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.

Recruitment has closed for this project and applications are being assessed for September 2025 entry.

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 has closed for this project and applications are being assessed for September 2025 entry.

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.