Funded PhD - Evaluating Nuclear Heritage: Developing New and Practical Approaches to a Complex ...

Funded PhD - Evaluating Nuclear Heritage: Developing New and Practical Approaches to a Complex Industrial Landscape

4 November 2022

Key information

A PhD project funded by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to be hosted at the University of York, jointly between the Departments of Archaeology and Physics.

Lead academic supervisors: Professor John Schofield (Archaeology) and Professor David Jenkins (Physics)

NOTE: This opportunity is only available to UK citizens. This is because students will need to receive national security clearance for site and archive access, which may be problematic for EU or international students.

Applications must be submitted by midnight GMT on Friday, 4th November 2022, via the University's online system. Interviews will be held on 24th and 25th November 2022. The studentship will ideally begin in January 2023.

For academic enquiries about these scholarships, contact the supervisors below. For general application enquiries, email .

Project Description

UK-based researchers are leading in developing new understandings of contemporary industrial heritage, including its values and long-term legacies. In the nuclear industry, this heritage includes sites, buildings, infrastructure, documents, scientific and engineering developments, and the memories of communities post-decommissioning. This specialised field requires social and knowledge-based values for informed decision-making. This project will address NDA's Priority Area E9 by defining new ways to assess heritage values of these complex and often contested places. It will benefit from the expertise of archaeology/heritage and physics specialists who have previously collaborated at CERN.

The PhD will explore how heritage values can be applied to the nuclear industry and translate this into NDA policy. It will involve developing skills to support NDA's future mission, promoting knowledge transfer between academic and industrial sectors working on nuclear decommissioning, and exploring citizen engagement in decision-making. Outputs will include practical heritage guidelines for NDA staff and academic and public dissemination.

How the project will support the NDA mission

This project aims to create social and knowledge-based understanding to inform heritage decision-making across the NDA estate, addressing the lack of research on UK nuclear heritage. Building on Schofield's experience in heritage policy and management and his previous collaboration with Jenkins at CERN, the project will use site visits and archival research to define social and knowledge-based values. These will help determine which sites or infrastructure should be preserved or recorded, promote public understanding of nuclear heritage, and evaluate sustainable decommissioning options.

The project echoes Schofield's prior work on military estates, where heritage could be at risk of neglect or destruction. It aligns with heritage sector interests in heritage futures and managing contested and toxic legacies. Recognising heritage significance in decommissioning decisions ensures assets are preserved or recorded, preventing unnecessary loss, in accordance with Historic England's protocols.

While not all assets need preservation, some sites or items may merit in-situ preservation, recording, or adaptive reuse. Such decisions require social and knowledge-based evaluation, filling a gap left by existing strategies like English Heritage's Strategy for England's Atomic Age and Hill's Atomic Empire.