Find out more about our innovative, self-funded PhD projects in areas of sport and exercise science where we already have supervisors active and engaged in the research topic in our School of Psychology and Sport Science.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity, Nutrition, Exercise and Cardiometabolic Risk
Despite evidence for increasing levels of recreational time availability in the general population, physical inactivity and obesity trends remain high in the United Kingdom (hscic.gov.uk, 2014). There has been recent interest in the use of high intensity training (or HiiT) as a means to provide a solution to perceived time limitation for exercise, as well as to provide more effective support for individuals who may be less able to undertake prolonged cardiovascular exercise (Gibala et al., 2006; Burgomaster et al., 2008; Kelly et al., 2014; Weston et al., 2014). Current scientific thinking indicates that HiiT provides a type of ‘up-regulation’ of key cell proteins leading to improved fitness and metabolism over time (Burgomaster et al., 2008). However, to date, there does not appear to be any research investigating the impact of more commercial home based training programmes such as P90X™ – a 90 day intensive cardio-resistance training programme or ‘Insanity’ – a similar home based training programme designed around maximal interval training.
The research programme would aim to investigate how such programmes benefit recreational, trained and overweight cohorts, either with or without a corresponding ‘healthy eating’ programme. There is particular interest on assessment of overall cardiometabolic health, and any potential negative effects from such exercise routines.
Resources required: the programme would require access to exercise physiology laboratory space for standard exercise testing/training, as well as access to the HTA laboratory for storage of plasma samples. Additionally, access to the main analytical laboratories would be required for assessment of endotoxin and cholesterol assays. Purchase of, and training in, assay use would be required.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity, Nutrition and Mindful Eating
Nutritional coaching, and methods to improve the application of nutritional strategies is of current interest to sport and exercise scientists, coaches and practitioners alike. In many cases, nutritional interventions are not reinforced and as such athletes (and exercising individuals) often fail in the consistent application of such interventions. This can lead to poor dietary intake or practices over time, with athlete’s regularly viewing nutrition as important, but not really focusing on its application in comparison to both training and recovery (Roberts, 2015 personal observations).
Levels of nutritional knowledge have been reported to be poor in many athletic groups (Furber, Roberts and Roberts, 2016), with education and advice often coming from non-scientific sources. In many cases, this gives rise to an unconscious approach to eating patterns, with athletes eating out of necessity, on the go, rushed or making poor food choices. Subclinical symptoms such as fatigue, poor recovery, bloating, mental confusion, poor decision making, inflammatory states and gastrointestinal distress may all stem from simple ‘decisions’ linked to food intake.
Strategies to improve mindful approaches to eating behaviours may provide practical means to advance athletic training and performance through improved nutrition and recovery mechanisms. This research aims to explore current practices in a variety of athletic cohorts, combined with practical and psychological strategies to enhance nutritional intake leading to measurable physiological improvements.
Resources required: the programme would require access to exercise physiology laboratory space for standard exercise testing/training, as well as access to the HTA laboratory for storage of potential plasma samples. Additionally, access to the main analytical laboratories would be required for assessment of pertinent assays. All cardio-metabolic testing equipment is currently available in the Sport and Exercise Sciences laboratories. Purchase of, and training in, assay use would be required, if applicable.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Endurance Physiology, Exercise
Marathon running is one of the biggest mass participation sports in the world, with the London marathon alone attracting around 38,000 runners each year. Within this population the largest grouping are the non-elite runners who are either running for personal goals or for charity.
When considering the physiology of the marathon runner, three components dominate, maximal oxygen uptake (VO2max), aerobic capacity as denoted by the lactate turn-point and the economy of the athlete. Yet when we consider the wealth of literature that has been published in this field the majority either uses small sample sizes or focuses on athletes who complete the distance in times of 2 ½ - 3 ½ hours.
Recent work from our group has focused on how runners pace the marathon, in respect of age, experience and sex across a sample of 1900 runners. Additionally we have amassed a data set from 97 non-elite runners relating to their training habits, underlying physiology and race performance. This project would aim to move from this laboratory data set and apply the findings to athletes wishing to increase their race speed (#30minutes_faster).
The study will follow a group of 300 runners as they prepare over a 9 month period for a spring to summer marathon. The runners will be required to follow prescribed programs based on bespoke training loads which have been derived from our previous works. The study will compare different modalities of training whilst ensuring that the load across groups remains the same. A sub-sample will be assessed on a regular basis for key physiological responses including cardiac function, haematology, respiratory responses, and metabolic responses and training characteristics. This project has an enormous real—world application as the outcomes will better inform the mass participation runner how to use their training time effectively whilst avoiding the negative consequences of training.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Sport Policy and Management
The Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race is a rowing race that has been contested since 1856 making it one of the oldest sporting institutions. The first women’s event was held in 1927, but until recently has always been contested separately from their male counterparts (Kingsbury & Williams, 2015.) In 2015, this changed largely due to the sponsorship intervention of Helena Morrissey (Chief Executive of Newton Investment), with the first ever Oxford-Cambridge Women’s Boat Race taking place on the same day and the same course as the men. The Boat Race became the Boat Races.
One theoretical approach that can explain this process of change is institutional theory, which has a well-established tradition within the sport management literature (Washington & Patterson, 2010). Institutional analysis emphasizes the importance of social structures and mechanisms of social order (i.e., institutions) that enable and constrain organisational behaviour (Scott, 2004). From an institutional perspective, the boat races can be viewed as an institution in that it contains “cultural-cognitive, normative and regulative elements which are stable and bring meaning to social life” (Scott, 2001).
The current project aims to examine the institutional processes surrounding the creation of the boat races and crucially how actors were able to influence these processes, which ultimately resulted in one of the oldest sporting institutions to change. In doing so, the project will enhance our knowledge and understanding of how institutional processes work within sport. In particular, how actors can influence sporting institutions.
Potential avenues of inquiry include (i) field conditions that enabled the initiation of the women’s boat race, (ii) how actors navigated their interpretive struggles surrounding the oxford-cambridge boat race, and (iii) the intervention strategies adopted by actors within and surrounding the boat race to enable institutional change.
This research may adopt a range of methodologies tailored to the specific research questions, including interviewing, document analysis, qualitative inquiry, and learning histories.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity, Probiotics and Gut Health
It is known that the bacteria of the intestinal tract differs between obese and non-obese cohorts (Dibaise et al., 2008). It has been proposed that such differences may explain transient gut wall permeability leading to conditions associated with increased circulating toxins. Additionally, with increased visceral fat stores in obese conditions (Depres et al., 2008), there would appear to be a connection between gut health and hormonal ‘messaging’ from adipose tissue. Increased levels of inflammatory hormones (e.g., resistin) have been demonstrated to result in higher concentrations of circulating low density lipoprotein (Steppan et al., 2001; Steppan et al., 2002; Al-Daghri et al., 2005) cholesterol (LDL-c), so called ‘bad cholesterol’. Levels of ‘bad cholesterol’ have been implicated alongside increased cardio-metabolic health risks.
It is proposed that nutritional strategies to support the gastrointestinal bacteria and provide competitive exclusion of endotoxins may alter such ‘messaging’, leading to a reduction in cardio-metabolic risk either with or without exercise. The use of omega-3 fatty acids combined with probiotic strains may offer practical interventions to support gastrointestinal health (Das, 2002). Improvements in cardio-metabolic risk offer considerable economic and societal impact considering evident obesity trends in the United Kingdom.
Resources required: the programme would require access to exercise physiology laboratory space for standard exercise testing/training, as well as access to the saliva laboratory for storage of plasma samples. Additionally, access to the main analytical laboratories would be required for assessment of endotoxin assays, cholesterol assessment and resistin assessment using enzyme-linked immunoabsorbant assay (ELISA).
The project would require sponsorship of nutritional supplementation throughout the research programme (omega-3 fatty acid, probiotic formulas), and we have an excellent working collaboration with a leading clinical nutrition company. Purchase of, and training in, assay use would be required, if applicable.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Sport Policy and Management
In April 2017, UK Sport and Sport England co-published a new sport governance code, which sets out the principles of ‘good’ governance and the levels of transparency, accountability and financial integrity required for any sport organisations wishing to receive public funding (through UK Sport or Sport England). The creation and implementation of the code was a key part of the Conservative Government’s sporting strategy set out within Sporting Future (DCMS, 2015).
Governance in sport has become a central concern in recent years (Hums & MacLean, 2018; King, 2016). This interest has emerged, in part, from broader societal concerns surrounding governance (e.g., Enron scandal and economic crisis) but also due to recent high profile failures within sport (e.g., FIFA and the Russian doping scandal). There is no single agreed upon definition of governance, but ‘good’ governance can be broadly understood as the effective and responsible management of an organisation.
The current project examines how NGB's have interpreted and implemented this new code of governance and assess what impact it has had on these organisations. Potential avenues of inquiry include: (i) how NGB's have interpreted the new code of governance, (ii) the barriers and challenges faced by NGB's in adopting the new code (iii) whether the new code has changed governance practice. In doing so, this project seeks to understand the implications of the new governance code for all sport organisations and improve its ongoing implementation.
This research may adopt a range of methodologies tailored to the specific research questions, including interviewing, surveys, and document analysis.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.
Cambridge Centre for Sport and Exercise Sciences
Health, Nutrition and Physical Activity, Green Tea Extract, Fat Oxidation
There is current scientific and public interest in the health benefits of functional foods, particularly with reference to green tea and related extracts. A recent publication by Roberts et al (2015) demonstrated that the acute use (4 weeks) of a high strength, decaffeinated green tea extract promoted significant improvements in the ability to use fat as an energy source during exercise, as well as increasing short term aerobic performance. Additionally, this study demonstrated that in recreationally active individuals, bodyfat was significantly reduced following short term green tea extract supplementation. It is proposed that the potential health and ergogenic benefits of green tea use stems from the active catechins, of which (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) may have profound bioactive properties.
Following this recent publication, there has been widespread media and public interest in the longer term use of green tea with particular reference to population level studies. The aim of this research project will therefore be to undertake collective studies leading to a larger population based study investigating the use of specific green tea formulas in conjunction with exercise training on body composition, fat oxidation and cardio-metabolic health.
Resources required: the programme would require access to exercise physiology laboratory space for standard exercise testing/training, as well as access to the psychology laboratory for storage of plasma samples (HTA authorised facility). Additionally, access to the main analytical laboratories would be required for assessment of pertinent blood assays.
The project would require sponsorship of nutritional supplementation throughout the research programme (green tea extract capsulation) – we currently have a good collaboration with a leading clinical nutrition company who will be supporting this research through product supply. Purchase of, and training in, assay use would be required.
This project is self-funded.
Details of studentships for which funding is available are selected by a competitive process and are advertised on our jobs website as they become available.
If you wish to be considered for this project, you will need to apply for our Sport and Exercise Sciences MPhil, PhD. In the section of the application form entitled 'Outline research proposal', please quote the above title and include a research proposal.