ESRC NWSSDTP CASE PhD Studentship

**Job Description**
This 3-year full-time ESRC NWSSDTP CASE PhD studentship, commencing January 2026, invites applications for a qualitative consumer research project entitled “The integration (and marketisation) of ‘Spaces of Compassion’ with healthcare.” The project is a collaboration between Lancaster University Management School and the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust’s (UHMBT) Chaplaincy Department. It aims to explore the local integration of “compassionate spaces” with hospital services against a broader backdrop of compassion becoming constructed, branded, and marketed in service environments. Utilizing creative ethnographic methods and interdisciplinary concepts, the research will investigate the political and ideological dimensions of compassionate spaces and the entanglements of diverse identities, values, and practices within clinical and commercial contexts. The successful candidate will contribute to both academic literature in consumer culture studies, marketing, consumer research, and the sociology of health, as well as to NHS service provision by understanding compassion’s role in effective healthcare delivery.

**Skills & Abilities**
• Strong background in qualitative research.
• Preferably experience in conducting ethnographic fieldwork.
• Confidence in pursuing theory-guided research.
• Ability to work closely with concepts, frameworks, and ideas from the social sciences.
• Passion for academic literature and for critiquing, expanding, and developing conceptual explanations in consumption and health studies.

**Qualifications**
Required Degree(s) in:
• Social Science
• Business
• Marketing
• Sociology
• Anthropology
• Philosophy
• Human Geography
• Related discipline (with a clear emphasis on consumer behaviour, critical marketing, political economy, space & place, or health & illness)
Required:
• Merit or Distinction Master’s degree (or expected attainment by the end of the 2024-25 academic year)

**Experience**
Other:
• Previous research experience (to be detailed in CV)

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