This PhD investigates how deer management, recreation, and conservation interact in multi-use landscapes such as the New Forest and South Downs National Parks. Combining social science, camera-trap ecology, and systematic review, it explores deer manager decision-making, human-deer disturbance dynamics, dietary overlap with grazers, and stakeholder-driven land-use futures.

Deer management is a central issue in multi-use landscapes where conservation, recreation, woodland restoration, and public access objectives overlap, such as the New Forest and South Downs National Parks. Current understanding of how deer managers make decisions, how deer respond to human activity, and how these dynamics interact with conservation grazing and stakeholder priorities remains limited. This interdisciplinary PhD addresses these gaps through four objectives:

1. Examine how professional and recreational stalkers make deer management decisions under the competing pressures of a multi-use landscape, including the influence of deer behaviour, technology, and landscape objectives.
2. Use remote camera-trap arrays and causal inference methods to quantify how visitor pressure and management activity affect deer movement, foraging, and vigilance behaviour.
3. Conduct a systematic review of dietary overlap between deer and sympatric domestic or semi-feral grazers, to assess competition for forage and its implications for deer management and conservation outcomes.
4. Develop and test participatory approaches for identifying the values, priorities, and trade-offs of stakeholders in shaping future land management.

The student will gain training across qualitative social research, spatial and statistical ecology, systematic review methods, and participatory scenario planning, working with conservation practitioners and land managers in real-world multi-use landscapes.

Findings will contribute evidence to inform deer management policy and practice. The project would suit a candidate interested in working across disciplines, combining natural and social science approaches to address complex management challenges.

Entry requirements: A very good undergraduate degree (at least a UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent) in a relevant subject. For example, geography, environmental science, ecology, biology. Keenness to develop a broad and interdisciplinary skill set.

Please apply via the online portal and select: Programme type: Research, Academic year: 2026/27, Faculty: Environmental and Life Sciences. Search for programme PhD Environmental Sciences (8491). Please add the name of the supervisor in section 2 of the application.

Applications should include: your CV (resumé), 2 academic references, degree transcripts/ certificates to date, English language qualification (if applicable), A cover letter explaining 1) why you are applying, and 2) how your specific skills and experience make you suited to the objectives of this PhD.

Funding: FULL TIME ONLY. This project is co-funded by the University of Southampton and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation.

This PhD investigates how deer management, recreation, and conservation interact in multi-use landscapes such as the New Forest and South Downs National Parks. Combining social science, camera-trap ecology, and systematic review, it explores deer manager decision-making, human-deer disturbance dynamics, dietary overlap with grazers, and stakeholder-driven land-use futures.

Deer management is a central issue in multi-use landscapes where conservation, recreation, woodland restoration, and public access objectives overlap, such as the New Forest and South Downs National Parks. Current understanding of how deer managers make decisions, how deer respond to human activity, and how these dynamics interact with conservation grazing and stakeholder priorities remains limited. This interdisciplinary PhD addresses these gaps through four objectives:

1. Examine how professional and recreational stalkers make deer management decisions under the competing pressures of a multi-use landscape, including the influence of deer behaviour, technology, and landscape objectives.
2. Use remote camera-trap arrays and causal inference methods to quantify how visitor pressure and management activity affect deer movement, foraging, and vigilance behaviour.
3. Conduct a systematic review of dietary overlap between deer and sympatric domestic or semi-feral grazers, to assess competition for forage and its implications for deer management and conservation outcomes.
4. Develop and test participatory approaches for identifying the values, priorities, and trade-offs of stakeholders in shaping future land management.

The student will gain training across qualitative social research, spatial and statistical ecology, systematic review methods, and participatory scenario planning, working with conservation practitioners and land managers in real-world multi-use landscapes.

Findings will contribute evidence to inform deer management policy and practice. The project would suit a candidate interested in working across disciplines, combining natural and social science approaches to address complex management challenges.

Entry requirements: A very good undergraduate degree (at least a UK 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent) in a relevant subject. For example, geography, environmental science, ecology, biology. Keenness to develop a broad and interdisciplinary skill set.

Please apply via the online portal and select: Programme type: Research, Academic year: 2026/27, Faculty: Environmental and Life Sciences. Search for programme PhD Environmental Sciences (8491). Please add the name of the supervisor in section 2 of the application.

Applications should include: your CV (resumé), 2 academic references, degree transcripts/ certificates to date, English language qualification (if applicable), A cover letter explaining 1) why you are applying, and 2) how your specific skills and experience make you suited to the objectives of this PhD.

Funding: FULL TIME ONLY. This project is co-funded by the University of Southampton and the British Association for Shooting and Conservation.