Category: Studentships

Maastricht U: PhD Studentship in Sustaining Borders and Displacement Through Refugee Entrepreneurship (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Sustaining Borders and Displacement Through Refugee Entrepreneurship Ph.D. Studentship, Maastricht University, Netherlands. Deadline: 31 August 2025.

The Department of Society Studies is looking for a PhD candidate to undertake in-depth ethnographic research on the bordering practices in entrepreneurship and other life-sustaining programs for refugees in protracted situations in the Global South. You will be part of the Globalisation, Transnational, and Development research group at Maastricht University.

For many refugees, sustaining life is a catch-22. On one hand, refugees living indefinite periods of displacement are often perceived as a burden to their countries of asylum. On the other hand, they are restricted from and can be punished for obtaining employment or other sources of livelihood that would allow them to become self-reliant. ‘Durable solutions’ to manage refugees’ return, local integration, or resettlement continue to be unattainable for the majority of the world’s refugee population. Institutions such as UNHCR and other state and non-state actors have turned towards more ‘comprehensive solutions’ that promote refugees’ self-reliance and economic inclusion in the society in which they live. This research aims to critically investigate how such programmes, in the form of entrepreneurship training and other youth employment initiatives designed to help refugees autonomously navigate the informal urban economies in the ‘Global South’, may also entail bordering practices that shape refugees’ continued experiences of displacement.

The PhD candidate will investigate entrepreneurship programmes and other initiatives that promote refugees’ self-reliance while living indefinite periods of displacement. These initiatives often target young refugees, which make up the majority of refugees, and are promoted as opportunities for refugees to learn new skills, widen networks, and improve future prospects after resettlement, despite declining opportunities for resettlement. The PhD candidate will get an opportunity to develop and undergo in-depth ethnographic research in a refugee asylum country in the Global South, preferably in Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. The research will engage with the following critical perspectives:

  1. A youth-centric perspective to understand how refugee entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes shape the experiences of young refugees, surviving and thriving amidst the fraught realities they face during displacement.
  2. An urban-refugee perspective to understand how refugee entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes are designed and implemented by state and non-state actors that support refugees in finding opportunities in the underregulated informal urban economies where they live.
  3. A border-making perspective to understand how refugee entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes are potentially used as border governing structures by state and non-state actors to keep refugees in protracted situations while not according them status.

The research project will be based on multi-scalar ethnographic research comparing different types of entrepreneurship and other self-reliance programmes in the PhD candidate’s chosen case study country. It will explore how these programmes are experienced by the refugees that participate in them, the trainers that are involved in designing and delivering the programmes, and the international organisations that fund them.

Oxford University: Rhodes Scholarship (UK)

“Studentships“Rhodes Scholarship for either MA or Ph.D. Studentship, Oxford University, Oxford, England, UK. Deadline: 1 August 2025.

The Rhodes Scholarship is a fully-funded postgraduate award which enables talented young people from around the world to study full-time at the University of Oxford. The Rhodes Scholarship is merit-based, with the purpose of developing public-spirited leaders, and to promote international understanding and peace through an international community of Scholars.

Applying for the Scholarship is a challenge, but it is an experience which has helped generations of young people to succeed. They encourage applications from talented students everywhere.

Rhodes Scholars go to the UK for two or more years and can apply to study most full-time postgraduate courses in almost any field offered by Oxford University. (Available for those wanting a PHD, an MA, or even a second BA.) If your country is not listed, you can apply for a Global Scholarship if you meet the eligibility criteria.

U Leiden: PhD Studentships in Interpersonal Conflicts & Violence (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Interpersonal Conflicts and Violence, 3 Ph.D. Studentships, University of Leiden, Netherlands. Deadline: 18 July 2025

(If the topic interests you, but you already have a PHD, there is also a postdoctoral researcher position available with the same team.)

Why and how do interpersonal conflicts turn physically violent? What are the turning points towards the beginning and ending of violence in encounters between civilians and between police and civilians? If you want to work on these questions, have a master’s degree in communication science, social science, or psychology, and would like to conduct qualitative video analysis, this may be the position for you.

The main aim of this ERC TURNING VIOLENT research is to identify turning points towards one-sided violence in interpersonal conflicts. Projects will focus on conflicts between civilians or between police and civilians in Berlin, Paris, or London. The team will be using publicly available video data, complemented with video elicitation interviews. They are seeking candidates who are interested in learning or who are already experienced in video based ethnomethodological conversation analysis and multimodal analysis and who are comfortable working with qualitative research methods and video annotation tools (e.g. ELAN, NVivo, or similar).

Erasmus U Rotterdam: PhD Studentship in Doing Diversity (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Doing Diversity: Street-level decisions in super diverse neighborhoods Ph.D. Studentship, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 31 July 2025.

New levels of migration and mobility have changed the face of European cities, such as Malmö. This had led to changing ‘superdiverse’ social realities, especially in ‘majority-minority’ neighbourhoods. The novelty of this emerging situation creates challenging circumstances particularly for ‘street-level workers’ such as teachers, police officers and healthcare professionals. This demands renewed understanding of the decision-making process of street-level workers.

This PhD project ‘ICONIC’ (‘International Comparative research Of street-level decisions in superdiverse Neighbourhoods In Context’) funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO Vidi grant) and led by dr. Mark van Ostaijen, will comparatively study street-level decisions in superdiverse neighbourhoods and investigate whether and why these decisions differ between Malmö, Aarhus, Bilbao, Marseille, Rotterdam and Antwerp.

This 4-year PhD project is grounded in Rotterdam, but in strong collaboration with Malmö University. Therefore, you will be based at Erasmus University Rotterdam but for the fieldwork phase, collaboration is ensured with Malmö Institute for Migration Studies (MIM) which provides with the support base to conduct qualitative fieldwork in Malmö and Aarhus. As such, this PhD project does not require additional funding, nor means to conduct fieldwork, which is all covered by project funding.

Next to qualitative and ethnographic research skills it is important that the PhD candidate holds Swedish, English (and Danish) language skills.

A second studentship is available for the same project, but with fieldwork in Bilbao and Marseille. In that case, it is important that the PhD candidate holds Spanish (Basque), English (and French) language skills.

U Limerick PhD Studentship: ID Compression (Ireland)

“Studentships“PhD studentship in Psychology to work with the project ID-Compression, University of Limerick, Ireland. Deadline: 10 July 2025.

There are 2 studentships available for this project; the one that is most likely of interest to followers of this Center is for a PhD in Social Sciences with an interest in Social Identity.

The ERC-funded ID-COMPRESSION project explores the idea that issue-based polarization is information compressibility, where attitudes provide redundant (i.e. compressible) information about groups and identity. This framework conceptualizes people holding attitudes as a social information system where people are located by their own attitudes and can easily locate each-other in the social system from a few expressed attitudes. The more compressible the social information system, the fewer bits of information are required to locate people within it. These ideas flow from the social identity and social representations approaches to attitudes. Team members are particularly excited to explore conversion pathways where, they hypothesize, people’s willingness to adopt an idea will depend on their current location in the social information system. The PhD candidates will work as part of this team testing these ideas with secondary data, social experiments and simulations. They will particularly explore whether and how information becomes compressible when it is passed through simple social networks, whether social information compression maps to polarization (e.g. that people compress social information more in highly polarized contexts), and will experimentally test the concept of conversion pathways. Applied mathematicians in the group will develop metrics and methods for estimating compressibility, and for mapping it to other measures of polarization

NTNU PhD Studentship: Social Work, International Migration, Refugee Studies (Norway)

“Studentships“PhD Candidate in Social work, with a focus on international migration and refugee studies, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. Deadline: 29 June 2025.

This three-years position is a part of the ANCHOR: Advancing Neighborhood, Community, and HOusing for the integration of Refugee families, an inter-disciplinary project funded under the NTNU’s strategic research area: Community. ANCHOR focuses on how housing and neighborhood environments can support refugee families’ wellbeing, social integration, and sense of belonging. This position will focus on Norwegian municipal contexts, examining how physical and social aspects of housing intersect with the everyday lives of refugee families with children.

ANCHOR investigates how entangled social, political, and environmental processes shape the housing experiences, wellbeing, and sense of belonging among refugee families in Norway. By focusing on non-linear and sometimes unexpected outcomes of policy, planning, and community design, the project aims to reveal how conventional approaches can inadvertently deepen uncertainties or, conversely, foster more inclusive forms of community life.

Challenging the traditional separation of social from material and environmental factors, ANCHOR takes a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, drawing on social and architectural anthropology, urban planning, social work, childhood studies, and public health. Central to this endeavor is an emphasis on intersectionality, which recognizes that factors such age, gender, cultural background, and generational dynamics can shape different layers of vulnerability or resilience within refugee families. Methodologically, the project combines creative, participatory methods with established qualitative techniques. This multi-method strategy seeks to co-create knowledge with refugee families, local communities, NGOs, and municipal authorities.

This project is a collaboration among the Departments of Architecture and Planning, Social Work and Public Health and Nursing, and it includes two PhD positions. The successful PhD candidate will work closely with their counterpart in the Department of Architecture and Planning. Norwegian and English are the main languages in use at the Department.

U Hamburg: 3 PHD Studentships in Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation Across the Lifespan (Germany)

“Studentships“3 Ph.D. Research Associates for the project Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation Across the Lifespan, University of Hamburg, Germany. Deadline: 15 June 2025.

The Faculty of Education at the University of Hamburg is a leader in conducting innovative and future-oriented research related to the educational and social consequences of diversity resulting from migration and globalization. This strength is now further expanded through the award of a Humboldt Professorship to Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller as part of the faculty research center “Literacy in Diversity Settings (LiDS).”

The Humboldt Professorship is devoted to “Linguistic Diversity and Social Participation across the Lifespan” and is closely integrated with the activities of the Language on the Move platform. The research focus will be on migrant language socialization, language learning, and settlement across the lifespan and outside of institutions of formal education. This includes digital spaces as well as language brokering and other forms of informal language assistance that often undergird institutional communications in linguistically diverse societies.

Your responsibilities: Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications. They may also pursue doctoral studies outside of working duties. This is a unique opportunity to become part of an education-focused research center that aims to make major contributions to social cohesion in linguistically diverse societies.

U Groningen: PHD Studentship in Mediatizing the Homeland (Netherlands)

“Studentships“Mediatizing the Homeland: Diasporic Imaginaries of Palestine Ph.D. Studentship, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands. Deadline: 30 April 2025.

Fully funded four-year PhD position for the project Mediatizing the Homeland, positioned at the intersection of digital media, decolonial and diaspora studies. As a candidate, you will part of the Centre for Media and Journalism Studies at the University of Groningen, engaging with a thriving community of scholars at the forefront of critical media research. This PhD project offers a unique opportunity to work in an international environment and to acquire valuable research experience at a top-ranked European university. As a PhD student, you will develop your own research project in consultation with the associated supervisors. You will conduct independent and original academic research and report results via peer-reviewed publications, conference presentations, and ultimately a PhD dissertation. The PhD thesis has to be completed within four years. You will also have the opportunity to (further) develop your teaching skills.

This PhD project explores how diasporic identity and belonging are shaped through mediated imaginaries of the homeland. Focusing on the Palestinian diaspora as a case study, it examines how the homeland is discursively and visually constructed across various media forms, particularly as a space that remains largely inaccessible due to geopolitical constraints. More specifically, it investigates how Palestinian diasporic media production, content, and consumption contribute to identity formation and a sense of belonging in response to contemporary regional developments.

The project is guided by the central research question “How do Palestinian participatory media producers, content, and consumers construct diasporic identities and imaginaries of the homeland?” Instead of focusing on traditional media such as literature and cinema, this study looks at participatory media, such as social media, music and videogames. The aim is to inquire into how these media provide diasporic voices with new modes of expression, engagement, and identity negotiation, facilitated by their accessibility, platformization, and the blurring of production and consumption.

U London: Migrant Futures PhD Studentships (England)

“Studentships“Two Migrant Futures Goldsmiths Ph.D. Studentships, Goldsmiths University of London, London, UK.Deadline: 25 April 2025.

Two doctoral studentships are available for entry in 2025-26. These are fully-funded studentship that may be held on a full-time or part-time  basis, pro-rata, over three years and six years and are at an equivalent rate to fully-funded UKRI studentships. They cover tuition fees and an annual stipend at the yearly UKRI rate, together with a small annual research training and support fund.

One of the two awards for entry 2025-26 will be open to eligible home applicants who identify as migrants or refugees and from racialised ethnic minority backgrounds in any field of research and practice for which supervision is available at Goldsmiths, University of London. To be clear, applicants considered for this award need not be working on a migration related topic, but they should be able to describe how their work will enhance their own economic, creative and intellectual lives and that of others.

The second of these two awards will be open to all eligible home or international applicants – irrespective of background and experience – whose proposed PhD is focused on a topic related to migration, broadly conceived, including in relation to processes of race and racialisation. Proposals must be informed by the co-production of knowledge with people and groups from migrant and refugee backgrounds, and demonstrate potential for social and cultural impact.

Migrant Futures Doctoral Studentship holders will, upon award, be designated as Fellows of the Migrant Futures Institute and will be expected to contribute to developing and enhancing the research culture of the institute through their research, creative practice and participation in MFI activities and events. Successful applicants from racialised backgrounds will also be invited to participate in the activities of Generation Delta Goldsmiths.

U Amsterdam: Studentship in Argumentation, Identity and the Public Sphere (Netherlands)

“Studentships“

PhD Studentship in Argumentation, Identity and the Public Sphere, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. Deadline: 14 April 2025.

The Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication (ACLC) currently has a vacant PhD position as part of the project Expressing Identity in Public Discourse through Argumentation led by principal investigator Dr. M.H. (Menno) Reijven. The ACLC prioritises diversity (taken in a holistic sense, e.g., ethnicity, social and/or linguistic background, gender, sexuality) and is committed to creating an inclusive research environment. They are seeking a talented colleague who can communicate well with the different ACLC research groups, develop interdisciplinary projects, and contribute to research-based teaching. The ACLC is one of the five Research Schools within the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research (AIHR). Researchers in the capacity group of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the ACLC investigate argumentative discourse across a wide variety of contexts, as well as the linguistic and cognitive processes behind argumentation and persuasion. The PhD student is expected to collaborate with other researchers on argumentation within the research school as well.