Job Type: On-site, PhD
Location: The University of Edinburgh - Edinburgh, Scotland
Application Deadline: April 10, 2026
Description:
This fully funded (4 Year) Phd Studentship (UK & International Candidates Eligible) project will seek to improve the understanding of the evolving nature of wildfire risk in Scotland. This topic will be studied in the particular context of understanding and improving wildfire resilience in natural capital sites (e.g. woodland creation, peatland restoration).
Through a mixed methods approach, this study will explore historic and predicted future wildfire trends in Scotland, alongside mapping and evaluating the key views and concerns of keys stakeholders including land managers, government bodies and the general public. This will seek to provide improved understanding of the overall risk profile at a national and regional level, as well as the evolving nature of wildfire resilience of landscapes throughout different stages of the restoration process and in response to different interventions (e.g. grazing, creation of firebreaks, rewetting etc.).
The PhD student will be join a larger, existing cohort of PhD projects supported by the University’s Forests and Peatland Programme that aims to advance our understanding of the impacts, and monitoring and reportingtechniques, around woodland creation and peatland restoration initiatives, which are designed and managed to meet multiple objectives, across different sites in Scotland.
Support will also be provided by the multi-disciplinary research supervision team, and the student will also join a cohort of PhD students and Post-Doctoral Researchers at the internationally recognised Edinburgh Fire Research Centre. Relevant training will be provided however experience and/or willingness to combine a mix of computational modelling and lab/fieldwork is required
