PhD Opportunities

We welcome enquiries from prospective PhD students interested in exploring regeneration, systems change, consciousness, leadership, and ecocentric futures.

Our unique research group operates from an action-oriented, collaborative, and sacred ethos. We operate through:

Action-oriented research: We are focused on making a difference in the world, and see research as powerful opportunities for intervention, whether through action research, insight development, and exploring roads less often travelled.
Collaboration: We are collaborative, working closely together to support group members personally and professionally.
Sacred Research: We actively encourage and support research and action that are informed or guided by something beyond ourselves.

We are particularly interested in hearing from you if you already have practical or professional experience and want to deepen your learning through research and action. This may include those working in areas such as food systems, leadership, business, environment, systems change, alternative consciousness practices, community development, facilitation, or wellbeing.

We are especially interested in applicants who want to apply action-oriented approaches, work across disciplines, engage with theory and practice, incorporate sacredness in their work, and explore wider ways of knowing and being.

Potential topics:

Ecocentric practice and regenerative futures
Sacred research
Inner dimensions of transformation
Systems change and transformation
Collective action and leadership
Consciousness shifts and transpersonal ways of knowing
Human–nature relations
Regenerative leadership and organisational change
Holistic and participatory research methods
Food systems, business or environmental transformation
New approaches to evaluation, learning and collective action

PhD study can be undertaken full-time or part-time, based either in York or remotely. To be part of the Ecocentric Futures Research Group you will need to:

Have existing experience in research or practice.
Have a means of self-funding: There are currently no funded opportunities available so you need to either cover your own tuition and associated costs or secure support through your employer, organisation, professional development funding, or other external sources.
Be committed to the collaborative and sacred ethos that underpins the Ecocentric Futures Research Group.
Meet in person in York for three days, twice per year.

If you think this could be a good fit, please send your CV and a short summary of your ideas to ioan.fazey@york.ac.uk