PhD Studentship: Collaborative Studentship: Important Trees: Co-creating ways to Recognise and Protect their Value

The Countryside and Community Research Institute CCRI is one of the largest specialist rural research centres in the UK, working at the interface of agriculture, society and the environment on issues relevant to both rural and urban development. This PhD offers the opportunity to contribute to CCRI’s expanding portfolio of research focused on supporting the growth, protection and long term resilience of the UK’s Treescapes. The supervisory team includes Dr Alice Goodenough and Dr Julie Urquhart CCRI and Dr Beth Brockett Forest Research.

This studentship is offered in collaboration with the Social and Environmental Research Group at Forest Research, Welsh Government and The Tree Council, providing a rich, multi partner environment in which to develop the project.

Through this collaboration, the successful candidate will be able to:

• Work closely with experts in treescape governance, environmental policy and community engagement.

• Access diverse groups of participants, including policy stakeholders, practitioners and community organisations.

• Gain experience in inclusive and critical engagement with the challenges of co designing environmental regulation.

• Contribute to research with real world policy relevance for governments, user groups and wider publics.

The project addresses a critical misalignment between existing legal frameworks and the complex ecological, social and cultural value of UK trees. Established and ancient trees provide a wide range of ecosystem services, including climate regulation, carbon storage and habitat provision. They also play a significant role in shaping people’s relationships with place and nature. Yet despite this growing recognition, there is currently no formal mechanism in the UK for assessing or designating a tree’s importance, nor adequate protections to safeguard trees of high significance. Existing frameworks often treat trees as isolated objects rather than as integral components of wider socio ecological networks.

At the same time, UK treescapes face multiple and increasing threats. These include climate‑related stressors, invasive pests and pathogens, and a range of human driven harms from land use change and vandalism to mismanagement or overgrazing. Incidents such as the Sycamore Gap felling have brought public attention to these vulnerabilities, but mechanisms for protection or prosecution remain limited. Recent Defra commissioned research has highlighted how current tools such as Tree Protection Orders TPOs provide fragmented and largely incidental protection rather than intentional, coherent safeguarding.