East Midlands SLAM (Sustainable Living and Mental Wellbeing) is an AHRC-funded Doctoral Focal Award at the interface of the environmental and health humanities, exploring the relationships between sustainability and mental health. We invite applications for fully-funded four-year PhD studentships that will empower you to become a changemaker.

EM-SLAM is a unique consortium of four leading universities: Loughborough, De Montfort, Nottingham Trent, and Leicester. It is grounded in the specialisms of the collective whole, in environmental humanities, health and wellbeing, ecology, and the arts, using storytelling as a research methodology and knowledge practice to enable impactful, transdisciplinary work.

We work alongside national and regional partners and cultural organisations to explore what it means to live in inclusive, sustainable, flourishing communities and to address the intertwined crises of environmental degradation and mental health in ways that are both impactful and hopeful.

EM-SLAM will train at least 30 doctoral researchers (including practice-based scholars) to lead change across academia, policy, the third sector, and creative industries

Find out more here. 

Queries? Contact Dr Harry Whitehead on hdw5@le.ac.uk

Deadline: Apply before 19 February 2026 for September 2026 start, then each year until 2029.