Digitally Connected Citizens and Communities
The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Digital Civics at Newcastle University will train a minimum of 55 doctoral students (5 annual intakes of at least 11 students) in the design, deployment and evaluation of community-driven digital technologies and services. Whether it is through the redesign local services with communities, or rethinking how citizens can and do interact with local government, technology innovation and design has a critical role to play in enabling digitally connected citizens and communities.
The EPSRC CDT in Digital Civics is a unique partnership between Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council, Gateshead Council and Northumberland County Council, and a range of local, national and global industry and third sector partners. The CDT aims to deliver applied research training for doctoral researchers and includes a program of intensive training and research, and internships and placements at some of the world’s leading charities, companies and universities.
World Class
Digital Civics is a cross-disciplinary endeavour that brings together researchers in the fields of computer science (Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, and Computer Security, Privacy and Trust) with researchers in Public Health, Social Care, Education, Planning and Politics. Digital Civics doctoral students will be supervised by multi-disciplinary teams of international experts at Newcastle University in these areas, all conducted in the context of our wider commitment to being a World-Class Civic University.
Collaborative
Digital Civics doctoral students will be trained to collaborate with each other and our partner organisations. All PhD research projects will be required to address challenges faced by local communities, and to be conducted in partnership with these communities, their local government bodies and members of our wider partnership of commercial and third sector bodies. Given the cross-disciplinary nature of Digital Civics research, students will also be expected to collaborate with each other in conducting their research, and to step outside the academic disciplines from which they originally hail.
Partnerships
We have 63 partners who have committed time and resources to help our Digital Civics doctoral students undertake their research. This includes 3 local councils who will facilitate access to local communities and services providers, 28 commercial and third sector partners (regional, national and global), and 32 of the world’s leading universities. Each student will work with a small set of partners most relevant to their doctoral research, and will be required to undertake one or more internships and at least one international academic exchange.
This website provides information about our EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics, including: CDT research themes; examples of existing Digital Civics research at Newcastle University; our centre supervisors; and our partner organisations. If you are interested in applying for a fully funded doctoral studentship within the CDT in Digital Civics (1-year MRes + 3-year PhD) then answers to some questions you may have can be found here, or you can arrange to have an informal (pre-application) discussion with an academic from the centre.