We’re proud to bring together a dynamic network of world-leading experts who are committed to putting people at the heart of climate action. Over five years of research, we have established a thriving community of over 70 climate change social scientists.
We’ll list any CAST career opportunities below, including PhD studentships with our member institutions.
If there aren’t any opportunities listed right now, or suited to what you’re looking for, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on BlueSky and LinkedIn to keep up to date on the latest CAST career opportunities.
The CAST team at the 2026 Annual Assembly event at the University of Manchester.
CAST PhD studentships at the University of Manchester (UK Students Only)
Low-carbon Climate Adaptation in UK Households: Understanding participation in, and pathways toward, low-carbon climate adaptation
- Primary supervisor: Dr Ruth Wood
- Job type: Full-time
- Location: University of Manchester
- Deadline: Tuesday, 7 July 2026 (We recommend applying early as the advert may be removed before the deadline)
Topic overview:
People play many roles in climate action — as commuters and carers, workers and hobbyists, citizens and consumers. Climate change is already reshaping all of these: affecting how people travel to work, what they eat, how they heat (and cool) their homes, how they manage caring responsibilities, and how they spend their leisure time. A critical question remains unexamined: are the ways people are already adapting to climate change compatible with the transition to net zero?
Some adaptation measures support emissions reduction (e.g. shifting to active travel). Others risk locking-in carbon-intensive ways of living (e.g. air conditioning), and there are yet untapped measures that could both mitigate and adapt to climate change (e.g. recirculating water systems). This PhD will provide the first analysis of the relationship between adaptation and mitigation across the full range of everyday actions and develop evidence-based policy pathways for low-carbon adaptation.
Community resilience and cascading climate impacts
- Primary supervisor: Dr Sarah Mander & Dr Ruth Wood
- Job type: Full-time
- Location: University of Manchester
- Deadline: Tuesday, 7 July 2026 (We recommend applying early as the advert may be removed before the deadline)
Topic overview:
Critical infrastructures are central to the function of society, with interdependencies between systems which brings risks of disruption in one sector impacting on another. From the UK’s Third Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCC, 2021) CCRA3, we know that climate impacts affect power, ICT, water and transport networks, with interdependencies between these and other systems. Impacts on electricity or water networks, for example, will cascade and disrupt sectors which rely on these networks for their functioning; as an example, power cuts will affect rail and tram networks which in turn make it harder for people to get to work. Except for the healthcare system (see for example Curtis et al, 2017) much of the research on cascading or interconnected risks has focused on the infrastructure systems themselves, with less known about the disruption to the essential services that these systems enable (e.g. education, social care, food, sanitation), and how the people providing these services, and the communities where they are happening, change their practices to adapt and cope with the disruptions