Funding
Competition funded (UK/EU and international students)
Project code
PSH50110125
Department
School of Psychology, Sport and Health SciencesStart dates
October 2025
Application deadline
17 January 2025
Applications are invited for a fully-funded three year PhD to commence in October 2025.
The PhD will be based in the Faculty of Science and Health within the School of Psychology, Sport and Health Science, within the Centre of Comparative and Evolutionary Psychology, and will be supervised by Dr Jérôme Micheletta, Dr Teresa Romero and .
Candidates applying for this project may be eligible to compete for one of a small number of bursaries available. Successful applicants will receive a bursary to cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate for three years and a stipend in line with the UKRI rate (£19,237 for 2025/26). Bursary recipients will also receive a contribution of £1,500 per year towards consumables, conference, project or training costs.
Costs for student visa and immigration health surcharge are not covered by this bursary. For further guidance and advice visit our international and EU students ‘Visa FAQs’ page.
The work on this project could involve:
- Conducting a systematic review of the literature surrounding behavioural indicators of emotions.
- Developing a set of measures of uncertainty applicable across sensory modalities and assess their correlation with affective valence .
- Conducting fieldwork to test this set of measures in the wild using controlled experiments (e.g., playback experiments, model presentations).
Communication signals allow individuals to gain information on the sender’s behavioural intention and internal states. As such, these signals are under selective pressures to be clear and unambiguous. Theoretical considerations and empirical findings, however, show that ambiguity can vary depending on the context in which communicative signals are used. For example, facial movements and vocalisations are more intense and highly specific or stereotyped in potentially risky situations (e.g. Clark et al., 2022). Following this logic, it should be that the level of uncertainty of the communicative signal will vary according to the affective state of the sender. To the best of our knowledge, no attempts to identify combined quantitative properties of communicative signals across modalities have been reported in the literature. We propose to use measures that are multimodal, anatomically grounded and standardised to validate robust and reliable markers not only of the arousal, but also the valence of an animal's affective state.
This novel integrative and multimodal approach, combining facial movements, vocalisations and body postures, has the potential to identify markers of uncertainty in communication as a reliable, robust indicator of affective valence highly generalisable across a wide range of species.
Entry requirements
You'll need a good first degree from an internationally recognised university (minimum upper second class or equivalent, depending on your chosen course) or a Master’s degree in an appropriate subject. In exceptional cases, we may consider equivalent professional experience and/or qualifications. English language proficiency at a minimum of IELTS band 6.5 with no component score below 6.0.
- Strong interest and some experience in animal behaviour communication.
- Knowledge and experience of behavioural observation methods and/or knowledge and experience of experimental methods.
- Strong quantitative data analysis skills.
- Good communication skills and ability to work independently.
- Willingness to conduct fieldwork under challenging conditions and in remote areas.
- Willingness to learn (or knowledge of) basic spoken Indonesian language.
How to apply
If you have any project-specific questions please contact Dr Jérôme Micheletta () or Dr Teresa Romero (teresa.romero@port.ac.uk), quoting the project code.
When you are ready to apply, please use the of the respective project on our PhD scholarships page. Please note that email applications are not accepted.
Make sure you submit a personal statement, proof of your degrees and grades, details of two referees, proof of your English language proficiency and an up-to-date CV. Our ‘How to Apply’ page offers further guidance on the PhD application process.
If you want to be considered for this funded PhD opportunity you must quote project code PSH50110125 when applying.
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