Renewable energy has recently gained significant global attention as a response to climate concerns. In the UK, offshore renewable energy (wind, tidal, and wave) holds promising potential for driving the transition towards clean energy production. However, the development of renewable energy at sea presents challenges, such as potential conflicts with existing sea-based activities and environmental threats. These risks become more concerning when it comes to large-scale projects falling under the category of Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs) under the Planning Act 2008. These projects are subject to consultation obligations that form part of mandatory Environmental Assessment (EA). Within this framework, developers must inform the public about the potential harmful environmental effects of the project and allow stakeholders to express their opinions. The research in this area has extensively considered the importance of public participation, demonstrating that involving the public and stakeholders in discussions and decision-making processes enhances the quality of decisions made, thereby improving the environmental impact of proposed projects. Whilst stakeholder engagement cannot in itself be the sole cause of either the approval or rejection of development consent, it has been found that stakeholder engagement has led to the realisation of effective mitigation measures aiming to prevent, reduce and potentially offset adverse environmental effects. Thus, public engagement plays an important role in mitigating environmental threats arising from renewable energy developments. The UK Government has recently announced that EIA will be replaced by a new procedure called Environmental Outcome Reports (EORs). The rationale behind this major alteration to the law is to streamline the process and remove barriers to development such as costly and time-consuming procedures faced by developers. However, simplifying the EA process for developers may limit public participation and the opportunity for stakeholders to influence the planning decisions. Research is needed to analyse the extent to which the recently-proposed EORs will impact upon the social dimension of marine planning. Given the crucial role of public participation in ensuring the democratic legitimacy of decisions, this research will make a novel contribution by examining public engagement within the new regime of EORs. It will focus on offshore renewable projects due to the strong incentives of the UK to accelerate progress in blue economy, and to harness clean energy resources from oceans which can increase tension between different stakeholders with competing interests in the use of the sea. Therefore, the primary objective of the research is to analyse the extent to which public engagement is addressed in the new regulatory framework of EORs within the context of offshore renewable energy development. Since the details of the EORs are currently in the process of being determined through secondary legislation, this timely research will identify the main challenges currently surrounding public engagement for offshore renewables and will propose practical solutions for the new EOR system to follow. This will be achieved by conducting semi-structured interviews with those who have participated in recently consented offshore renewable energy developments in the UK. A law-in-context approach will be adopted to analyse the relevant rules within their broader environmental and societal context. To this end, an interdisciplinary methodology will be employed, combining legal doctrinal methods with empirical data collection. While the UK region will serve as the primary context for analysis, the ultimate findings of the research will provide valuable insights for policymakers worldwide who seek to improve public engagement in their respective EA procedures for offshore renewable energy.

Mangrove forests provide a wealth of ecosystem services to the marine and terrestrial environments and to people. These forests are biodiversity hotspots and mangrove trees play a key role in the protection against natural hazards. Mangroves also store large amounts of carbon and are amongst the world's most carbon-rich ecosystems. The carbon stored by mangroves is called Blue Carbon and may be crucial in counterbalancing anthropogenic CO2 emissions and mitigating climate change. Human activities and climate change are posing serious threats and mangrove forests are in rapid decline worldwide. Despite the many benefits they provide, land-use change in coastal areas and sea level rise are leading to the degradation of mangroves with negative impacts on the ecosystem services they provide. Lack of understanding on the long-term evolution of mangrove ecosystems hinders the design and implementation of appropriate environmental management and as a result, essential ecosystem services are already being lost.

My project challenges how playwrights are understood in early modern historiography, examining the dramatist as de facto historian in the period c.1560 - 1623, from the publication of Sackville and Norton's Gorboduc to that of Shakespeare's First Folio. My research addresses key problems in the existing scholarship: How should we define a 'history play?' What did people in early modern England understand by the concept? Did dramatists have shared conceptions of history, or did multiple understandings of history exist simultaneously? What research methodologies did dramatists use, and how did they synthesize and adapt their sources? What did the past look like on stage? The most significant problem in the study of early modern history plays is that there exists no scholarly consensus on what the term 'history play' actually means. Early modern plays have traditionally been divided into 'history', 'tragedy', and 'comedy', a typology derived from Shakespeare's 1623 First Folio. However, this typology is rife with problems, and is often contradicted by editions from Shakespeare's lifetime (e.g., the first quarto King Lear refers to it as a history). My project aims to arrive at a workable definition for the term 'history play' based in historiography, defining it in a contextually-specific and historically sensitive manner. Plays based on historical events and sources were not the only type of drama that made use of historical themes or pretexts; plays such as The Merchant of Venice are referred to as histories in quarto titles despite having no known historical basis, while others like Titus Andronicus have a historical setting but a fictional plot. I will address the diverse uses of the past in drama by constructing a database of all extant plays from the period featuring historical themes, recording information like titles, publication dates, sources, chronology, and setting. This will allow for the identification of historiographical trends, enabling unprecedented comparison of playwrights' sources. Key to understanding the role of playwright as de facto historian is exploring their research methods, and how they adapted their sources. My project conducts an in-depth historiographical survey of a broad range of history plays and the histories on which they are based (e.g., Holinshed's Chronicles or Foxe's Acts and Monuments), exploring how multiple (often contradictory) sources were synthesized and adapted for the stage. One particularly significant shift in historical thought in the early modern period is the emergence of a 'visual sense' used in early modern drama? While it is generally accepted that some historical costuming was used in Classically-set plays, little work has been done to understand how history plays set in other periods were costumed. Ultimately, my thesis aims to re-contextualise the history play as a genre, to correct significant misconceptions in the established historiography, and to improve our understanding of the role ideas about the past played in early modern society.

Climate change is particularly pronounced in the polar regions, precipitating widespread range shifts, invasions of new species and losses of others. These changes present significant challenges for conservation of marine vertebrates; thus a suite of biomonitoring strategies is required to help manage marine resources and monitor biodiversity. Furthermore, polar regions provide extreme and expensive field conditions for researchers with many understudied species and a dearth of knowledge on ecosystem functioning. Monitoring methods such as visual survey, bioacoustics, and biologging are spatially limited and expensive, often requiring extensive ship time and expert knowledge. In many cases, they also do not provide high-resolution taxonomic classification and are not effective in evaluating taxonomically cryptic, elusive or undescribed species. Environmental DNA (eDNA) monitoring is one strategy that could provide a rapid, non-invasive tool to characterise polar vertebrate biodiversity. Routinely used in, for example, freshwater ecology, eDNA is currently an underdeveloped method for monitoring marine animals. Current eDNA-based methods focus on cataloguing taxa, but rarely generate information on intraspecific community diversity or resilience, nor are they developed for systematic monitoring. Recent expeditions by Greenpeace, in collaboration with SPYGEN (www.spygen.com) and the University of Montpellier (France), collected 100+ samples from polar regions generating mitochondrial 12S sequence datasets for mammals, teleosts and elasmobranchs. The student will analyse these samples and generate bioinformatic pipelines and protocols that will help to provide the next step in eDNA monitoring for marine ecosystem characterisation and conservation. Project Aims and Methods The student will use bioinformatic procedures based on sequence-level classification to maximise the utility of eDNA datasets for biomonitoring to inform the future implementation of eDNA biomonitoring in relation to marine biodiversity management (Figure 1). The PhD student will: 1. Further develop a bioinformatics pipeline to classify eDNA sequence datasets to examine polar communities at the population level (instead of basic cataloguing at the species, genus and family levels) and use the recovered phylogenetic signal to measure intra- and intercommunity diversity as captured by eDNA sampling. 2. Take advantage of available molecular sequence databases, e.g. Genbank (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank) and generated by Tara Ocean Expeditions (www.oceans.taraexpeditions.org) to investigate trophic links between vertebrates and phyto- and zooplankton community diversity. 3. Feedforward results to web-based platforms to visually represent the geographical and temporal distribution of such diversity for better interfacing with end-user management needs. 4. Use existing portable DNA sequencing equipment to trial field protocols that integrate real-time eDNA sequencing and bioinformatic web-based frameworks

This project offers the existing opportunity to use the latest structural biology methods to impact the development of new herbicides to help crop security. In this project, you will determine a structural movie of the enzymatic action of two herbicide targets. These exciting results will highlight the optimal strategies for designing new herbicides and provide a new level of detailed understanding of the enzymes. The project will offer the opportunity to learn techniques at the cutting edge of structural biology and to make a significant impact on food production. As a student on the project, you will learn a strong range of techniques. Key methods will be protein production and purification, crystallisation and structure determination, and enzyme studies to complement the structural results. The supervisors are experts in all stages of this work and have strong experience of developing similar projects. This project will have expert supervisors in Exeter and Bristol, offering the opportunity to experience two different research environments, access a wider range of expertise, and interact with other DTP students more extensively. This project will be undertaken in collaboration with Syngenta, and as part of the project you will take a three month placement at Syngenta's site at Jealott's Hill. This placement will be timed to obtain maximum benefit from the opportunity and will most likely be taken once results are established for one enzyme and can be followed up effectively with Syngenta. Syngenta will provide an additional supervisor to give insight into the herbicide development process and further support your development. The project will be hosted at the Living Systems Institute in Exeter. LSI is a vibrant interdisciplinary environment combining mathematical and biophysical approaches with experimental biology to decode the complex mechanisms of life. LSI arranges specific ECR training in relevant topics. LSI has a strong structural biology grouping using the latest techniques to gain a molecular understanding of life. You will join an integrated PhD community who organise their own programme of scientific and social events. LSI provides an ideal environment for a successful PhD.