Chronicle to Core: flood histories, resilience & community engagement

Background

Are you passionate about history, environmental science and coastal resilience? Join our ground-breaking project integrating historical sources and environmental science approaches with digital humanities and creative community engagement. This exciting PhD project will work in transdisciplinary ways to shed new light on how people lived with, and adapted to, water and floods in coastal zones over thousands of years.

What will you do?

Using an innovative combination of methods, the PhD project will:

1. Reconstruct flood histories: Generate new knowledge about when, where and how often chosen case study regions flooded over a period of several thousand years, and the technologies, physical infrastructure and socio-legal arrangements used in managing, governing, and adapting to water and flood.
2. Correlate archives and sediments: Link sediment proxy-based records of flooding with the historical archive, so as to better understand the date, frequency and magnitude of known flood events c.1000 AD onwards, and uncover previously unknown flood events.
3. Engage communities creatively: Apply digital humanities approaches and creative community engagement to showcase the history and heritage of our coasts. Develop and evaluate innovative tools for engaging young people and local communities in building climate awareness and coastal resilience for the future.

Why this matters

Coastal communities worldwide face increasing risks from flooding and sea-level rise due to climate change. Understanding how societies in the past adapted to living with water provides vital insights to help us live well with water today, and opportunities to build climate action using participatory and creative approaches. By combining historical archives, environmental science, and creative engagement, this project not only reconstructs long-term flood histories but also seeks to co-create strategies for a sustainable future. The research will generate new knowledge about past people and environments, as well as practical tools that support communities, inform policy, and strengthen coastal resilience.

Applicants must have a good first degree or master's qualification in human geography, physical geography, history, or another relevant discipline. You will have experience working with either historical sources or sedimentary records, with a willingness to undertake training (to be provided during the PhD) in the other methodologies to be used.