PhD Studentship: Sport and Exercise Sciences: Fully Funded PhD studentship in Sports Science, Performance Science/Skill Acquisition/Biomechanics & Technology

Swansea University - Engineering and Applied Sciences School

This studentship aims to develop valid and high-fidelity immersive simulations to support the transfer of performance to competitive sporting environments. Immersive simulation is widely used in healthcare teaching and training, and in 2023 Swansea University opened a new Simulation and Immersive Learning Centre (SUSIM) for this purpose. The Department of Sport and Exercise Sciences have been collaborating with the SUSIM team to explore the potential for applications of immersive wall technology to support skill acquisition, training and testing in performance sport. This proposed collaborative PhD between Swansea University and the University of Canberra aims to complement and enhance an existing project at Swansea University that has scoped similar applications across other domains and is exploring the potential for this technology to elicit realistic emotional responses in simulated sporting environments. The proposed PhD will explore new potential sporting applications, develop new simulations, and evaluate the validity (particularly face and construct) and fidelity of these simulations in order to provide an evidence base to support their implementation into high performance sport.

The PhD is jointly funded by Swansea University and the University of Canberra. Both universities have committed to match funding the project, and there will be supervisory input from both Universities from the outset. The successful candidate will initially enrol on a Swansea University PhD, and when a formal agreement between the two Universities is finalised, the successful candidate will have the opportunity to transfer enrolment to the PhD programme agreed by both Universities. The studentship will be hosted at Swansea University given the location of the SUSIM Centre. Whilst time at the University of Canberra is not an expectation of this studentship, the student will have the opportunity to spend some time at the University of Canberra if they wish and it is valuable for the project and/or their development, but there is currently no additional funding (to that listed below) allocated to support this travel.

This is a full-time PhD, and is an interdisciplinary sports sciences project, including input from experts in Performance Science, Skill Acquisition, and Biomechanics & Technology, as well as others as required.