ground, which are critically important for travel between communities, to cultural sites, and for practicing traditional hunting and fishing activities which have particular importance for Indigenous communities.
The ETHNO-CLIM project (ERC Advanced Grant) is developing new conceptual and methodological tools to understand how different cultures encounter, perceive, adapt to, and interact with climate change. Collaborating with Inuit communities in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, the project focuses on the use of trails in a rapidly warming Arctic, combining both ‘bottom-up’ participatory modelling of current and projected climate-risk, and storytelling and visioning to create scenarios of how such changes might be experienced and responded to. In the research to-date, team members have created a suite of trail access models with communities in Alaska, Canada, and Greenland (the ‘study regions’), which are being used to examine and project future change in these specific geographies (see Ford et al (2019, 2023, 2024)). As a PhD student, you will join an international and cross-cultural research team and will be responsible for developing comparative understanding across the study regions. This will include: i) investigating the similarities and differences in the climatic risks affecting trail access in partner communities in the study regions, ii) developing a modelling workflow that combines individual models from the three regions to create a pan-North American Arctic trail access model, iii) using this modelling workflow to project future changes in trail access for Inuit communities across North America at different levels of warming, modelling how adaptation and behavioural changes may affect risk profiles.
The PhD project will be on the cutting edge of developing innovative interdisciplinary approaches to connect science and Indigenous knowledge within a participatory modelling environment. Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of the work, you will be supervised by two geographers with experience working with Indigenous knowledge systems in the Arctic (Prof. Ford & Dr Malik), and a computational geographer who specialises in developing models for simulating human systems (Prof. Malleson). While fieldwork will not be required for the project, there may be opportunity to visit the partner communities with team members to help contextualise the modelling. You will have worked with qualitative and quantitative data and models. You will have a good foundational knowledge of modelling approaches and some experience in computer programming.
Cited articles
Ford, J.D., et al. Re-conceptualizing the IPCC’s ‘burning embers’. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-024-00594-2
Ford, J. D. et al. Projected decrease in trail access in the Arctic. Communications Earth & Environment 4 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00685-w
Ford, J. D. et al. Changing access to ice, land and water in Arctic communities. Nature Climate Change 9, 335-+ (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0435-7
Information about the Award
- We are offering one fully funded scholarship in the School of Geography for one UK status candidate. The funding covers UK tuition fees as well as a UKRI matched stipend (currently £21,805 in 2026/27) per year, for four years, subject to satisfactory progress.
Duration of the Award
- Full-time (4 years). The award will be made for one year in the first instance and renewable for a further period of up to three years, subject to satisfactory progress.
Other Conditions
- Applicants must not have already been awarded or be currently studying for a doctoral degree.
- Award must be taken up by the 1st October 2026.
- Applicants must live within a reasonable distance of the University of Leeds whilst in receipt of this scholarship.
Funding Notes
We are offering one fully funded scholarship in the School of Geography for one UK status candidate, to study the PhD project Modelling climate adaptation futures in the Arctic. The funding covers UK tuition fees as well as a UKRI matched stipend (currently £21,805 in 2026/27) per year, for four years, subject to satisfactory progress.
If you are unsure whether you are eligible for UK fees/funding, please see our fee assessment page.
