Impact of “blue space” as a working condition on the health and wellbeing of offshore windfarm workers

Project Description:

This PhD scholarship is offered by the EPSRC CDT in Offshore Wind Energy Sustainability and Resilience; a partnership between the Universities of Durham, Hull, Loughborough and Sheffield. The successful applicant will undertake six-months of training with the rest of the CDT cohort at the University of Hull before continuing their PhD research at Loughborough University. The project is part of a PhD Research Cluster on The wellbeing triad: improving the physical, psychosocial, and cognitive health of workers in the offshore windfarm sector.

The offshore wind industry has expanded rapidly and as a large influx of offshore workers is expected to meet the growth of the industry, companies now have an important task of maintaining health and safety at work in order to sustain well-being and retain the workforce until statutory pension.

Whilst blue spaces (e.g., coasts, rivers) can play a direct and indirect role in improving health and well-being through reducing stress, depression and anxiety as examples, working at sea can cause feelings of confinement and negatively impact workers’ activity levels and sedentary behaviour, leading to poor health outcomes.

This novel study will involve an assessment of offshore workers’ health behaviours (including activity, sitting, diet and sleep) to fully understand the impact of this working environment on these important health behaviours.

The student will work directly with offshore workers, as well as stakeholders such as human resources personnel, safety managers and occupational health staff, to design, test and pilot intervention content to support offshore workers to make pragmatic, beneficial changes to key health behaviours, within the confines of their working environment.

Methodology

Firstly, a systematic review will be conducted to identify the impact of blue spaces on offshore workers, to understand the positive and negative effects of being at sea, and the positive and negative effects of working conditions. From the review, knowledge gaps will be identified. Findings from the systematic review will be used to shape a study examining health behaviours (e.g. activity levels, sitting, sleep and diet) and physical and mental health markers to understand the interaction of work and blue spaces on health and wellbeing. This work will involve both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Objective data on weather conditions will be recorded.

The findings of this work will inform the content and design of co-creation workshops, involving offshore workers and key stakeholders, where appropriate intervention and/or workplace policies will be designed to support offshore workers to maximise the benefits of working in a blue space. If time permits, the intervention/proposed policy changes will be piloted in a small sample of offshore workers.

Training and development

You will benefit from a taught programme, giving you a broad understanding of the breadth and depth of current and emerging offshore wind sector needs. This begins with an intensive six-month programme at the University of Hull for the new student intake, drawing on the expertise and facilities of all four academic partners. It is supplemented by Continuing Professional Development (CPD), which is embedded throughout your 4-year research scholarship.

The successful candidate will receive the following training as part of the PhD project: Systematic literature review, longitudinal design, physiological measurement and health tool use and analyses training, questionnaire and interview design and analyses.

The PhD could lead to careers in academia as well as in public or private sectors (in human resources or health and wellbeing teams), or in consultancy firms specialising in work, health and wellbeing.

Entry requirements

If you have received a First-class Honours degree, or a 2:1 Honours degree and a Masters, or a Distinction at Masters level with any undergraduate degree (or the international equivalents) in psychology, biosciences, physical activity and/or health, we would like to hear from you.

The deadline for applications is Friday 9 May 2025.

For informal enquiries about the research project, please contact Prof Stacy Clemes, S.A.Clemes@lboro.ac.uk.

You may also address queries about the CDT to auracdt@hull.ac.uk.

Watch our short video to hear from Aura CDT students, academics and industry partners:

Funding notes

The CDT is funded by the EPSRC, allowing us to provide scholarships that cover fees plus a stipend set at the UKRI nationally agreed rates. These have been set by UKRI as £20,780 per annum at 2025/26 rates and will increase in line with the EPSRC guidelines for the subsequent years (subject to progress).

Eligibility

Our funded Doctoral Scholarships are available to UK Students. The advertised CDT scholarships in this current recruitment round are available to Home (UK) Students only as the CDT has reached the annual cap, set by the funding council (UKRI EPSRC), on international student recruitment for the 2025 intake. To be considered a Home student, and therefore eligible for a full award, a student must have no restrictions on how long they can stay in the UK and have been ordinarily resident in the UK for at least 3 years prior to the start of the scholarship (with some further constraint regarding residence for education).

Guaranteed Interview Scheme

The CDT is committed to generating a diverse and inclusive training programme and is looking to attract applicants from all backgrounds. We offer a Guaranteed Interview Scheme for home fee status candidates who identify as Black or Black mixed or Asian or Asian mixed if they meet the programme entry requirements. This positive action is to support recruitment of these under-represented ethnic groups to our programme and is an opt in process.

Find out more

How to apply

Recruitment is open until Friday 9 May for CDT Scholarships beginning study in September 2025.

Please ensure that you familiarise yourself with the Aura CDT website before you apply to give you a good understanding of what a CDT is, our CDT’s research focus and the training and continuing professional development programme that runs alongside the CDT. The Frequently asked questions page and Candidate resources page are essential reading prior to applying.

Applications are made via the Loughborough University admissions system. If you have not applied to Loughborough University before, you will need to set up an account to enable you to track the progress of your application and upload supporting documents.

Follow this link to apply for CDT projects at Loughborough University: https://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/apply/research-applications/

Under programme name, select ‘Business School’. Both Full-time and Part-time modes of study are available. Please quote this reference number in your application: Aura25-SC

With your application, you need to upload copies of the following supporting evidence:

• Complete transcripts (and final degree certificate(s) where possible). If your qualification documents are not in English, you will need to supply copies of your original language documents as well as their official translation into English.
• Your Curriculum Vitae (CV).
• A completed Supplementary Application Form (upload as part of your supporting evidence documentation).

Please download the Supplementary Application Form here.

Ensure you complete all sections of the Supplementary Application Form in font and size Calibri 11pt, specify the research project you are applying for.

When you have completed the form, please save it as a pdf format and labelled as follows:

Last name_first name PhD application form

Upload the form as part of your application documents through the Loughborough University student application portal upload as part of your supporting evidence documentation. Please do not send your form directly to the Offshore Wind CDT.

Interviews will be held online with an interview panel comprising of project supervisory team members from the host university where the project is based.  Where the project involves external supervisors from university partners or industry sponsors then representatives from these partners may form part of the interview panel and your supplementary application form will be shared with them (with the guaranteed interview scheme section removed). Interviews will take place during early and mid-June. 

For informal enquiries about the research project, please contact Prof Stacy Clemes, S.A.Clemes@lboro.ac.uk.

You may also address queries about the CDT to auracdt@hull.ac.uk.

References and further reading

Mette, J., Velasco Garrido, M., Harth, V., Preisser, A.M. and Mache, S., 2018. Healthy offshore workforce? A qualitative study on offshore wind employees’ occupational strain, health, and coping. BMC public health, 18(1), pp.1-14.

World Health Organisation. Green and blue spaces and mental health. Evidence and perspectives for action. 2021.

White, M.P.; Elliott, L.R.; Gascon, M.; Roberts, B.; Fleming, L.E. Blue space, health and well-being: A narrative overview and synthesis of potential benefits. Environ. Res. 2020, 191, 110169.

Earle, F., Huddlestone, J., Williams, T., Stock‐Williams, C., van der Mijle‐Meijer, H., de Vries, L., van Heemst, H., Hoogerwerf, E., Koomen, L., de Ridder, E.J. and Serraris, J.J., 2022. SPOWTT: Improving the safety and productivity of offshore wind technician transit. Wind Energy, 25(1), pp.34-51.