Lancaster University is looking to recruit a university funded PhD to work on the EPSRC Programme Grant Liveable Cities, Transforming the Engineering of Cities for Global and Societal Wellbeing.

Liveable Cities is an ambitious, five-year programme of research to develop a method of designing and engineering low-carbon, resource-secure, wellbeing enhanced UK cities. This will be achieved via the development of a unique City Analysis Methodology (CAM) that will measure how cities operate and perform in terms of their people, environment and governance, taking account of wellbeing and resource security. The CAM will be used to establish future visions of low-carbon, resource-secure, liveable UK cities from which the team will backcast to determine what needs to be done now to achieve these visions. Using the CAM, the Liveable Cities team will develop realistic and radical engineering solutions for achieving the UK’s ambitious carbon reduction targets and will test them in three UK cities: Birmingham, Lancaster and Southampton.  A second Liveable Cities PhD is also being advertised for PhD in Sociology at Lancaster University (see http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/faculty/stories/1729/ for further information).

The studentship covers the payment of tuition fees and a tax free yearly stipend of £13,590.

PhD in Design in ImaginationLancaster, Lancaster University, supervised by Rachel Cooper (plus other colleagues if appropriate). See http://imagination.lancs.ac.uk

This person will join ImaginationLancaster, an open and exploratory design-led research lab at Lancaster University. We conduct applied and theoretical research into people, products, places and their interactions. This PhD will consider how to communicate our research which involves radically envisioning sites for low carbon living as a means of providing a brief to engineers, designers and policymakers and challenge conventional design and engineering approaches. The person appointed will have a background and interest in information and visual communication, skills in visual and media production with an ability to deploy various research methods. The person should be willing to participate in the wider EPSRC Research Programme including collaborating with colleagues in Birmingham, Southampton and UCL.

Details on how to apply can be found by clicking on the APPLY button below or contact Claire Coulton, Liveable Cities Project Administrator, 01524 510818, c.coulton2@lancaster.ac.uk.

The closing date for applications is 24^th February 2013.