Leverhulme Living With Waste Doctoral Programme
The Leverhulme Trust has awarded Queen Mary £5 million to establish the Leverhulme Living with Waste Doctoral Programme: Rethinking Sustainable Consumption and Transformation as part of the Trust's Centenary celebrations.
Tackling the global waste crisis
Future planetary health depends on how we manage current, future and inherited waste. Around the world, poorly managed waste pollutes ecosystems, threatens biodiversity, contributes to climate change and deepens social, economic and health inequalities. Addressing these interconnected challenges requires new ways of thinking that bring together expertise from across disciplines.
The Leverhulme Living with Waste Doctoral Programme unites researchers across environmental science, engineering, geography, the arts and the social sciences to rethink how waste is understood, managed and transformed. By taking a truly interdisciplinary approach, the programme aims to develop solutions that are environmentally sustainable, socially just and economically viable.
A distinctive feature of the programme is the Waste School: an immersive three-month interdisciplinary training model that will enable doctoral researchers to explore waste through multiple disciplinary perspectives. By combining academic expertise with community knowledge and lived experience, the programme aims to deliver solutions that are ethically, economically and technically feasible, solving problems rather than simply shifting them elsewhere.
The programme will fund up to 30 PhD students over the next nine years recruiting ten students per year, including six scholarships designed to widen participation for students from under-represented groups and up to six international studentships. The first cohort will begin their doctoral research in October 2027.