Qualification Type: PhD
Location: Colchester
Funding for: UK Students, Self-funded Students
Funding amount: Living costs stipend at the UK Research and Innovation recommended level per year. The stipend for 2024-25 is £19,237. The rate for 2025-26 TBA.
Hours: Full Time
Placed On: 21st November 2024
Closes: 7th February 2025
Reference: 11368 Sociology_Maths Oct 2025
Project Overview
This is an opportunity to conduct fully funded interdisciplinary research under the ‘Sustainable Transitions – Leverhulme Doctoral Training Programme’ at the University of Essex.
Technology is changing the way we work across many spheres, including the agricultural industry. For example, sensor technologies employed in farming (like virtual fencing and GPS animal tracking) claim to accelerate the transition to more sustainable agricultural practices. Technological solutions are key to sustainable transitions but their success relies on how people understand and interact with these technologies. The acceptance of digital technologies and their impact on the working practices of farmers, agricultural workers, and conservationists are underexplored (especially in the UK context).
Drawing on perspectives from Science and Technology studies, this project aims to understand how digital sensor technology, and the statistical tools to analyse, visualise, and interpret the resultant data, interact with and shape the everyday working lives of those in the agricultural and conservation sectors. This may include research with those implementing the technology on the ground and with the organisations and stakeholders that promote its use, such as farmers, landowners, the National Trust and regional Wildlife Trusts.
This project offers the opportunity to engage with those at the forefront of technology uptake in sustainable land management transitions, to learn what works and why, and how to value the labour of those who perform it.
Interdisciplinary Focus and Methods
This project will have a strong interdisciplinary focus, combining sociological understandings of how technology can transform human-environment relations through qualitative methodologies, with recent developments in automated technology and methods for analysing, visualising and interpreting animal and environmental sensor data. The project will involve direct collaboration with farmers, land managers, conservationists, and agricultural workers, as well as agrotechnology companies.
Person Specification
This opportunity would suit a candidate with a social science degree/ background, with an interest in Science and Technology Studies, the sociology of work, qualitative methodology, data visualisation and analytics or sustainable agriculture and conservation.
While prior training in both qualitative and quantitative methodologies is not required, expertise in one would be an advantage, with training provided in both during the programme.
