The University of Southampton has been awarded funding by the Leverhulme Trust to train a new wave of doctoral scholars with the skills needed to investigate, interpret, and inform resilience in its many dimensions and across a rich diversity of contexts.
A distinguishing feature of the new Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Programme for Interdisciplinary Resilience Studies is its deliberate embedding of arts, humanities, and social-sciences perspectives into resilience discourse. The programme will leverage and add value to the University’s existing strengths and strategic investments in resilience research.
Resilience describes both elasticity and brittleness in response to disruption. When researchers can explain the underlying mechanisms of resilience in a given system, they also shed light on resilience in other contexts. Research into one resilience puzzle collectively improves research into all resilience puzzles. This relationship between specific and general makes the study of resilience both intellectually exciting and societally vital.
To deliver its vision and a lasting legacy of impactful scholars and scholarship, the new programme will offer a “liberal arts” educational model in which students will progress through an interdisciplinary curriculum while also developing discipline-specific expertise.
Dr Eli Lazarus, Associate Professor in Geomorphology at the University of Southampton and programme lead said, “For the next generation of researchers to tackle societal challenges stemming from environmental change, social inequities, political and cultural disparities, health and wellbeing, and technological evolution, they will need proficiency in systems thinking, evaluating patterns and signatures of resilience quantitatively and qualitatively, and creating novel methods of critical analysis that draw creatively from different disciplines. Those proficiencies constitute the core of our doctoral-training design.”
Built on best-practice principles for greater equality, diversity, and inclusion in doctoral study, the programme includes structural provisions to encourage the recruitment of, and support for, students from historically excluded demographics.
Prospective students can propose their own studentship projects, and interdisciplinary teams of University of Southampton supervisors will offer studentship proposals to which prospective students can apply. Opportunities are expected to be advertised in February 2024, with the selection process taking place in March.
Details on how to apply and eligibility can be found on the Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarship Programme for Interdisciplinary Resilience Studies website.
Enquiries about the Programme for Interdisciplinary Resilience Studies may be directed to [email protected].