Overview
This project investigates how coastal communities in Liverpool, UK and Port of Spain, Trinidad pass down water stories that shape resilience and emotional responses to living with environmental change. Through ethnography and intergenerational storytelling, the student will explore how two linked coastal cities navigate climate stress.
About this opportunity
Communities in coastal and estuarine cities such as Liverpool and Port of Spain are increasingly living at the intersection of industrial legacies and accelerating climate change. Rising heat, humidity, sea-level threat, and flooding are reshaping the sensory and emotional experience of everyday urban life. At the same time, family memories of migration, labour, displacement, and belonging continue to shape how people understand water, risk, and home. This project explores how intergenerational “waterstories” function as psychological frameworks for wellbeing and climate adaptation across two coastal worlds that share transatlantic histories yet occupy different positions within the wider imperial and postcolonial landscape.
Liverpool and Port of Spain offer a compelling comparative context. Both cities have been shaped by centuries of maritime labour, migration, and colonial entanglement, and both now experience intensifying climate stress. Yet the meanings attached to water, coastal life, and environmental change differ across generations, reflecting distinct historical trajectories. The project will investigate how emotional and symbolic relationships with water influence responses to climate uncertainty, and how these water memories are passed down, transformed, or activated in the present.
The candidate will conduct comparative research using ethnography, narrative interviews, oral history, and participatory workshops. They will document intergenerational experiences of water and analyse how people in both cities understand and adapt to changing climatic conditions.
The student may choose to work in both locations or focus more intensively on one site with comparative literature and archival work supporting the study.
Aims
- To document and compare intergenerational water stories in Liverpool and Port of Spain.
• Examine how emotional and symbolic relationships with water shape responses to climate stress, and ecological change.
• Develop a comparative model of emotional climate adaptation integrating environmental psychology, heritage, and landscape-based approaches.
Training and Collaboration
The student will receive training in ethnographic research methodology, oral history, qualitative interviewing and ethical community engagement. They will develop skills in cross-cultural research and comparative urban analysis. Additional training will be available through institutional postgraduate programmes, including methods workshops, field safety training, and interdisciplinary seminars.
The project offers rich opportunities for collaboration. The student may work with relevant cultural organisations and or community partners in their chosen locations.
Project Structure
Year 1:
Foundational training in qualitative methods, literature review, ethics approval, development of community links, and initial pilot fieldwork.
Year 2:
Main fieldwork in Liverpool and/or Port of Spain, including ethnography, interviews, and oral history. Begin analysis of emerging themes and water stories.
Year 3:
Continuation of analysis and development of comparative insights. Writing of thesis chapters and dissemination.
This project is ideal for a student passionate about environmental psychology, climate adaptation, migration histories, Caribbean studies, or community-engaged creative research.
This project is offered as part of The AHRC-NERC Living Well with Water [LWwW] Doctoral Focal Award at the University’s of Hull and Liverpool, in partnership with National Trust, Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) and Tate Liverpool. By applying for one of our fully funded interdisciplinary doctoral awards you will explore the relationship between water, culture and community in coastal regions and become part of a new generation of researchers shaping solutions to urgent human and planetary health challenges.
You will participate in our innovative doctoral training programme, undertake a placement with one of our partner organisations, and learn research skills transferable to a variety of future careers. https://www.hull.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/funded-opportunities/living-well-with-water
Further reading
Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago (GORTT) (2023) National Adaptation Plan for the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Ministry of Planning and Development. Available at: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/NAP_Trinidad_and_Tobago_2024.pdf
Britton, E., Kindermann, G., Domegan, C., & Carlin, C. (2020). Blue care: a systematic review of blue space interventions for health and wellbeing. Health promotion international, 35(1), 50–69. https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/day103
Pink, S. (2015). Doing Sensory Ethnography (2nd ed.). Sage.
https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/doing-sensory-ethnography/book242776