We are advertising two fully funded PhD projects on topics at the cross-over of demography and spatial statistics/GIScience.

Applicants criteria for both positions:

1) A first class or an upper secondary undergraduate or master’s degree in any area of social, environmental and health sciences (including statistics and applied mathematics);

2) Interest in developing and/or applying advanced quantitative methods in social sciences ;

3) Interest in working with spatial and longitudinal data;

4) For non-native speakers, a high level of English (University of St Andrews requires a minimum IELTS score of 6.5).

Coding skills are an advantage (e.g. in R, Python, Stata or SAS), but not required.

Both projects start in October 2019.

 

1. Modelling Short- and Long-Term Effects of Air Pollution and Temperature on Population Health and Mortality

The aim of this project is to investigate short- and long-term effects of air pollution and extreme weather events on health and mortality in Britain. This will be done by developing a multilevel survival model to study the effect of time-varying contextual factors on individuals’ health and mortality.

This project is funded by the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science / ESRC, check your eligibility here.

Project description / How to apply / DL 10 April 2019

Supervisors: Prof Hill Kulu and myself.

 

2. Climate Change, Air Pollution and Ethnic Inequalities in Health: Analysis and Projection Based on Longitudinal Register Data from Scotland

The objectives of this PhD project are to study effects of air pollution and extreme weather events on population health and mortality on ethnic groups in Scotland and to project future health behaviour and mortality patterns as response to changes in weather and pollution. For this, we will link individual-level ethnic group data from the Scottish Longitudinal Study (SLS) and environmental data linked to individuals’ residential contexts, such as meteorological and air quality data.

This project is funded by the St Leonard’s College Interdisiplinary Scholarship of the University of St Andrews.

Project description / How to apply / DL 10 May 2019

Supervisors: Prof Hill Kulu, Prof Frank Sullivan (School of Medicine) and myself.