About the Leverhulme Centre for Water Cultures
The University of Hull's Leverhulme Doctoral Scholarships Centre for Water Cultures pioneers a new, humanities-led, interdisciplinary and transhistorical research area, the ‘green-blue humanities.’
It equips a new generation of PhD students to take this agenda forward, transforming our understanding of our relationships with water and shaping future research agendas, methods, and approaches within and between disciplines.
Join our webinar – Thursday 11 March 2021
We are hosting a free webinar to help you find out more about funded postgraduate research at the Leverhulme Centre for Water Cultures. Join us to hear from programme leaders, supervisors, students and researchers and ask any burning questions at the Q&A. Register here
About this project
This is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious, talented and enthusiastic researcher to conduct interdisciplinary research in order to advance thinking within the area of blue-green humanities through fostering greater youth engagement in governance issues around flood and flood management.
Participatory research methodologies, such as Citizen Science, are emerging as powerful strategies in dealing with environmental challenges. Yet these approaches rarely engage with hard to reach groups such as young people who are key stakeholders and may become key decision/policy makers in the future.
This PhD project will explore the use of Citizen Inquiry methodologies – an adaptation of the Citizen Science approach developed and tested by academics in the University of Hull – to foster greater youth engagement in governance issues around flood and flood management.
The aim of the scholarship will be to demonstrate the efficacy of the Citizen Inquiry methodology in engaging young people in local governance issues, such as flooding. The objectives include:
- Identify whether young people are already engaged on local water governance issues (e.g. through Hull's Youth Parliament and Bremerhaven's Youth Climate Council).
- Identify the attitudes and views of young people around water governance issues and the extent to which they are active citizens in this field.
- Explore and evaluate the potential of participatory research methods such as Citizen Inquiry for ascertaining the views and opinions of stakeholder groups.
- Use Citizen Inquiry to develop and evaluate a range of governance strategies that empower young people to tackle issues such as flooding (e.g. youth parliaments, etc)
Research will focus on two cities (Hull, UK and Bremerhaven, Germany) that have considerable similarities and face similar challenges associated with flooding. Recent projects in these two cities have demonstrated the potential value of participatory research methods in engaging young people to address environmental issues. This PhD project will build on these experiences to strengthen the voice of young people and develop their capacity as active citizens and future decision-makers.
It is also envisaged that this PhD project will include an opportunity to undertake a placement in either Hull or Bremerhaven (or both) working with stakeholders and agencies such as the local council and the youth parliament.