3-year funded PhD studentship in behavioural and data science

Project Title: UK’s Infectious Disease Geospatial Project: Mapping incidences to understand and predict behaviour. 

Contacts: We are currently recruiting a PhD candidate to join the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham. The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Brian O’Shea (Psychology, 50%), Dr James Goulding (Computer Science, 40%) & Dr Alexa Spence (Psychology, 10%).

Description: The candidate will build and infectious disease mortality cases and mortality databases across districts within the UK to enable comparisons to the US metrics we have developed. Crucially, these new databases will have a host of benefits for public health, epidemiology, and social physics/geography psychology, especially with understanding how regional level infectious diseases impact racial bias (O’Shea et al., 2020) and political beliefs (O’Shea et al., 2022). Multilevel modelling, time-series analysis, geospatial mapping and machine learning can be used to answer complex questions regarding the relationships between infectious disease and behaviour. 

Location and funding: The successful candidate will be affiliated with N-Lab (https://www.nlab.org.uk/) at the Business School. The studentship is funded by the Faculty of Science and will provide a stipend to cover living costs and will cover Home University fees (Stipend £17,668, Home fee estimated £4,587pa; 36 months). The studentship will not cover international fees. However, international students are welcome to apply, but details of how they plan to cover the high international fees (>£22,000 per annum) will need to be presented. 

We would recommend you send your C.V. to Dr O'Shea   (brian.oshea@nottingham.ac.uk), who can advise on whether you will be a competitive candidate for the position.    

Deadline: Rolling submissions until we identify a suitable candidate.  

Starting date: October 2023.   

Requirements: 

• Essential: the ideal candidate should be highly motivated with strong written and verbal communication skills. They should have advanced data management, wrangling and analytics skills using R or Python.
• Desirable: the candidate should have the ability to understand how large-scale macro-level factors (e.g., diseases, poverty, temperature, population density) impact individuals’ behaviours and decisions.

How to apply:

All applications are to be made directly to the University, selecting PhD Psychology (36 months duration) as the course. Please apply at: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/how-to-apply/apply-online.aspx.  

In the research proposal section, please include “Brian O’Shea Geospatial PhD position” in the title. No formal research proposal is required. You are required to upload the following documents to your application:

• A maximum of a 2-page C.V. 
• Degree certificate and transcript (if already graduated) or a recent transcript.
• Two references (in a non-editable format, on headed paper and signed by the referee). One of the references must be academic.
• A 1,000-word personal statement (maximum but excludes references) should address the following points:
  • Why are you interested in doing this PhD?
  • Do you have any previous experience that is relevant to this studentship?
  • Describe how the ideas outlined in the advert align with the your interests?
  • What do you plan to do after this PhD (long-term goals)?

If you have any questions about the application process through MyNottingham, please contact sciencessupport@nottingham.ac.uk for further advice.