Two fully-funded PhD scholarships are available in agent-based modelling to explore interventions to increase cycling as an active, safe, and sustainable mode of transport. The PhD programs will be hosted by the Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research Group in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University.
The central goal of these PhD programs is to advance the understanding of how interventions (e.g. infrastructure, behaviour change campaigns, equipment, financial incentives) affect cycling participation, and how these interventions might also impact health and equity (e.g. increasing cycling in typically underrepresented groups, such as in women and in lower socioeconomic areas). Specifically, the projects will explore what factors may drive modal shift toward greater uptake of cycling (e.g. private car disincentives, cycling incentives) and how those policies work and potentially interact. The PhD programs may draw upon quantitative (discrete choice experiments) and qualitative (focus groups, semi-structured interviews) methods, evidence reviews, agent-based modelling and health impact assessments.
These PhD programs will enable a better understanding of key policies and interventions needed to increase cycling participation and maximise health and equity outcomes.
These PhD programs will be supervised by Dr Ben Beck (Head of Sustainable Mobility and Safety Research, School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University) and Dr Jason Thompson (Senior Research Fellow, Transport, Health and Urban Design (THUD), Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne).