Our focus in 2016/17 has been to continue to increase outward mobility for both staff and students. We have achieved this: - An increase of 33% in non-compulsory student exchanges from 15/16 to 16/17 - Doubled the number of non-academic staff on training mobility placements - An increase of 200% in students undertaking an Erasmus+ placementWe have achieved this by: - Maintaining a high level of contact with students at the pre-departure stage, to build and support confidence. - Increasing peer-to-peer awareness at our annual International Opportunities Fair. - Working with academic and administrative staff across the university to ensure that positive outcomes from studying abroad are communicated by a wider range of stakeholders.As referenced above, we saw an increase in our Student Mobility for Placements due to an increased awareness from academic departments, and positive word-of-mouth from returnees. For the first time, we had both recent graduates and Master's-level students undertaking traineeships with positive outcomes.Staff mobility numbers also increased in 2016/17 - particularly in the area of non-academic staff traineeships. Staff from the University's Policy and Planning team were able to visit universities in the Czech Republic, Italy and Germany and meet with both students and staff at these institutions to share best practice.As referenced above, students undertaking Erasmus+ exchanges in 2016/17 benefited from increased pre-departure sessions which are compulsory and cover not just the basic academic side of a student exchange, but also Health and Safety, cultural awareness and benefits to employability. In addition to this, the University of Stirling Study Abroad Office has a regular 'Walk In Wednesdays' drop-in session within the Student Services Hub. The Hub is a central 'one stop shop' for all University of Stirling students where they can receive advice and signposting on a number of academic and administrative issues. The relationship between the Study Abroad Team and the Student Services Hub is extremely positive and this provides study abroad opportunities with a centralised platform for the dissemination of information. The walk-in service is for both outgoing and incoming study abroad and exchange students.Our incoming students are all administered and supported centrally by our Admissions team and Study Abroad Team who are on hand throughout the application, arrival, study and post-exchange period to assist the students, and ensure that their experience at the University of Stirling is both worthwhile and positive. The induction and orientation programme - organised centrally and offered to all new students - seeks to ensure that every student is given an equal opportunity to understand the university and the local area and, crucially, to become aware of the multivarious methods of support that they can access during their time. As referenced above, the Student Services Hub is key to this experience and we work closely with our colleagues in that area.Upon arrival, students are all invited and encouraged to attend our Orientation sessions, which generally include a Welcome evening hosted by local dignitaries to ensure a welcome not just to the University but to the City of Stirling. Students can also attend sessions on how to make the most of the library, and how to make use of the University of Stirling's wide range of student support services. These include the Careers and Employability Service, Money Advice Service, and our Counselling and Wellbeing Service. The latter is something we have seen a particular increase in access amongst study abroad and exchange students in recent years. All induction sessions are recorded and made available online should students wish to revisit them.Incoming study abroad and exchange students are prioritised for University accommodation provided they apply within the advertised deadlines. If a student fails to do this, we will aim to assist them to find accommodation although it is generally not an issue. Students have their choice of on or off campus housing, with cost depending on assignment.Overall, our aim is to provide all incoming students with a smooth, positive experience not just of the University of Stirling but of Scotland - offering the kind of experience we hope that our students will have when they undertake their mobility periods abroad.

My PhD studentship will study the effects of new technologies on skills and employment, with the supervision of Professor Ron McQuaid. The Master of Research in Business and Management course would give me a great opportunity to gain great knowledge on business and management research and it would equip me with the essential research skills for my PhD studentship.

Cost-benefit analyses are routinely used by policy makers when designing environmental policy to weigh the costs and benefits of different policy alternatives, and stated choice experiments are used to value the non-marketed costs and benefits included in such analyses. Standard practice in stated choice experiments is to create a hypothetical market environment in which people choose among competing policy alternatives under the assumptions that they have complete information about all available policy alternatives, and that they are perfectly rational and maximize utility based on a clearly defined set of preferences, which can be retrieved when needed in any choice situation. In reality, these assumptions are questionable. Drawing on accumulating evidence from economics, psychology and marketing, this project aims to understand how searching for information about policy alternatives affects stated preference formation, learning and choice, and the extent to which this can address hypothetical bias. The project develops a novel experimental procedure that addresses important issues in stated choice experiments and make significant and original methodological contributions that advance current practice beyond state-of-the-art in both experimental design and data analysis. Improving the reliability of stated choice experiments will lead to improved estimates of non-marketed costs and benefits included in cost-benefit analyses. Through a broad uptake and use of these methods by stated preference practitioners, and increased awareness among policy makers, the methodological developments in this project can lead to improved policy recommendations and implementation across the EU.

Resolving conflicts between food security and biodiversity conservation under uncertainty Conflicts between food security and biodiversity conservation are increasing in scale and intensity and have been shown to be damaging for both biodiversity and human livelihoods. Uncertainty, for example from climate change, decreases food security, puts further pressure on biodiversity and exacerbates conflicts. I propose to develop a novel model that predicts solutions to conflicts between biodiversity conservation and food security under uncertainty. ConFooBio will integrate game theory and social-ecological modelling to develop new theory to resolve conservation conflicts. ConFooBio will implement a three-tiered approach 1) characterise and analyse 7 real-world conservation conflicts impacted by uncertainty; 2) develop new game theory that explicitly incorporates uncertainty; and 3) produce and test a flexible social-ecological model, applicable to any real-world conflict where stakeholders operate under conditions of extreme uncertainty. The project has importance for society at large because ecosystems and their services are central to human wellbeing. Managing a specific natural resource often results in conflict between those stakeholders focussing on improving food security and those focussed on biodiversity conversation. ConFooBio will illuminate resolutions to such conflicts by showing how to achieve win-win scenarios that protect biodiversity and secure livelihoods. In this project, I will develop a practical, transparent and flexible model for the sustainable future of natural resources that is also robust to uncertainty (e.g., climate change); this model will be highly relevant for environmental negotiations among stakeholders with competing objectives, e.g., the negotiations to set the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in September 2015.