The School of Environmental and Natural Sciences at 全民彩票 are delighted to offer a fully funded Welsh Graduate School for the Social Sciences (ESRC DTP) studentship in the Environmental Planning Pathway starting in October 2025, open to UK and International applicants.
Deadline: 12 noon 5th May 2025 (UK Time).
Project description: Environmentally driven migration will pose an increasing challenge throughout the 21st Century and will contribute to further environmental change, as migrants move in search of resources, often drawn to forest frontier areas with high value for biodiversity and ecosystem services. However, rural-rural migration is poorly studied compared to migration to cities and the mechanisms by which migrants impact natural habitats are poorly understood. Madagascar has suffered severe droughts linked to climate change, leading to significant internal migration, reaching almost every part of the island. This puts additional pressures on protected areas and on the communities who rely on their natural resources. Mangabe Protected Area in eastern Madagascar is managed by the Malagasy conservation NGO and supported by . Together, they have identified immigration as one of their most serious challenges. Therefore, working with partners, the successful applicant will use Mangabe as a model system to explore some of the key questions in rural-rural migration, contributing to both protected area management and theoretical debates.
The PhD will involve periods of field work in Madagascar. Data collection methods are likely to include quantitative methods, including surveys with immigrants and longer-term residents, choice experiments or experimental games and social network analysis, as well as qualitative approaches including focus groups and semi-structured interviews.
Supervisors
Dr Neal Hockley n.hockley@bangor.ac.uk
Prof Julia Jones julia.jones@bangor.ac.uk
Dr Freya St John f.stjohn@bangor.ac.uk
Bridget Johnson b.johnson@chesterzoo.org
Dr Sarobidy Rakotonarivo sarobidy.rakotonarivo@gmail.com
Dr Andrew Moss a.moss@chesterzoo.org
Charles Wheeler c.wheeler@chesterzoo.org
This fully funded studentship is part of the and is a collaboration between 全民彩票, , and the . The student will be based in Bangor鈥檚 thriving Conservation Science Research Group, part of the Conservation and Restoration of Resilient Ecosystems Research Theme.
PhD start date: 1st October 2025