PhD Studentship with Prof Ella Arensman, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health UCC and Dr Jan Rigby, Centre for Health Geoinformatics within the National Centre for Geocomputation at Maynooth University
Closing Date for Applications: Wednesday, 9th November 2016
Salary: €16,000 per annum and EU postgraduate fees will also be funded
Start date: January 2017
Applications are invited for a four-year PhD by research at the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, UCC. The position is funded by the Health Research Board Leader Award held by Professor Ella Arensman. Professor Arensman was appointed as a Research Leader by the HRB in December 2015. The overall vision for her programme of research entitled ‘Individual and Area Level Determinants of Self-Harm in Suicide in Ireland: Enhancing Prediction, Risk Assessment and Management of Self-Harm by Health Services’ is to identify individual and area level determinants of self-harm and suicide in order to improve self-harm assessment and management by health services in Ireland.
This PhD studentship will focus on work package 5 of the research programme, ‘Socio-ecological and geo-spatial analysis of suicide and self-harm clustering’. Using geospatial techniques, the objectives of this package are to: identify geographic areas in Ireland with recurrent clusters of suicide and self-harm over a 15-year period; examine the association between clustering of self-harm and suicide; identify area-level and individual factors associated with clustering of suicide and self-harm; and develop a pulse system for emerging self-harm and suicide clusters. The research will involve accessing data from records from the coroner’s office on an ongoing basis.
The research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr Jan Rigby at the Centre for Health Geoinformatics within the National Centre for Geocomputation at Maynooth University. Some travel to Maynooth will be required during the studentship, particularly in the first year.
Criteria
Applicants should hold a 1st or upper 2nd class honours undergraduate or Masters degree in Public Health/Epidemiology/Psychology/Geography or allied discipline
Strong background in quantitative research methods
Interest and affinity with working in the area of mental health
Awareness of Geographical Information Systems would be an advantage
Ability to relate to staff in a collegial manner
Excellent organisational, interpersonal, report writing and IT skills
Excellent communication, both written and spoken
Ability to work on own initiative
To Apply
Please submit a short cover letter, full C.V. along with a statement of research interests and achievements, and the names of two referees to Karen Mulcahy (k.mulcahy@ucc.ie) by Wednesday, 9th November 2016.
For informal enquiries please contact Professor Ella Arensman (earensman@ucc.ie).