PhD Studentship: Geographically Weighted Geodemographics, Liverpoool, UK

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Supervisors: Dr Alex Singleton; Professor Chris Brunsdon
Industrial Partner: Office for National Statistics

Applicants are invited for a PhD studentship at the University of Liverpool within the ESRC North West DTC. The studentship will be supervised by Dr Alex Singleton and Professor Chris Brunsdon in the Department of Geography and Planning; and is being conducted in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics.

This three year advanced quantitative methods award will provide an enhanced stipend of £16,726 (tax free) alongside payment of tuition fees. You will also have the opportunity to apply for additional funding related to training and fieldwork expenses. This studentship is open to candidates from outside of the UK / EU.

The project aims to redefine those methods through which geodemographic classifications are created, feeding these developments into ONS best practice for creating future open national indicators, such as the census Output Area Classification. The project will develop an extension to traditional geodemographics that more appropriately accounts for spatial context and the relationship between small area geography. This will involve the development of new methods integrating spatial statistics, data mining and computer modelling.

The candidate will require a background in Geography, Planning, Mathematics, Computer Science, Statistics or other quantitative discipline; an undergraduate degree at 2.1 or 1, and ideally a Masters degree in a domain relevant area. We would be especially interested in candidates with some coding experience, either in traditional languages (java, python etc) or statistical programming such as R.

If you are interested and would like some more information, we have a more detailed specification of the project available here: http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/881843/Further_Details_PhD.pdf

Also, please feel free to get in touch with Alex Singleton (alex.singleton@liverpool.ac.uk).
Candidates interested in this studentship should send a letter detailing their suitability and interest in the project, along with a CV, to Alex Singleton by 27th September 2013.