INSPIRE: Interdisciplinary Southampton Partnership for Investigators Researching the Environment

The University of Southampton is leading a consortium to train the next generation of environmental scientists through a NERC-funded Doctoral Training Partnership. This matters because the UK faces complex environmental challenges—from climate change and biodiversity loss to pollution and resource scarcity—that require skilled researchers who can work across disciplines. Traditional PhD training often keeps students within narrow specialisms, but environmental problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries. This programme deliberately breaks down those walls, training students to integrate expertise from ecology, oceanography, geology, engineering, and social science. If successful, the partnership will produce a cohort of researchers who can tackle real-world environmental problems with a broader toolkit than most PhD graduates possess. These scientists might go on to work in academia, government agencies, environmental consultancies, or industry—anywhere that needs people who understand both the physical science of a changing planet and the human systems that interact with it. The programme also strengthens the UK's research pipeline, ensuring that environmental science does not suffer from a shortage of skilled early-career researchers. This is primarily a training and capacity-building project rather than a single research investigation. Its impact will be measured in the careers it launches and the problems those future scientists solve.