Award

PhD Scholarship including:

a stipend of £17,668 per year
a tuition fee waiver for three years
an annual expense allowance of £500.

Deadline

7 June 2024

Eligibility Criteria

Applications will be considered based on the quality of the research proposal and its alignment with the focus outlined below. The strengths of the individual candidate (in relation to academic competence and commitment) will be considered.
A good first degree or Masters in Psychology (or relevant discipline) is essential.
All non-native speakers of English must be proficient in written and spoken English.
The successful applicant will be required to undertake 50 hours of teaching related work each year.
You must have applied for both a place on the PhD programme as well as a scholarship by the scholarship application deadline of 7 June 2024.
The successful candidate must be available to begin their studies in December 2024 on a full-time basis.

Scholarship Focus

The scholarship will focus on: Exposure to light as a mediator of the impacts of circadian disturbances on behaviour and affective experiences

The alignment of sleep and circadian health with cycles of day and night plays a critical role in behaviour, cognition and mental health. The project builds on the current and previous work of the research team on sleep and circadian health in clinical and nonclinical populations. The project will be taking a broader view of sleep and circadian health (i.e., duration, efficiency, timing, alertness, and quality) across a combination of physiological, behavioural, and psychological markers.

The aim of the project is to explore the role of ‘exposure to light’ (environmental and seasonal) as a core mediator between the physiological changes in circadian rhythms and sleep and its impact on behaviour, cognition and mental health. The entrainment of circadian rhythms is achieved by environmental time cues (i.e., zeitgebers), physical and daily activities, social cues, meals, and work patterns.

By constraining the cycles of sleep/activity cycles, shiftwork represents a unique opportunity to explore the impacts of disturbances on the entrainment of circadian rhythms in sleep and circadian health. Furthermore, variations in exposure to light (e.g., light during the night, lack of light during the day) are recognised as key factors driving the misalignment and adverse health consequences. We are interested in melanopic lux, a new metric of the light captured by the retina in opposition to metrics that measure light in the environment.

The objectives of the PhD are:

To examine the impacts of exposure to light on the sleep and circadian health of adult healthy populations
To study the dynamic interplay between sleep and circadian rhythms, and behaviour in healthy populations with diversified working time arrangements (i.e., shiftwork) and the role of exposure to light mediating the impacts of sleep/circadian disturbances on affective experiences (i.e., SAD)
To model the impact of increasing sleep/circadian disruption on behaviour and the mediating or mitigating role of exposure to light.

The successful candidate will be aligned with the Health & Wellbeing thematic group of the School of Psychology and Life Sciences under the supervision of Professor Teresa C. D'Oliveira. Professor Sukhi Shergill (Kent and Medway Medical School/CCCU, King's College London) and Dr Philip Ulrich.

Interested applicants should contact Professor Teresa C. D'Oliveira for an informal discussion (teresa.doliveira@canterbury.ac.uk).

How to apply

You will be asked to interview with a potential supervisor in the Faculty and will be required to submit a research proposal.
Submit your application via the website.

For any queries about the application and admissions process please contact Postgraduate Admissions pgadmissions@canterbury.ac.uk.