University studentships

Department of Information and Operations Management

Professor G. 'Hari' Harindranath

g.harindranath@rhul.ac.uk

Responsible Digital:

I am interested in the societal impacts of digital technologies and in understanding how best to maximise their benefits while mitigating potential harms. Digital technologies can enhance our social, economic, political, and cultural experiences and wellbeing. However, they almost always exacerbate existing societal inequalities and create the potential for new digital harms, particularly for those who lack the capability to use these technologies safely, wisely, and securely.

Responsible digital is about harnessing the power of digital technologies to create a more inclusive, equitable and sustainable digital future. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Digital for development
• Digital technologies and marginalised communities including migrants
• Digital platforms and the informal economy in developing countries
• Digital inclusion/exclusion
• Responsible AI

Department of Information and Operations Management 

Dr Najmeh Hafezieh & Professor G. 'Hari' Harindranath

Najmeh.hafezieh@rhul.ac.uk

g.harindranath@rhul.ac.uk

AI and Inclusion in Tech Sector: Advancing Diversity in the Digital Ecosystem:

This research domain explores innovative intersections of AI, technological inclusion, and the tech sector, with a focus on how emerging technologies can be leveraged to create a more diverse and equitable digital ecosystem.

We invite research proposals that challenge current paradigms and explore novel applications of AI to promote inclusion in technology. Potential areas of investigation include (but not limited to):

• AI-Powered Adaptive Learning Platforms for Tech Skills: Exploring how AI can create personalized, culturally responsive learning experiences that adapt to diverse learning styles, backgrounds, and paces, making tech education more accessible to underrepresented groups.
• Inclusive AI Pair Programming: Investigating the development of AI coding assistants specifically designed to support and empower underrepresented groups in software development, addressing unique challenges they may face.
• AI-Driven Bias Detection in Tech Recruitment: Examining how AI can be used to identify and mitigate unconscious biases in hiring processes within the tech industry, promoting more diverse and inclusive workforces.
• AI-Facilitated Remote Collaboration for Inclusive Tech Teams: Investigating how AI can enhance remote work tools to better support diverse, distributed teams, considering factors like language barriers, cultural differences, and varying accessibility needs.
• Ethical AI Development by Diverse Teams: Studying how diverse teams influence the development of more ethical and inclusive AI systems, and how this process can be optimized using AI-driven collaboration tools.

We welcome research proposals that address these or related topics, employing innovative methodologies to explore the transformative potential of AI in promoting inclusion within the technology sector. We encourage approaches that combine insights from social sciences, human-computer interaction, Information systems, and related fields.

Department of Information and Operations Management 

Dr Yuanyuan Lai

Yuanyuan.Lai@rhul.ac.uk

AI-driven Solutions for the Future of Mental Health Services: 

Background
The increasing prevalence of mental health issues, exacerbated by factors like societal pressures, isolation, and limited access to professional care, highlights the need for innovative solutions. Digital humans, powered by artificial intelligence (AI), have emerged as promising tools in healthcare, offering real-time, scalable, and empathetic support. These AI-driven avatars can simulate human interaction and potentially provide users with emotional and psychological care. While promising, more research is needed to understand their potential for future mental health interventions.

Research Objectives
This research aims to investigate how AI-based digital humans can be utilized to provide personalized, effective, and accessible mental health support. The study will explore their ability to recognize emotional states, offer tailored interventions, and maintain long-term engagement, comparing them to traditional mental health support methods.

Research Questions
• How do users perceive the use of digital humans for mental health support in terms of trust, usability, and overall satisfaction?
• How effective are AI-driven digital humans in improving emotional well-being compared to traditional online therapy?
• What challenges and ethical considerations arise from integrating AI-based digital humans into mental health care, and how can they be mitigated?
• What are the long-term effects of interacting with AI-driven digital humans on user engagement and mental health improvement?
• What are the design principles for similar AI-driven mental health services?

Social Purpose and Impact
This research aligns closely with a broader social purpose by addressing critical gaps in mental health care accessibility and support, fostering inclusivity, and addressing widespread issues like mental health stigma and inequity, particularly for underserved and marginalized populations. This aligns with the funding body's mission to promote socially impactful research that benefits communities and improves societal well-being.

Centre for Research into Sustainability Strategy, International Business and Entrepreneurship

Dr Maureen Ayikoru

Maureen.Ayikoru@rhul.ac.uk

Unresolved Equity Challenges in the Clean Energy Transition and Climate Change Mitigation: 

Centre for Critical and Historical Research on Organisation and Society

Dr Paul Caussat, Dr Giulia Achilli, & Professor Robert Fitzgerald

Paul.Caussat@rhul.ac.uk

Giulia.Achilli@rhul.ac.uk

R.Fitzgerald@rhul.ac.uk

Founding Values, Organisational Memory and Social Purpose of Universities:

Research context:
UK universities’ missions and role in society have evolved from being places of knowledge and reflection to market-oriented, efficiency-driven organisations (Deem et al., 2007), thereby fuelling growing tensions over universities’ organisational identity. This in turn jeopardise universities’ ability to find their place in their society and fulfil their civic role (the so-called ‘social purpose’ of universities), giving rise to criticisms and frustrations both externally (Government, political parties, families, taxpayer) and internally (staff, students, unions).

Research aims:
This proposed project aims at rethinking the role, purpose and contribution of universities in contemporary British society. Specifically, the project will explore the process through which universities go back to their historical origins (i.e., organisational memory; Connerton, 1989), founding values and archives to reconcile current tensions over their own organisational identity. The research questions will be developed in consultation with the student, but may include the following: 

• How do universities translate founding values into their contemporary identity and practice?
• How can organisational memory be used to nurture universities’ identity?
• How do universities embody or negotiate their civic role in society?

Key methods:
The project will draw on a variety of qualitative methods, including document analysis, archival research, interviews, and field observations. Document analysis will relate to the website and media communication of a sample of UK universities to investigate universities’ current discourses around mission, identity, offer, environment and the extent to which these rely on their founding values and history. The project will also include an in-depth case study of Royal Holloway, University of London, as a representative case of a university with a strong legacy and commitment to social justice and inclusive education. The case study will involve archival research as well as interviews with senior managers.

Department of Marketing

Dr The Khoa Do (Bin) & Dr Nisreen Ameen 

TheKhoa.Do@rhul.ac.uk

Nisreen.Ameen@rhul.ac.uk

The impact of AI-driven content curation and perceived algorithmic authenticity on user-generated content effectiveness in digital health and wellness service platforms: promoting equitable access and diverse representation in health service delivery:

We are seeking a motivated PhD student to investigate the intersection of AI-driven content curation, algorithmic authenticity, and user-generated content (UGC) in digital health and wellness service platforms, with a focus on promoting equitable access and diverse representation in health service delivery. This research aims to understand how AI-curated content influences user trust, engagement, and health-seeking behaviour, while also examining its potential to foster more inclusive and accessible digital health service communities.

The study will explore the following key questions:

• How does perceived algorithmic authenticity influence user trust in AI-curated user-generated content on digital health and wellness service platforms, particularly for underserved populations?
• To what extent does perceived algorithmic authenticity moderate the relationship between AI-curated UGC exposure and health service-seeking intentions across diverse user segments?
• What factors contribute to users' perceptions of algorithmic authenticity in AI-driven digital health service contexts, and how can these be leveraged to promote inclusivity and accessibility in health service provision?
• How can AI-driven content curation be optimised to showcase diverse health experiences, promote health service equity, and address cultural competence in digital health information and service delivery?

The research will employ a mixed-methods approach, including online surveys, experimental designs, and qualitative interviews with users from diverse backgrounds and health conditions. By focusing on digital health and wellness service platforms and introducing the novel concept of "algorithmic authenticity," this study aims to extend our understanding of how AI-driven processes influence health-related behaviour while addressing important social issues in healthcare service access and representation.

We welcome queries on related topics, such as:

• The role of AI in reducing bias in health information and service recommendations
• Strategies for increasing representation of marginalised groups in AI-curated health service content
• Ethical considerations in AI-driven digital health service platforms
• The impact of AI-curated content on health literacy and patient empowerment in service utilisation

This research has the potential to make significant theoretical contributions while also providing practical insights for creating more inclusive, diverse, and equitable digital health and wellness service platforms, ultimately contributing to improved health service outcomes for underserved populations.

Department of Marketing

Dr Vera Hoelscher & Dr. Yuanyuan Lai

Vera.Hoelscher@rhul.ac.uk

Yuanyuan.Lai@rhul.ac.uk

Psychological Impact of Human-AI Interactions:

The rapid integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into daily life presents an unprecedented challenge in understanding the psychological impact of human-AI interactions. These interactions are reshaping how humans form relationships, process emotions, and understand themselves. The potential for both positive outcomes (e.g., reduced loneliness) and significant risks (e.g., emotional dependency, diminished human connections) underscores the urgency of this research.

In the UK, a significant percentage of the population experiences loneliness, particularly among younger generations. Simultaneously, digital relationships are becoming more prevalent. With AI capabilities growing exponentially, AI companions could soon become as common as smartphones, potentially reshaping the psychological landscape of entire generations.

Aim and Example Research Questions:

This project aims to investigate the psychological implications of human-AI personal interactions, focusing on their impact on well-being, social relationships, and identity formation. The goal is to inform policy, guide ethical AI development, and empower individuals to navigate this new psychological terrain.

Potential research questions include:

• How do personal interactions with AI agents affect human psychological well-being and social cognition across different age groups and cultural contexts?
• What are the mechanisms by which humans form attachments to AI entities, and how do these impact real-world interpersonal relationships?
• How can we design AI interactions that promote positive psychological outcomes while mitigating risks to mental health and social cohesion?

Significance:

Department of Electronic Engineering

Dr Beenish Ayaz & Professor Shyqyri Haxha

beenish.ayaz@rhul.ac.uk

Shyqyri.Haxha@rhul.ac.uk

Smart Robotic Sensor Network Design for Secure, Independent Living: Empowering Individuals with Mobility Impairments:

As the global population increases, the number of individuals with mobility impairments increase, there is a growing need for innovative solutions that foster independence and improve the quality of life. This PhD project aims to design and develop a robotic sensor network-based system that enables secure, independent living environment for individuals with mobility challenges. By integrating advanced robotics, sensor technologies, and IoT, the project will create an intelligent, responsive, and secure home environment tailored to the specific needs of the user. The proposed system will utilize a network of sensors and robotic components embedded in the home environment to monitor and assist users in real time. This could include smart appliances, wearable devices, and mobile robotic assistants that can interact with the user and the environment to provide seamless assistance with everyday tasks, such as mobility support, healthcare monitoring, and emergency response, while ensuring system integrity and user data privacy.

Key research questions include:
• How can robotic systems and sensor networks be integrated into daily environments to assist individuals with mobility impairments in a safe and ethical manner?
• What are the most effective methods for ensuring real-time assistance while maintaining system security and user privacy?
• How can machine learning and AI enhance the adaptive capabilities of these systems?

Department of Electronic Engineering 

Dr Vladimir Dyo 

vladimir.dyo@rhul.ac.uk 

Advancing Radar Communication Systems to Protect Vulnerable Pedestrians:

Pedestrians, especially children and wheelchair users represent some of the most vulnerable groups on our roads, frequently facing serious and life-threatening injuries. A recent study by the Department of Transport revealed that in 2022 alone, 5900 pedestrians were seriously injured in Great Britain. The social impact of these injuries cannot be overestimated as they often result in long-term physical, emotional, and financial burdens for the individuals affected, their families, and the wider community. These incidents place significant strain on healthcare services and contribute to societal inequalities, particularly affecting lower-income groups who may lack access to adequate support or rehabilitation services.

Although modern cars are equipped with radar-based pedestrian detection systems, they fail to detect certain individuals, such as children or wheelchair users, due to smaller size or unusual posture, which make them less detectable to automotive radars.

Department of Electronic Engineering 

Dr Stefanie Kuenzel & Dr Maureen Ayikoru

Stefanie.Kuenzel@rhul.ac.uk

Maureen.Ayikoru@rhul.ac.uk

Technical solutions for socially responsible demand side management whilst delivering net-zero: 

Department of Electronic Engineering

Dr Stephen Alty

Steve.Alty@rhul.ac.uk

Creativity first, Science Follows: An AI-based approach:

Electronic Engineering education has traditionally employed demanding mathematics than most topics found among courses in Engineering. In some cases, the technical challenges posed by some courses have made it difficult for students to complete those courses successfully. Hence, Engineering Education is inherently non-inclusive by design. Here in the Department of Electronic Engineering, we advocate for creativity to be nurtured in the first place, after which the science will flow naturally. This way forward has equipped our EDI students to cope with the technical aspect of engineering, graduate, and are now working in various industries such as in data analytics and engineering. In fact, our pedagogical approach based on creativity was published in
“Creativity First, Science Follows: Lessons in Digital Signal Processing Education,” in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, May 2021.

However, there are no advanced scientific methodologies to i) measure various degrees of creativity; ii) explore the influence of creativity on accessibility and inclusiveness in engineering courses; iii) propose solutions for existing engineering courses that falls short of creativity, inclusivity and fairness; iv) investigate generative artificial intelligence (AI) that fosters creativity and inclusivity in the creation of new courses.

To address these shortcomings in education, this research proposes the adoption of AI for education in the following ways:

• AI-driven tutoring strategies such as AI-powered performance metrics for inclusivity and creativity and intelligent grouping of students to promote student engagement, fairness & inclusivity, and creativity.
• Integration of AI into Engineering Education to facilitate curriculum development and revolutionise education delivery.

Department of Physics

Dr Asher Kaboth

Asher.Kaboth@rhul.ac.uk

Environmental Sustainability for Future Dark Matter Experiments:

This PhD project is focused on studying environmental sustainability factors for a future dark matter experiment and will explore the intersection of cutting-edge physics and environmental stewardship.

Dark matter is one of most interesting and vibrant areas of physics research, searching for the unknown particle(s) composing 80% of the mass of the universe. The XLZD experiment, a next generation xenon-based dark matter experiment, will open vast new areas of parameter space in this search. The experiment is in a design and engineering phase, where design choices can have large impact on both scientific and environmental factors. For example, the choice of detector materials can result in the experiment having much lower embedded carbon yet also change the detector’s sensitivity to dark matter. This project will aim to optimize both scientific and sustainability goals of the experiment through simulation and life cycle analysis.

By balancing scientific goals with environmental sustainability, this PhD project will contribute to a model of sustainable scientific research in the next generation of physics experiments and work towards aligning the field of particle physics with NetZero goals.

The successful student will have a strong computing and data analysis background, and an MSc or MSci in physics or a closely related subject.

Department of Information Security

Dr Yiannis Tselekounis & Dr Elizabeth Quaglia

Yiannis.Tselekounis@rhul.ac.uk

Elizabeth.Quaglia@rhul.ac.uk

Cryptographic techniques to prevent coercion in digital environments, ensuring that users can act freely without external pressure or manipulation:

Cryptography is playing an increasingly critical role in modern society, underpinning the security of online banking and financial transactions, communications, and voting systems. Its goal is to ensure privacy, integrity, and freedom of expression in digital interactions. Despite the technical safeguards cryptography offers, these freedoms can be undermined by threats such as online intimidation and coercion, which compromise users’ autonomy.

This PhD project aims to explore cryptographic techniques to mitigate the impact of malicious behaviours that threaten the freedoms enabled by cryptography. Specifically, the project will investigate cryptographic solutions to prevent coercion in digital environments, ensuring that users can act freely without external pressure or manipulation. The project will focus on the following areas:

Electronic voting: A key focus will be coercion resistance in electronic voting systems, a critical area where ensuring the authenticity of voter intent is paramount. We will study how the concept of delay-based cryptography, which ensures that secrets can be recovered only after a specified amount of time, can be used to enhance protection by giving users time to reconsider or escape undue influence.

Secure messaging: Secure messaging is a widely used class of cryptographic protocols used by billions of users and popular applications such as Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Google Allo, Wire, and more, allowing groups of clients to communicate securely over untrusted network and server infrastructure, providing the strongest possible security guarantees. The project will study the security of secure messaging protocols, aiming for strong anti coercion and abuse resistance mechanisms.
The proposed research seeks to invent new cryptographic techniques and protocols that will provide strong security guarantees for honest users, while identifying and exposing malicious behaviours.

A strong background in Computer Science or Mathematics is required.

Department of Information Security

Dr Christian Weinert 

christian.weinert@rhul.ac.uk 

Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) for Social Good:

Are you driven by the potential of advanced technology to address societal challenges? Our project, “PETs for Social Good”, offers an exciting opportunity to explore the development of privacy-preserving technologies (PETs) for processing sensitive data with a focus on enabling positive societal impact. Inspired by initiatives such as the Boston Women’s Workforce Council’s (BWWC) use of Secure Multi-Party Computation (SMPC) to measure gender and racial wage gaps, this project aims to design and implement PETs-based solutions that protect the data of marginalized and at-risk groups while fulfilling a broader social purpose.

You will tackle the technical and non-technical challenges in developing PETs that can be applied in sensitive contexts. Your research will focus on ensuring that these technologies allow organizations to extract meaningful insights without compromising the privacy (as well as security and safety) of vulnerable populations, and by extension all citizens. Key questions include: How can PETs be adapted to meet the specific needs of at-risk groups? What are the technological and practical trade-offs when ensuring both user and data privacy as well as system security and usability?

This project offers interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities, drawing on expertise in cryptography, computer and social sciences. The research will involve potential case studies in fields such as income inequality, healthcare disparities, and workforce diversity, contributing to a growing effort to use technology for social good while maintaining robust privacy protections.

Depending on the background of the successful applicant, the deliverables of the project can be cryptographic protocol designs and attacks, proof-of-concept implementations (e.g., privacy dashboards), and participatory risk modelling frameworks. We look forward to discussing the project in more detail with interested applicants.

Department of Computer Sciences

Dr Santiago Franco

Santiago.FrancoAixela@rhul.ac.uk

How can GPS-jammed drones determine their location using a combination of cooperative, ML and symbolic-AI driven methods:

Using symbolic AI methods will enable drones to reason and effectively represent environmental uncertainties such as “safe landing zones”, “restricted areas”, etc. ML visual methods will be used to extract semantic information from sensor data. This work will involve the creation of digital twins of small UAV platforms, and the development of an accurate, realistic simulation environment, in which the behavior of different cooperative learning strategies can be observed and evaluated. The purpose of this work will be to enable the development of efficient, accurate algorithms to ensure the safety of Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BvLOS) drone delivery systems.

The project focuses on developing a comprehensive framework to identify how drones can cooperatively determine their location, assuming unreliable GPS and telecommunications infrastructure. The student will be expected to create a high-fidelity, simulation environment encompassing a representative ecosystem of drones and sensors. This tool will provide the means to verify the behavior of different AI algorithms under various conditions of GPS outage, jamming, or spoofing. It also serves as a substantial contribution to design-time validation of AI-assisted drone navigation algorithms in its own right. The Omnidrome facility provides a safe, controllable environment for real-world testing of UAVs for this research.

Research areas to be pursued:

• How can AI techniques be used to represent and reason about the spatial environment in which multiple drone operate, for example dynamic and complex settings like urban environments?
• How can symbolic reasoning be combined with ML approaches to improve a drone’s ability to adapt to stressful conditions like GPS outage, jamming or spoofing, while maintaining interpretability and explainability in its decision-making process?

Key outcomes:

• Safety in Public UAV systems: Establish a safety-first method of verifying cooperative problem-solving in crisis scenarios. Omnidrome will provide a safe test environment for validation of simulated behaviors, in real space.
• Societal Impact and Policy: Supporting creation of education and public information campaigns to ease the integration of manned and unmanned systems in shared spaces, such as public delivery. This work will also inform government policy for backup UAV positioning systems.
• Verification of Cooperative Recovery Mechanisms: Investigating the theoretical and empirical correctness of the simulator. You will use the Omnidrome Facility to ensure that digital twins of selected UAVs correctly replicate the flight characteristics of those platforms.

Department of Computer Sciences

Dr Anand Subramoney

anand.subramoney@rhul.ac.uk

How can we democratise access to large AI models and reduce their environmental footprint?:

How can we lower the computational requirements of large AI models to make them more widely accessible and make them more energy efficient?

This project aims to develop technological solutions to (i) democratise access to large AI models and (ii) reduce their environmental footprint.

Currently, most large models with advanced capabilities require massive amounts of computing in the form of GPUs. Only large corporations can afford this, which makes training or even running such models out of reach for a vast majority of people, hindering transparency and accountability.
Furthermore, the current rate of energy consumption in the AI sector is alarming. By 2027, it is estimated that the AI sector alone will consume as much energy as the entire country of the Netherlands. This underscores the urgent need for our project.

In this project, we will address these problems by developing approaches to make AI models more efficient to train and run and also explore using novel ultra-efficient brain-inspired “neuromorphic” hardware for AI to reduce their energy footprint. We will develop innovative training algorithms and ML architectures, such as spiking neural networks that use asynchrony, physical and temporal sparsity, and locality for efficiency. The human brain (which runs on a mere 20W of power) will significantly inspire our work. We will also work closely with computational neuroscience and neuromorphic hardware groups, providing interdisciplinary and international cooperation opportunities.

Some background material:

• Youtube video on introduction to this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5nG_5UZ_yk
• Research paper using bio-inspired features for language modelling: https://openreview.net/forum?id=lJdOlWg8td

Department of Computer Sciences

Dr David Tena Cucala 

david.tenacucala@rhul.ac.uk

Explainable Graph Neural Network-Based Models for Real-World Graph Data:

Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are a family of machine learning models that have been successfully applied to many real-world problems involving graph-like data. Their predictions, however, are difficult to explain using human-understandable concepts from the relevant application domain.

*Monotonic GNNs* and *Max GNNs* are two novel subclasses of GNNs which enjoy well-defined connections with rule-based formal languages. Rules are much easier to understand by humans: their application is intuitive, and they are formulated in terms of properties and relations that capture meaningful concepts of the application domain. This connection between GNNs and rules opens the way for new applications that combine the powerful learning capabilities of GNNs with the clarity of rules. For example, the predictions made by a GNN could be explained using meaningful, easy-to-understand rules. This can help in fostering trust in the predictions of GNNs, in making this technology more accessible, and in ensuring compliance with legislation on algorithmic explainability. Furthermore, the connection with rules can be exploited to formally prove properties of the GNN model, which is crucial in safety-critical applications.

Department of Computer Sciences

Professor Li Zhang 

Li.Zhang@rhul.ac.uk

Exploiting Biodiversity-Well-being Relationships Using Explainable Precision Social and AI Models:

Human activities have been identified as significant drivers of climate change and the decline of biodiversity. These detrimental effects directly impact human mental and physiological well-being. As a result, achieving sustainability has become an urgent global goal. While aiming for net zero emissions is a positive step towards restoring ecological balance, it does not guarantee a secure future from a further deterioration that may lead to human extinction. Despite having a basic understanding of the relationship between climate change, biodiversity, and human actions, we lack precise models that offer accurate guidance on altering the course of Nature. To take more effective action, we require Precision Social and AI models that comprehend the various key factors influencing nature's ecosystems in different regions and globally. These models will enable us to identify optimal solutions for achieving sustainability locally and globally. Our aim: This project aims to validate the hypothesis that biodiversity, climate change, and human activities are closely associated with each other, and develop Nature-Inspired Explainable Precision Social and AI Models that help understand the causality of ecosystems in Nature’s own ways. Through these precise models, we will study relationships between biodiversity/climate change and human mental and physiological well-being, and identify optimal solutions to achieve sustainability with minimal efforts. By developing a nature-inspired revolutionary Precision Social and AI framework, we will better address climate crises, biodiversity contingencies, as well as human mental and physiological well-being.

The project will be supervised jointly by top researchers from Computer Science (Professor Li Zhang), Psychology (Dr Gabriele Bellucci), and Health Studies (Dr Mark Lee) in RHUL, and top experts from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and DDM Health.

Department of Classics

Professor Richard Alston

R.Alston@rhul.ac.uk

Cleopatra Stories: Using Ancient History to Narrate Issues of Race, Gender and Sex in the Contemporary World

Cleopatra stories are a crux in modern discourses of race, sex and gender. A popular figure for artists and dramatists from the early modern period onwards, Cleopatra’s legacy has been felt in discussion of sex and sin, empire and gender, race and identity. Before 1945, her modern receptions were tied together inextricably notions of sexuality, orientalism and empire and her legacy and imagined body were a site for imperialist, masculine sexual fantasy. Rather than becoming more distant with the decline of the colonial empires, Cleopatra has been weaponized in the culture wars.

The stories we tell shape our being in the world. The older stories, the narratives of history, resonate as representations of the fundamentals of human civilizations. The social purpose of Humanities is (in part) to expose, critique and explain the intellectual archaeology and deconstruct the mythic origins of such essentialism.

The fault lines in the Cleopatra stories allow exploration of the polemics through which representation in the historical-cultural record is refused and demanded. In a wider context, the project explores the narrative reinforcements and challenges thereto of discourses of race, gender and sexuality and the translation of those norms into antiquity; issues of race and representation and Whiteness in the reception of ancient history and the Roman Empire; Africa, Egypt, and the imperial legacies in contemporary cultures, and the issues around decolonializing cultures.

The PhD can be supported through the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome, the Departmental research themes around Contemporary Classics, and the Departmental commitment to research in issues of gender. The Gender Institute provides further institutional support. The source material to be analyzed range through poetry, novels, histories, documentaries, and television and cinema dramatizations and will be refined with the candidate. A public engagement element will be an integral part of the project.

Department of History

Dr Stella Moss

Stella.Moss@rhul.ac.uk 

Healthy Eating in Modern Britain: New Foodways and Cultures of Consumption, 1950-2000:

The second half of the twentieth century witnessed remarkable shifts in the food cultures of the British nation. The growing popularity of new types of health foods both shaped and reflected changes in home and work structures in many households. Exploration of this history also reveals important developments in relation to: class, gender, race and ethnicity, age and generation. Alongside ideas of healthy food, tastes for new ‘fast foods’ as well as more ‘exotic’ cuisine emerged, linked partly to increased availability and also evolving ideas about the role of food not ‘traditional’ to the British kitchen and palate in expressing social and cultural identities. Here the place of migrant food cultures was key, especially in terms of European and Asian cuisines. These imperatives around food preparation and consumption as an expression or symbol of culinary authenticity sometimes ran counter to other demands for healthy eating, sometimes leading to competing ideals in terms of the meanings attached to food cultures.

Despite the significance of these developments (as well as the considerable popular appeal of food history in contemporary publishing and broadcasting) there has been little scholarly historical work excavating this important history. Moreover, these themes have striking resonance in the context of current debates about the sustainability and security of food.
In order to investigate this history, particular use will be made of the online archive of the Association of Market and Social Research (AMSR), a unique collection of records charting changes in consumer views, as well as producers’ research into evolving market demands. Relevant materials include in-depth surveys on attitudes to healthy eating and responses to new foods launched in supermarkets.

Department of History 

Dr Matthew Smith & Dr Samantha Evans

Matthew.Smith@rhul.ac.uk 

Samantha.Evans@rhul.ac.uk

Faced with an existential funding crisis, how can local museum services and partnerships be reimagined to ensure their survival, enhance local engagement, and demonstrate their relevance as vital community assets to their various community stakeholders into the 2030s and beyond?:

Local museums are facing an existential funding crisis in the UK. Local authorities are spending 23% less per head on museums than they did 15 years ago, amounting to a real terms decrease of 42.1% when inflation is considered. In 2022 31% of local authorities reported zero per capita net expenditure on museums and galleries according to Arts Council England. These cuts come on the back of the devastating impact of the Covid pandemic and the energy costs crisis. As a result, local museums are more dependent than ever on increasingly competitive Lottery funding and local charitable giving, many are making redundancies, and some are facing the prospect of closure. Our own local museums are similarly under unprecedented pressure.

Action needs to be taken to ensure these vital community assets survive. This entails not just diversifying income streams, but crucially, reimagining what a local museum service looks like as we approach the 2030s; the partnerships that can be built between museums, their communities, local businesses and other local bodies to pool resource and amplify reach; and how collections can be mobilised in new and innovative ways to strengthen museums' position and for greater public good.

This PhD by Practice Public History project would involve interviewing local and independent museum leaders, heritage sector entrepreneurs, and community audiences and stakeholders; mapping and analysing innovative practice across the sector; and using our local museums, (Windsor and Royal Borough Museum and Egham Museum, who support this proposal) as labs where new ideas and approaches can be tested and evaluated. The project will culminate in a sector facing report and digital toolkit for local museum leaders, including activity and service plans, case studies, evaluation methods, and templates, that can be adapted to individual museum needs. These will be accompanied by a 40,000-word reflective thesis.

Department of History

Professor Kate Cooper & Dr Edmund Wareham Wanitzek

Kate.Cooper@rhul.ac.uk

Edmund.Wareham@rhul.ac.uk

World-building as a tool of wellbeing in Latin Christianity, ca. 200-1500:

Whatever their social class, ancient and medieval people lived lives of hardship by comparison to their modern counterparts, and in their religious literature they produced a rich tradition of imaginative resources encouraging individuals to find meaning in the challenges they faced. From a modern perspective, ancient and medieval efforts to cope with suffering and injustice can sometimes seem to side-step the question of resistance to systems of oppression; however, in some cases a deeper analysis sheds light on discourses and practices which supported individuals in distress by supplying enabling and empowering narratives aligned with a strategy of ‘agency under constraint’. Additionally, discourses of spiritual reinterpretation of hardship were sometimes accompanied by access to networks of valuable material or social support.

With this in mind, we invite proposals for dissertation projects exploring the 'story worlds' of hagiography and/or devotional literature in the formative period of Latin Christianity (ca. 200-1500), to be jointly supervised by Kate Cooper and Edmund Wareham Wanitzek. Possibilities include but are not limited to case studies drawn from the Latin martyr literature, hagiography, and devotional or conduct literature of Africa and Europe including the British Isles. Also welcome are comparative studies (whether comparing related material across genres, across periods, or across geographical regions). We are especially interested in proposals which explicitly engage with the problem of 'world-building' as a tool of pastoral care in a way that can support the wider work of the Social Purpose Research Innovation Hub.

Prospective applicants are encouraged to contact the prospective supervisors at an early stage of developing their proposal. While strong applications on other themes are welcome, preference may be given to projects which have the potential to benefit from collaboration with the Bedford Centre for the History of Women and Gender.

Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Professor Hannah Thompson

Hannah.Thompson@rhul.ac.uk

How can the theories and practices of Critical Disability Studies enable the creative and or cultural sector to improve the representation and engagement of D/deaf, disabled and neurodiverse visitors and / or workers?:

Department of English

Dr Helen Kingstone

helen.kingstone@rhul.ac.uk

How can intergenerational and intercultural creative practice be used in community settings to improve inclusion and community cohesion?:

As the UK riots of summer 2024 demonstrated, research that can bridge intergenerational and intercultural divides is urgently needed. This project combines creative methods with intergenerational practice in intercultural communities. It asks: how do we, across generations and across cultures, come together to create a shared vision of Britain that includes everybody?

Dr Helen Kingstone’s research shows that the intergenerational practice sector needs to access more effectively the intangible heritage that both younger and older people bring to their encounters. Co-supervisor Dr Karina Lickorish Quinn’s research demonstrates the need to invite children’s diverse linguistic and cultural heritages into the classroom to welcome children’s authentic selves and improve intercultural understanding.

Research has shown that creative methods are powerful in facilitating authentic sharing across boundaries (Kara 2015). Kingstone’s and Lickorish Quinn’s pilot research has already shown the value of methods including visualised life-narratives (Hall, Kingstone and King 2024) and multilingual poetry-writing (Barbour and Lickorish Quinn 2020).

The project will study how creative methods can best strengthen (a) the capability of the intergenerational practice sector to achieve their community-cohesion aims, (b) schools’ recognition of the value of multilingualism, (c) immigrant families’ inclusion and belonging, (d) younger and older people’s understanding of the intercultural heritage of others beyond their own family and community.

Department of Earth Sciences

Dr Jonathan Paul

Jonathan.Paul@rhul.ac.uk

Flood risk management and mitigation: Leveraging local knowledge to produce actionable data and meaningful protective strategies:

The January 2024 floods of the Thames Valley (west London to Oxford) were unprecedented in their sweeping scale and severity. Floodplains are supposed to flood: yet the inexorable need to build here has increased flood risk, which compounds existing longer-term climate trends that see dramatic, intense cloudbursts dominating in a region that is actually drying out.

Surprisingly, the provenance of most floodwater is the ground – slow, vertically upward seepages from a permeable gravel substrate – rather than the Thames and other surface drainage overtopping their banks. Yet knowledge of the disposition of this groundwater is as poor as its regulation and governance, which falls to local councils (rather than an expert body like the Environment Agency/EA).

The purpose of this studentship is to co-develop, with local people, strategies of mapping this flooding, and to do something about it. The candidate will work with residents’ and SME groups in the Thames Valley, as well as local government and the EA, to capture local knowledge of historical flooding and transform this qualitative information into data for hydrological modelling. Field surveys and laboratory analyses will inform analytical and numerical models to elucidate water flow direction and speeds in the ground, and predictions of flood risk. We will use elements of supervised learning – based on flood maps co-developed with the local community – to validate the modelling approach. A proof-of-concept of this methodology has been applied to Staines; a publication (in Water Resources Research) follows in Oct-24.

Social purpose fit-to-call:
• Flood risk reduction and resilience building in the immediate area around RHUL
• Involvement of local stakeholders throughout the research journey
• Raising local environmental awareness of local communities
• Development of new local research partnerships for RHUL
• Influence on policy change regarding (ground)water resource management first at local, then national, level, also affecting planning decisions e.g. floodplain construction

Department of Earth Sciences 

Dr Queenie Chan 

Queenie.Chan@rhul.ac.uk

Data Sciences; Atmosphere Science; Earth Sciences; Planetary Sciences; Computational Sciences:

Freshly fallen meteorites provide valuable information about the history and evolution of our solar system. Their rapid recovery is crucial for their subsequent analyses as terrestrial alteration can significantly impede their chemical signatures. In the UK, meteorite fall recovery is enabled by bright meteor sightings via meteor camera networks, dashboard cameras, eyewitnesses, etc. These efforts have led to the rapid recovery of the Winchcombe meteorite in 2021. However, this success has not been repeated in the subsequent fireball observations. The low meteorite fall recovery rate (0.1%) stems from the extreme difficulty in recovering meteorites observed by cameras alone, as the calculated strewn fields can span many kilometers that require 10s of man-hours to locate one meteorite fragment. Doppler radars designed for weather observations have recently been shown to be an effective tool for the rapid recovery of meteorite falls. Landing sites can be calculated with an accuracy of 10s to 100s of meters, significantly decreasing search time with a concordant increase in recovery likelihood. Using the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) NEXRAD data, searches have led to meteorite recoveries within days, such as the unique Sutter’s Mill meteorite. In the UK, the Met Office Radar network was made Doppler capable in 2012, with dual polarisation capability introduced in 2018 . Given the current state of computing power and rapid advancements in machine learning, data-mining the Met Office NIMROD weather radar data offers a pivotal advance in the detection and recovery of meteorite falls. This project will identify and locate major historic meteorite falls from archived radar data, and in doing so develop a new methodology to enhance the recovery of future fresh UK meteorite falls.

Department of Earth Sciences

Professor Martin King

M.King@rhul.ac.uk

Climate research owing to spillages from crude oil: 

Applications are invited for a research studentship to explore whether the natural oxidation of black carbon and crude oil materials in snow and sea ice can reduce the climatic impact of aerosols on cryosphere albedo.

Recent research indicates that even trace amounts of crude oil in sea ice can significantly decrease planetary albedo. The pollutions comes from anthropogenic oil and gas combustion and is transported to polar regions as aerosol or spillage. Rising concentrations may be contributing to earlier springs and the loss of sea ice in the Arctic. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has emphasized this radiative forcing in its latest report, highlighting considerable uncertainty. To clarify its effects on climate change in polar regions, it is crucial to parameterize the impact of crude oil on seance for integration into global climate models, examining its influence across different latitudes and seasons, as well as scenarios involving increased crude oils and its optical characteristics. As little as 10 ng of crude oil in 1 ml of snow can cause a change in albedo.

The successful candidate will carry out experiments in the sea-ice simulator at Royal Holloway. Their research will investigate the reflectivity and light penetration of snow and sea ice with varying levels of crude oil. Additionally, they will model the optical properties of the snow and ice and measure the decay of these properties due to natural oxidation by hydroxyl radicals and ozone. This research aims to deepen our understanding of crude oil's role in climate dynamics and improve the accuracy of climate models related to the cryosphere.

Department of Health Studies

Dr Preeti Mahato

Preeti.Mahato@rhul.ac.uk

To improve access, outcomes and experiences of pregnant and postpartum minoritised women living in deprived areas of Surrey and Hampshire counties:

More than 1 in 3 (35.8%) of all live births in England and Wales had either one or both parents who were non-UK born in the year 2022. Research suggests that Black and ethnic minority women have an increased risk of maternal mortality and adverse perinatal outcomes compared to white women. Similarly, babies from black and ethnic minority groups have double rates of neonatal death and stillbirth compared to babies born to white women. Data also suggests that the black and ethnic groups have the highest percentage of live births to mothers who live in the most deprived areas of England, with 82.9% of babies for this group born in the most deprived areas in 2019.

Some research has also indicated that ethnic minority women feel underserved by community-based services and have experienced negative interactions, stereotyping, discrimination and cultural insensitivity. Health inequalities faced by pregnant black and ethnic minority women contribute to these adverse perinatal outcomes. It is therefore imperative to investigate these inequalities and the experiences of these women. Given that the proportion of black and ethnic minority groups is increasing in Surrey and Hampshire counties with many living in deprived areas, it is important to study the reason for the inequalities to improve access to perinatal services, experiences of using these services to improve the perinatal outcomes for women of black and ethnic minority groups living in this region. Working with local charity organisations such as Surrey Ethnic Minority Forum (SMEF) and community groups, the proposed research will explore the reasons for inequalities in perinatal health for black and ethnic minority women living in the deprived areas of Surrey and Hampshire counties. The proposed study will use a mixed methods approach to answer the research question.

Department of Health Studies 

Dr Anne Majumdar

anne.majumdar@rhul.ac.uk

Prevention and Management of Type 2 Diabetes in Children of Ethnic Minority Backgrounds Experiencing Health Inequalities:

Health inequalities (HI) are a growing problem nationwide, and cause worse prevalence of chronic-health conditions and poorer outcomes, that can lead to a two-decade disparity in life expectancy. Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) , causes serious health complications, including cardiovascular disease, kidney, nerve damage which can result in blindness or limb amputation. T2D was historically developed in later-life, however ethnic minority children are being diagnosed at alarming levels, paediatric diabetes units report a 50% increase in cases treated within five years [1], highlighting the need for targeted interventions.

HI in childhood diabetes is driven by social, economic, environmental, and genetic influences. Barriers to addressing HI are exacerbated by distrust of healthcare, and lack of culturally-tailored interventions.
This PhD will use a community-led approach where young people from target communities become advocates for T2D prevention. Method: Children aged 9-12 with parents/carers, with or without diabetes, prediabetic conditions, obesity, particularly from ethnic minority backgrounds will be invited to participate.

• A mixed methods exploration. Survey: The PhD-led group will design culturally sensitive questionnaires to collect experiences and preferences from children, parents, and healthcare providers regarding T2D. The follow-up focus groups will draw out key issues from the survey, present these and discuss them in a group interview with our target communities.
• We will use results to create and facilitate a pilot programme of engaging health-themed activities to build connections and trust with children and families, gathering experiences and fostering discussions. Measurements to identify levels of obesity, central adiposity and diabetes-risk, among the children will include height, waist circumference, random blood glucose levels, and weight. Recruitment will be via our collaborators at LB Tower Hamlets Council, through the schools that targeted children attend, ensuring diverse representation.

We will have a strong social impact by improving children's long-term health, integrating hard-to-reach communities into healthcare, prevent T2D in childhood or in later-life and address HI.

Department of Health Studies

Dr Lynn Tang 

Lynn.Tang@rhul.ac.uk

Mental health, inequalities and recovery: 

This research proposal focuses on improving mental health care for hard-to-reach populations in the UK. Health inequalities in the UK can lead to life expectancy gaps of up to two decades within the same area. The intersection of mental health, social justice, and inequality, especially in disadvantaged communities, is a contributing factor. Structural inequalities—such as class, gender, and ethnicity—shape both the development of mental health issues and recovery journeys. Recent global disruptions, like COVID-19, the cost-of-living crisis, and migration, are likely to worsen these inequalities and create new mental health challenges.

Although national policies like the NHS Long Term Plan and the Advancing Mental Health Equalities strategy (2020) aim to tackle mental health inequalities, recent reports from Lord Darzi and the Marmot Review indicate that disparities have worsened, not improved, since 2010. This proposal calls for a critical assessment of local initiatives—such as social prescribing and community-based interventions—in responding to the needs of disadvantaged groups.

Key Research Areas:

• Effectiveness of Local Initiatives: How effectively do local mental health programs, such as social prescribing, address the needs of disadvantaged populations?
• Recovery-Oriented & Trauma-Informed Services: How can services become more recovery-oriented and trauma-informed, particularly for individuals affected by socio-economic and cultural disadvantages?
• Cultural Competency: How can primary care and mental health services become more culturally competent, especially in response to migration?
• Social Determinants of Mental Health: What emerging mental health needs arise from recent social disruptions, and how can local services adapt?

This PhD research will explore critical gaps in primary care and mental health services’ responses to inequalities. It will offer opportunities to work with Primary Care Networks and Integrated Care Systems connected to our Health Studies Department. The outcome will provide guidance on effective interventions for hard-to-reach populations, ensuring no one is left behind.

We welcome enquiries on related topics (Dr. Lynn Tang, Lynn.tang@rhul.ac.uk and Dr Anne Majumdar, Anne.Majumdar@rhul.ac.uk).

Department of Biological Sciences

Dr Christopher Wilkinson 

Christopher.Wilkinson@rhul.ac.uk

Parkinson's Disease; dementia:

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurological disorder with 140,000 sufferers in the UK, a number predicted to rise 30,000 by 2030. In addition to motor symptoms (tremor, rigidity), 40% of patients report depression and 30% report anxiety . In 80% of patients the disease leads to dementia. Parkinson’s impedes economic activity, a societal problem that is increasingly in focus both due to the impact on those who are economically inactive and the broader economy.

This project will use a Drosophila-zebrafish pipeline to investigate pharmacological modifiers of impaired locomotion in PD. Drosophila melanogaster (fly) provides a rapid and cost-effective model for identifying genetic and pharmacological factors that influence locomotor dysfunction. Flies exhibit dopaminergic neurodegeneration and motor impairments similar to those seen in PD, allowing a quick screen for compounds that restore motor function. Short lifespan and ease of genetic manipulation make them ideal for high-throughput drug discovery.

Zebrafish allows for further evaluation in a vertebrate system. Zebrafish share key features of brain anatomy relevant to PD, including conserved dopaminergic pathways. Fish fry exhibit quantifiable swimming behaviours, enabling researchers to assess effects of pharmacological agents on restoration of motor coordination. The transparent nature of zebrafish allows for live imaging of neuronal degeneration. This pipeline minimizes costs and ethical concerns compared to mammalian models, while offering robust preclinical insights into drug efficacy and safety. The combination of these two models enhances the chances of discovering effective treatments to improve locomotion in PD patients.

Department of Biological Sciences

Professor Julia Koricheva

Julia.Koricheva@rhul.ac.uk

Citizen science as a tool for enhancing human-nature connectedness and pro-environmental behaviour: 

Addressing the global environmental problems facing our planet requires not only governance and technological approaches, but also a significant shift in human behaviour. Personal experiences with nature and nature connectedness are one of the key drivers of pro-environmental behaviour. It is important therefore to explore the range of activities that can enhance the human–nature relationship. Citizen science (the involvement of volunteers in science and monitoring) is increasingly used to provide data for scientific research and often involves data collection while spending time in nature. Therefore, citizen science activities have potential not only to generate the data, but also to restore people’s connectedness with nature and to inspire people to change their behaviour and to use their voice to advocate for change. However, little research has been done to explore to what extent taking part in nature-based citizen science leads to increased nature connectedness and pro-environmental behaviour, which citizen science activities are most effective in this respect, and how activities can be designed to maximise nature connectedness. There is an opportunity to explore these questions through collaboration with Earthwatch Europe’s Tiny Forest programme which comprises over 250 tennis-court-sized forests planted in urban schools and community sites across the UK. Half of the forests are planted in areas scoring 4 or lower on the index of multiple deprivation. Earthwatch Europe engages local communities in citizen science monitoring of four ecosystem services provided by Tiny Forests: carbon storage, flood mitigation, biodiversity support, and thermal comfort. This provides opportunities to explore the impact of different science activities on citizen scientists of different age, gender and social background. The knowledge gained from this research will provide key information into how citizen science activities need to be designed to increase nature connectedness and promote pro-environmental behaviour.

Department of Psychology

Dr Kaili Rimfeld & Professor Dan Anderberg

Kaili.Rimfeld@rhul.ac.uk

Dan.Anderberg@rhul.ac.uk

Causal links between educational environments and mental health:

Statistics for mental health in the UK portray a stark picture: about three children in every classroom have a diagnosable mental health problem. Mental health issues often emerge in early adolescence, with earlier symptoms typically leading to worse outcomes. The NHS reports that the crisis is growing, with 1 in 4 young people (age 17-19) showing signs of mental disorder. However, effective, evidence-based interventions remain scarce. The crisis is likely to escalate, but the causes of mental health problems are not well understood. One particularly overlooked area is the school environment, where children spend significant time, potentially affecting their mental wellbeing. The current mental health crisis among young people calls for a paradigm shift toward identifying modifiable risk factors within their daily environments.

Risk factors for poor mental health are likely to be multifactorial, ranging from biological (genetic factors) to psychological (attitudes) and environmental (home and school environment; broader society) factors. There is an urgent need for research that combines these risk domains to better understand the processes affecting children's mental health. This project seeks to unlock the potential of the school environment in tackling the youth mental health crisis using longitudinal, genetically informed design and multiple cohorts and study designs to establish the causal links between school environment and mental health.

The proposed interdisciplinary project uses advanced statistical methods and is jointly supervised by Dr Kaili Rimfeld (Psychology) and Prof Dan Anderberg (Economics). This research has the potential to significantly influence policy and the design of intervention and prevention programmes, thereby contributing to a transformation in young people's mental wellbeing.

Department of Psychology

Dr Gabriele Bellucci 

gabriele.bellucci@rhul.ac.uk

Morality from a decision-making perspective:

Moral norms are specific behavioural guidelines that regulate humans’ actions in a huge number of aspects of their everyday lives. These norms are rooted in the moral beliefs and values of a society or community and are so fundamental to social functioning that they have been argued to represent a sort of universal grammar of human societies. This has been demonstrated in multiple research fields, such as neuroscience, cognitive development, cross-cultural studies, and work on nonhuman primates. However, despite all the research in different scientific fields, there is little consensus about what moral norms are and do, and a general framework of norm behaviour is missing to-date.

This project aims to investigate moral norms in terms of their algorithmic representation. Starting from a decision-theoretic prospective, the project will study how moral norms as computational tools help humans make inferences and decisions. The project will use a multidimensional approach to explore what cognitive mechanisms moral norms promote, which neural dynamics they involve, and how they evolve. The project will hence require advanced experimental designing, like online and in-lab multiplayer games as well as interactions with model-based agents, combined with state-of-the-art computational modelling and neuroimaging techniques (i.e., functional magnetic resonance imaging) to dive into the different cognitive dimensions underlying morality.
Understanding moral norms is pivotal to address major global challenges our society stands to face in the upcoming decades like erosion of social trust, rising inequalities, and political polarization. Moreover, it is hard to promote positive norm change if it is not clear how moral norms emerge and spread in society. Hence, understanding the cognitive and psychological underpinnings of moral decision-making is pivotal to develop strategies and policies that most effectively harness positive impacts and mitigate harm in response to the collective challenges of the future.

Department of Politics, International Relationships and Philosophy

Dr Andreu Casas Salleras 

andreu.casas@rhul.ac.uk

Social media and politics; computational methods; determinants and consequences of the moderation of political speech by private social media platforms:

Citizens increasingly rely on social media (SM) to express opinions and engage in politics. In recent years SM companies have played an active role in regulating freedom of speech by removing accounts. Companies mostly do so to battle bots and toxic behaviour, and so improve the health of the platforms. However, due to a lack of transparency, we do not clearly know the conditions under which SM companies regulate speech, nor the effects (and effectiveness) of their policies. This new regulation paradigm (with a handful of companies regulating the voice of millions) poses new challenges to democratic accountability that need to be rapidly addressed; a problem that speaks to ongoing discussions about the social responsibilities of commercial companies and the tension between open vs. healthy platforms.

Preliminary research, as well as political groups in Western and non-Western countries, argue that SM companies censor users based on ideology, raising relevant democratic concerns. In addition, we lack a full cross-platform understanding of the effects suspensions have on users. How do users behave on other platforms after being censored on another one? How do their followers react? Answering these questions is crucial to assessing the veracity of these claims, and to designing a better theoretical/normative model for when censorship might contribute to SM’s role in democracy.

Challenges related to analysing big SM data have made it difficult for research on this pressing topic to flourish. I ramp-up this research by leveraging innovative computational methods to disentangle the nature and consequences of this new paradigm on three widely used SM platforms. The project contributes to identifying the size of the problem, the dynamics of censorship, their effects on the quality of public discourse, and to keeping accountable the companies regulating our online environment.

Department of Politics, International Relationships and Philosophy

Professor Tom Dyson

Tom.Dyson@rhul.ac.uk

Learning from Conflict: Lesson Learning within the British Armed Forces:

Organisational learning is vital for the capacity of NATO and its member- and partner-states to cope with the widening scope and intensity of contemporary security challenges. It matters not only for combat effectiveness, but also for budgetary oversight, democratic accountability, political legitimacy, personnel recruitment, and skill retention.

Technological advances in the communication, storage, and dissemination of information during the 1990s created the foundation for militaries to rise to this challenge of organisational learning through the establishment of permanent formal learning processes. These ‘lessons-learned processes’ have developed across NATO over the 2000s, based upon emulation of the NATO 'Lessons-Learned Process' developed by NATO's Joint Analysis and Lessons-Learned Centre. Usually overseen by dedicated lessons-learned branches within the services and the joint environment, they focus on improving the ability of militaries to identify best-practices and to uncover, resolve, and disseminate tactical, operational and strategic level lessons from exercises, operations, allies, and partners such as non-governmental organisations and other government departments.

While the NATO Lessons-Learned Process is a mature and clearly-documented model, the model, its recommendations have been adopted in widely-varying ways and with disparate levels of effectiveness within NATO members and partners. The UK Armed Forces have been a leader in the adoption of implementation of the NATO lessons-learned process. Hence, this studentship will explore the development and performance of lessons-learned processes at the Joint level within UK Strategic Command and also at the Service level, within the British Army. It will focus especially on developments following the 2016 Chilcot Report, which identified the vital importance of lessons-learning in defence.

Department of Politics, International Relationships and Philosophy

Professor James Sloam

james.sloam@rhul.ac.uk

Amplifying the The Voices of Young People from Disadvantaged and Traditionally Marginalised Groups in Public Policy: 'How can local and civic authorities effectively co-create policy with children and young people?': 

Young people in the UK are facing a polycrisis regarding key issues such as child poverty mental health and climate change but are a largely ignored presence in policy-making circles. Yet, the evidence shows that meaningful youth participation leads to more nuanced and sustainable governance. The proposed studentship will examine ways of amplifying youth voice (especially youth from disadvantaged backgrounds) by answering the question: ‘How can local and civic authorities effectively co-create policy with children and young people?’
The student would apply Professor Sloam’s ‘civic mentoring model’, developed in studies with the Mayor of London’s Peer Outreach Team, as a framework for understanding pathways and obstacles to the effective implementation of youth engagement strategies. In doing so, the project aligns with the College’s priority of addressing inequalities in society as well as contributing to practical solutions (supporting the Social Purpose research innovation hub).

The student (with Prof. Sloam and co-supervisor Dr. Kaat Smets) would work closely with UNICEF UK (participation confirmed by Dr. Penny Bernstock) to examine the research question through the lens of their Child-Friendly Cities and Communities programme. The collaboration would include a 2-3-month placement within the organisation, which would provide an opportunity for in-depth fieldwork with unique access to UNICEF and its many partners in the UK. It would lead to the authoring of a UNICEF/RHUL report and academic publications (co-authored with the supervisors) beyond its contribution to the student’s PhD thesis.

We envisage the student using a mixed-methods approach that would draw upon narrative analysis to unlock the views of children and young people and challenge power structures that lead to tokenism in youth engagement. Both supervisors are experienced in research with young people, elite interview techniques (with policy-makers) and public policy analysis, which will be necessary components of the project.

Department of Politics, International Relationships and Philosophy

Dr Antara Datta

Antara.Datta@rhul.ac.uk

Refugee Politics in India:

This project will examine how refugees changed ideas about borders and citizenship in South Asia. The applicant could look at Partition refugees, later refugees from Tibet or Sri Lanka or more recent changes around citizenship legislation in the subcontinent. Students who wish to study statelessness in South Asia through the prism of displaced populations are also welcome to apply. I welcome students using archival methods, oral histories as well as other qualitiative methods in their research.

Department of Politics, International Relationships and Philosophy

Dr Yoav Galai & Professor Roberta Mock

yoav.galai@rhul.ac.uk

Roberta.Mock@rhul.ac.uk

Dialogic Creative Practices of Jewish Memories and Imaginaries:

This interdisciplinary research project integrates artistic practice, advanced visual methods, and social science methods, supporting an academic approach that centres creative engagement as a mode of addressing political impasses. It will explore the generative potentials of Jewish imaginaries through the layering and construction of a multidirectional mapping that cuts across the conflicting identities and discourses that frame contemporary Jewish life in a tumultuous historical moment.

The resulting PhD thesis will comprise an integrated body of critical and creative, textual and visual work that explores Jewish imaginaries and collective/communal/collaborative aesthetics from several interconnected angles, including Judaism, Jewishness, Zionism, Antisemitism, philosemitism, decolonialism, and Islamophobia. Methodologically, the candidates will develop creative work, which will interrogate religious, racial, gendered and political implications, as well as their intersection with aesthetic technologies. This could take the form of live performance, performance to camera, film, screen- or time-based media, socially engaged or participatory work, or any combination.

The project will centre the reflexive production of either an iteratively-staged single creative project or else a portfolio of artistic work that is likely to be in dialogue with, for example, Oreet Ashery’s Welcome Home/ Necessary Journey (2005); Mirta Kupferminc’s The Skin of Memory (La piel de la memoria) (2007); Eli Valley’s Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel (2017); Ben Spatz’s Postmemory in the North (2022); or Rachel Mars’s Forge (2022). Employing structured public engagement and audience interaction to both share and draw responses to ongoing production, this creative practice will ground rigorous critical analysis in Visual Politics and Jewish Cultural Studies, in order to act as both knowledge formation and co-produced knowledge presentation.

This project will be co-supervised by Dr Yoav Galai, who brings expertise in political visual literacy, international relations and post-conflict memorialization, and Professor Roberta Mock, with expertise in creative practice research, gender and bodies in performance, and Jewish cultural studies.

Department of Economics

Professor Melanie Luhrmann & Dr Gregory Veramendi 

Melanie.Luhrmann@rhul.ac.uk

Gregory.Veramendi@rhul.ac.uk

Does the mental health crisis harm young people’s career choices and future economic well-being? (area: mental health, economics, inequality, education): 

The social purpose of this project is to address the developmental and socio-economic impacts of the youth mental health crisis, and to quantify the benefits of timely medical intervention. The PhD project aims to quantify the extent to which mental health disorders may “derail” or “hamper” young people, with potentially lifelong effects on their earnings and well-being.

The supervisors will ensure that the social purpose reaches its potential through state-of-the art research, advanced methods, and a dissemination strategy that communicates the evidence to the NHS, DHSC, Surrey County Council, mental health charities such as Mind, and parliamentary select committees.

The Mental Health of Children and Young People in England 2023 report, published by NHS England, shows that one in five children and young people in England aged eight to 25 had a probable mental disorder in 2023. The Royal College of Psychiatrists recommends early intervention in the life course, since the majority of mental illnesses have childhood antecedents (see Gondek et al., 2020). Fast access to mental health services, either so-called talking therapies or medication, are key factors in treating these mental disorders. However, there is large heterogeneity in access to treatment across England.

Analysis will be based on the Millenium Cohort Study, a panel survey following individuals born in 2000, linked to their academic performance (National Pupil Database). The PhD student will exploit local geographic variation in propensity to prescribe anti-depressants, waiting times for talk therapy, combined with individual medical treatment usage to estimate impacts of treated and untreated mental health disorders on the development of socio-emotional skills, academic performance, and future earnings expectations. Methods will utilize advanced methods of causal inference (Borusyak and Hull, 2023) and machine learning to identify teenager groups who are vulnerable to mental health disorders and may be particularly receptive to medical treatment.

Department of Law & Criminology

Stephen Dnes

Stephen.Dnes@rhul.ac.uk

Data use online: Protecting consumers while protecting innovation:

I would like to recruit a student to investigate, evaluate and move forward the debate on data use online. Since at least the passage of the GDPR, there has been a debate about the basis for data about individuals, and data related to individuals. This has profound societal impacts because of the impact of policy decision making on many stakeholders, notably the press who rely on data-driven systems to fund content. There is also limited legal and regulatory doctrine as many new cases present novel issues, such as in the recent UK Competition and Markets Authority's investigations into mobile browsers and Google Chrome. These cases will develop important doctrines with wide societal implications, e.g., the use of individual level data points for advertising and the safeguards required for data-rich systems including AI. Good policy here would protect the consumer against material risk while still allowing low-risk data use needed for innovation and competition against the largest tech companies, thereby avoiding monopoly outcomes.

Department of Politics, International Relationships and Philosophy 

Dr Suki Finn

Suki.Finn@rhul.ac.uk

Philosophy of Reproduction:

If you are reading this, you are likely to be alive. And if you are alive, you are likely to be so as the result of a pregnancy. The sciences (in particular, biology) have added immensely to our knowledge of reproduction, and so it has come to be thought that questions pertaining to pregnancy are best left within the scientific domain. But this thought is mistaken, as there are philosophical issues about reproduction that are not well suited to the sciences, leaving many questions about pregnancy unanswered, and some even unasked. Undertaking a PhD in such areas at Royal Holloway University of London therefore provides an opportunity to contribute to exciting and growing research that directly relates to and impacts upon ‘social purpose’, with some of the leading scholars in the field.

Dr Suki Finn invites PhD students to investigate philosophical aspects of reproduction and how they manifest in social, legal, political, and medical contexts. The proposed thesis can relate to any of the following topics:

• Ethics of assisted reproductive technologies, such as ectogenesis and ectogestation;
• Metaphysical understandings of the gestator-foetus relationship and their implications;
• Phenomenology of the intersection of gendered and pregnant embodiment;
• Gendered parenthood, including trans and nonbinary pregnancies and queer kinship;
• Stratification of outcomes and social inequalities prevalent in reproductive healthcare;
• Political theorising and feminist movements on issues regarding gender and reproduction;
• Queer theory, crip theory, and critical race theory, on the reproduction of race and disability;
• Social reproduction theory and the interaction between family-making and capitalism.

Dr Suki Finn is also happy to receive queries on other relevant topics.

Department of Drama, Theatre and Performance

Dr Yoav Galai & Professor Roberta Mock

yoav.galai@rhul.ac.uk

Roberta.Mock@rhul.ac.uk

Dialogic Creative Practices of Jewish Memories and Imaginaries:

This interdisciplinary research project integrates artistic practice, advanced visual methods, and social science methods, supporting an academic approach that centres creative engagement as a mode of addressing political impasses. It will explore the generative potentials of Jewish imaginaries through the layering and construction of a multidirectional mapping that cuts across the conflicting identities and discourses that frame contemporary Jewish life in a tumultuous historical moment.

The resulting PhD thesis will comprise an integrated body of critical and creative, textual and visual work that explores Jewish imaginaries and collective/communal/collaborative aesthetics from several interconnected angles, including Judaism, Jewishness, Zionism, Antisemitism, philosemitism, decolonialism, and Islamophobia. Methodologically, the candidates will develop creative work, which will interrogate religious, racial, gendered and political implications, as well as their intersection with aesthetic technologies. This could take the form of live performance, performance to camera, film, screen- or time-based media, socially engaged or participatory work, or any combination.

The project will centre the reflexive production of either an iteratively-staged single creative project or else a portfolio of artistic work that is likely to be in dialogue with, for example, Oreet Ashery’s Welcome Home/ Necessary Journey (2005); Mirta Kupferminc’s The Skin of Memory (La piel de la memoria) (2007); Eli Valley’s Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel (2017); Ben Spatz’s Postmemory in the North (2022); or Rachel Mars’s Forge (2022). Employing structured public engagement and audience interaction to both share and draw responses to ongoing production, this creative practice will ground rigorous critical analysis in Visual Politics and Jewish Cultural Studies, in order to act as both knowledge formation and co-produced knowledge presentation.

This project will be co-supervised by Dr Yoav Galai, who brings expertise in political visual literacy, international relations and post-conflict memorialization, and Professor Roberta Mock, with expertise in creative practice research, gender and bodies in performance, and Jewish cultural studies.