INFUZE: Inclusive evaluation of mobility systems

One full scholarship is available at the Institute for Transport Studies in 2025/26. This scholarship is open to UK (Home fee rated) applicants and covers UK fees plus maintenance stipend. <br /> <br /> This fully funded PhD place provides an exciting opportunity to pursue postgraduate research in a range of fields relating to environmental science and climate change.<br /> <br /> The Institute for Transport Studies invites applications from prospective postgraduate researchers who wish to commence study for a PhD in the academic year 2025/26 for the Institute for Transport Studies INFUZE Scholarship.

<p style="text-align:justify; margin-bottom:11px">Traditional approaches to understanding why we travel have been criticised as having a ‘flat ontology’ where the experience of travel is treated as a blank space that people travel ‘through’ (Sheller 2018).  Transport planning is therefore at risk of ignoring pre-existing structural inequalities and how the journey experience is experienced differently across groups or, indeed, reinforcing them. Current project appraisal approaches explore the value for money of specific projects or interventions, such as a new road or the adding of a cycle lane. Whilst aspects of inclusion do feature in the assessment, they are typically small in magnitude or covered in some form of social impact assessment. This enables distributional analysis of policy options or projects and the suggestion of remediation, but it does not place inclusive design at the heart of option generation and sifting. This PhD will explore the development of a more inclusive and bottom up set of evaluator tools which enable policy makers to understand different system change options.</p> <p>The PhD will be situated within the INFUZE project, which is taking a design-led approach to exploring the potential to moving from systems of individual car based mobility to systems which are more based around mobility on demand. This potentially means changing the way in which people pay for how they travel, how they perceive the options in front of them, and how they blend their choices. There is also the potential for such choices to impact on the quality of their local neighbourhood. In a broader sense, the visions is to imagine a “city where you don’t need to own a car”, which could also include how work is organised, health care and social activities. As citizens have very different experiences of the city today, the design parameters which the project use will need to meet a more diverse set of goals to understand whether this system change could be positive or negative, and for who. This requires the development of more bespoke and culturally sensitive evaluation tools.</p> <p>This PhD will focus on building a novel evaluation framework which is led by the citizens who are involved in the trials and demonstrations being run by the INFUZE project. This will enable an integrated assessment of the social and public value of changes to the way transport is organised. The PhD will then go on to place the citizen-led evaluation framework in critical dialogue with the existing appraisal framework. The aim will be to identify the critical gaps which need to be addressed if we are to put the needs of people at the heart of a decision-making framework that can also demonstrate the value of state investment and intervention.</p> <p>The candidate will need to have skills in documentary analysis, interviewing and will need to be able to work as part of a wider team in the INFUZE project to ensure the study connects to it. The studentship is part funded by the Department for Transport and the successful applicant will spend some time during their study period on secondment to the Department for Transport in Leeds to ensure the study can achieve impact.</p> <p><strong>Connected Reading</strong></p> <p>Büscher, M., Cronshaw, C., Kirkbride, A., & Spurling, N. (2023). Making Response-Ability: Societal Readiness Assessment for Sustainability Governance. Sustainability, 15(6), 5140. <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/su15065140">https://doi.org/10.3390/su15065140</a></p> <p>Docherty, I., Stone, J., Curtis, C., Sørensen, C.H., Paulsson, A., Legacy, C., & Marsden, G. (2022). The case for ‘public’ transport in the age of automated mobility. Cities, 128, 103784. <a href="https://doi.org/https:/doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.103784">https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2022.103784</a></p> <p>HM Treasury and Government Finance Function. (2022). The Green Book: appraisal and evaluation in central government. <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-green-book-appraisal-and-evaluation-in-central-government">https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-green-book-appraisal-and-evaluation-in-central-government</a></p> <p>Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes. Verso, ISBN 978-1-78873-092-1.</p> <p>INFUZE project: <a href="https://in-fuze.org.uk/">https://in-fuze.org.uk/</a></p>

<p>Formal applications for research degree study should be made online through the <a href="https://www.leeds.ac.uk/research-applying/doc/applying-research-degrees">University's website</a>. You will need to create a login ID with a username and PIN.</p> <ul> <li>For ‘Application type’ please select ‘Reseach Degrees – Research Postgraduate’.</li> <li>The admission year for this project is 2025/26 Academic Year.</li> <li>For ‘Planned Course of Study’ please select ‘PhD Institute for Transport studies Full-time’.</li> <li>For ‘Proposed Start Date of Research’ please select 1 October 2025.</li> <li><strong>In the research information section, you must state clearly that the project you wish to be considered for is ‘INFUZE: Inclusive evaluation of mobility systems’ and name <a href="https://environment.leeds.ac.uk/transport/staff/958/professor-greg-marsden">Professor Greg Marsden</a> as your proposed supervisor. If you do not do this, your application may not be considered.</strong></li> </ul> <p>If English is not your first language, you must provide evidence that you meet the University's minimum English language requirements (below).</p> <p><em>As an international research-intensive university, we welcome students from all walks of life and from across the world. We foster an inclusive environment where all can flourish and prosper, and we are proud of our strong commitment to student education. Across all Faculties we are dedicated to diversifying our community and we welcome the unique contributions that individuals can bring, and particularly encourage applications from, but not limited to Black, Asian, people who belong to a minority ethnic community, people who identify as LGBT+ and people with disabilities. Applicants will always be selected based on merit and ability.</em></p>

The minimum entry requirements for PhD study is 2.1 honours degree, or equivalent, or a good performance in a Masters level course.<br /> <br /> A first-class honours degree (or equivalent) is usually required to be competitive for scholarship funding and a Masters degree is also a valuable asset.<br /> <br /> Applicants who are uncertain about the requirements for a particular research degree are advised to contact the PGR Admissions Team prior to making an application.

The minimum English language entry requirement for the Institute for Transport Studies postgraduate research study is an IELTS of 6.0 overall with at least 5.5 in each component (reading, writing, listening and speaking) or equivalent. The test must be dated within two years of the start date of the course in order to be valid. Some schools and faculties have a higher requirement.

<p><strong>Information about the Award</strong></p> <p>We are offering 1 full-time PhD scholarship in the Institute for Transport Studies for <strong>one UK candidate (Home fee rated)</strong>, covering tuition fees and a maintenance grant matching the UKRI rate (£19,237 in 2024/25) for three and a half years, subject to satisfactory progress. </p> <p class="MsoNoSpacing">If you are unsure whether you are eligible for UK fees/funding, please see our <a href="https://www.leeds.ac.uk/undergraduate-fees/doc/fee-assessment">fee assessment page</a>.</p> <p><strong>Duration of the Award</strong></p> <p>Full-time (3.5 years). The award will be made for one year in the first instance and renewable for a further period of up to two and a half years, subject to satisfactory academic progress.</p> <p><strong>Other conditions</strong></p> <ul> <li>Applicants must not have already been awarded or be currently studying for a doctoral degree.</li> <li>Awards must be taken up by 1^st October 2025.</li> <li>Applicants must live within a reasonable distance of the University of Leeds whilst in receipt of this scholarship.</li> </ul>

<p>For further information, please contact the INFUZE team: <a href="mailto:infuze@leeds.ac.uk">infuze@leeds.ac.uk</a> or <span style="font-size:11.0pt"><span style="line-height:107%"><span style="font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif">the Postgraduate Research Admissions Team by emailing <a href="mailto:ENV-PGR@leeds.ac.uk" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">ENV-PGR@leeds.ac.uk</a></span></span></span></p>