PhD Studentship: Building Psychosocial and Physical Resilience Using Self-management Skills for Offshore Workers

Supervisor(s)

1. Dr David Maidment, Loughborough University
2. Fehmidah Munir, Loughborough University

Enquiries email: f.munir@lboro.ac.uk 

Funding for: UK students

Subject areas

• Psychology 

Project description

This multidisciplinary research project is focused on enhancing the resilience of offshore wind industry workers. The research aims to contribute to the physical, psychosocial, and cognitive health of offshore workers by developing and piloting interventions based on self-management and organisational support theories. The successful candidate will collaborate with offshore workers and industry stakeholders to address health challenges, such as stress, fatigue, and musculoskeletal issues, ensuring long-term workforce wellbeing. 

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. However, work in the offshore wind industry involves both cognitive and manual work. 

Evidence suggests that high work demands that exceed the physical and cognitive capacity of workers and their physical work demands may reflect as poor work ability and compromised health and safety at the workplace. Particularly work stress, fatigue, difficulties detaching from work, sleeping problems, musculoskeletal have been documented.

Using organisational support theory and self-management theory, this project will examine how health, wellbeing and productivity can be improved and sustained for those at risk of poor health and wellbeing.

The student will work directly with offshore workers, as well as stakeholders such as human resources personnel, safety managers and occupational health staff, in order to design, test and pilot intervention content, based around necessary adaptations to fit the offshore work environment and context.

You will receive the following training as part of the PhD project: Intervention design, physiological measurement and health tool use and analyses training, questionnaire and interview design and analyses.

Eligibility requirements

Entry Requirements

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

This scholarship is available to Home (UK) students only.

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.

Closes: 9 May 2025

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