Tag: PHD studentship

Heriot-Watt U PhD Studentships: Languages & Intercultural Studies 2024 (Scotland)

“Studentships“
PhD Studentships 2024-5 in Languages and Intercultural Studies, School of Social Sciences, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Deadline: 2 April 2024.

Heriot-Watt University’s School of Social Sciences is offering a number of full-time PhD studentships to start in September 2024. Studentships include a tuition fee waiver and an annual stipend currently set at £18,622. The duration of the studentships is 3.5 years. The School of Social Sciences also offers a research support allowance of £2,250 over the registered period of study. In addition, full-time scholarship holders are normally offered an opportunity to undertake paid teaching support each academic year.

Projects in areas related to language and intercultural studies include The use of new language technologies for translation purposes by non-language professionals in higher education settings, and also Decolonising research and research methodologies. 

Coventry U: PHD Studentship in Contentious Civil Societies & Democratisation in Southeastern Europe (UK)


“Studentships“PhD Studentship: Contentious Civil Societies and Democratisation in Southeastern Europe, Coventry University, UK. Deadline: 31 March 2024.

Coventry University is inviting applications from suitably-qualified graduates for a fully funded PhD studentship examining Contentious Civil Societies and Democratisation in Southeastern Europe. Candidates will be based in the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations – a research centre in the Institute for Peace and Security.

Many current developments in Post-Communist Southeast European politics confound analysts. Firstly, while the overall trend is towards democratic backsliding, there is much variation between states to the extent that democracy databases often disagree; for example Romania’s democracy score has been on a negative trajectory since the mid-2010s according to Freedom House, but a positive trajectory according to V-Dem. Part of this confusion arises from the fact that, with the sudden emergence of battle-ready civil societies in the 2010s, most of these societies are far more contentious that they were in the 2000s. Contention is notoriously difficult to evaluate from the perspective of democracy evaluators. This ‘contention’ conundrum is of interest to political scientists and democracy promoters worldwide: are polarised, contentious civil societies better understood as catalysing or spoiling factors in young democracies? The former interpretation prevails in much rationalist political science theorising while the latter argument is rooted in agonistic democratic theory and the new social movements literature. Activists struggling for emancipatory causes are at once celebrated by democratic theorists as seeking to expand the democratic realm and (often implicitly) denigrated as drivers of polarisation by rationalist political scientists, especially as in Southeastern Europe where these activists are struggling against (often pro-EU) political elites. The whole situation calls for a closer look.

The proposed PhD project would be a mostly qualitative, possibly ethnographic study focussed in either one or two countries of Southeastern Europe that would ideally facilitate access to either or both liberal-emancipatory and illiberal civil society actors. Methodologies such as participant observation, focus groups and semi-structured interviews would be encouraged to allow civil society actors themselves to outline their interests and identities in relation to aspirations for – or against – democracy and its liberal dimensions.

U Antwerp: Studentship in Peace, Institutional Design and Ethnicity in Africa (Belgium)

“Studentships“

Graduate Teaching & Research Assistant in Peace, Institutional Design and Ethnicity in Africa, Institute of Development Policy, University of Antwerp, Belgium. Deadline: 29 February 2024.

As a graduate teaching & research assistant, you are part of the Academic Assistant Staff (Dutch: Assisterend Academisch Personeel, AAP). You spend at least 50% of your working time preparing a PhD thesis in development studies. In addition, you play an assisting role in teaching, research and service-delivery activities.

PhD research

  • You work on the preparation and defence of a PhD thesis in Development Studies – in English, French or Dutch – on a subject related to peace, institutional design and ethnicity in Africa. Your PhD research is situated at the national level of state institutions, possibly with linkages to the local sub-state and the intergovernmental regional level (African Union, RECs). You investigate how, as a conflict prevention or conflict resolution strategy, ethnic diversity and segmentation is institutionally managed through constitutional design or other governance instruments.  You may decide to focus on one country or engage in a comparative analysis. Your PhD contributes to the scholarly literature and policy on nation-building, state-building and peacebuilding in Africa.

  • You organise your own PhD research and report on your progress regularly.

  • You participate in a doctoral training programme, for instance by participating in courses offered by the Antwerp Doctoral School and/or CERES doctoral school in order to enhance your doctoral research skills.

  • You present the findings of your PhD research at academic conferences and you publish in scientific publications (among which IOB’s own publication outlets). You also communicate your findings to non-scientific audiences (among which IOB’s own Analysis and Policy Briefs).

  • You contribute to the research related activities organized by the community of IOB PhD students.

U Hull: Studentship in Great Flood Stories and What They Teach Us: Applying Lessons from Cross-Cultural Diluvial Traditions (UK)

“Studentships“

PHD Studentship: Great Flood Stories and What They Teach Us: Applying Lessons from Cross-Cultural Diluvial Traditions, University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull, UK. Deadline: 24 January 2024.

Despite being one of the world’s oldest narratives, stories about Great Floods have yet to receive sustained critical attention. No synthesis has brought together the increasingly precious adaptation and mitigation lessons held within the anthropological, literary and historical intercultural responses to past floods. This PhD sets out to mine their potential lessons for the present. It will set out applied historical lessons of global value resulting from analysis of the Great Flood stories that span the ages through Indigenous South and North America, the Near East, the Greco-Roman world, and Mesoamerica.

This exciting PhD project will address this environmental history research gap via detailed examination centred upon the context-specific elements from flood stories that made the flood mitigation/adaptation options successful (or not) within sources such as the “earth-diver’ motif in the Northeastern United States, the Maya Deluge Myth and the Four Flood Myth Traditions of Classical China.

The student will analyse international historical, ethnographic, and paleoclimatology sources, oral history collections and academic literature on Great Flood stories and conduct semi-structured interviews/policy document analysis on present-day flood resilience in a specific flood-prone region.

They will be encouraged to produce a policy report, article and a short book publication such as a Cambridge Element (a book series within Treatied Spaces Research Group). The aim of each output will be to connect historical knowledge to present-day practice.

This is a funded 4-year PhD studentship to start in September 2024. An exciting opportunity for an ambitious, talented and enthusiastic researcher to conduct interdisciplinary research in order to advance thinking within the area of blue-green humanities. Because this project is international in design, it would benefit significantly from being carried out by a candidate with capabilities in multiple languages and cultural registers.

Brunel U: Studentships in Education (UK)

“Studentships“

ESRC Funded Studentships in Education at Brunel University London, via the Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership, Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK. Deadline: 12 January 2024.

The ‘Grand Union’ is a Doctoral Training Partnership between Brunel University London, the Open University and the University of Oxford. This is one of 14 ESRC Doctoral Training Partnerships across the UK, providing postgraduate students with high-quality social science research training. Brunel DTP students on the Education pathway will join the Department of Education. Education at Brunel is a leading department in the UK offering the full range of provision at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. In common with the university as a whole the department has a rich ethnic mix among its student population and attracts a significant proportion of students from outside the European Union.

The most obvious options for followers of CID are:

 

Norwegian School of Economics Studentship: Professional and Intercultural Communication (Norway)

“Studentships“

PhD Research Scholar : Professional and Intercultural Communication, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), Bergen, Norway. Deadline: 15 January 2024.

NHH is pleased to announce vacancies as PhD research scholar at the Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication. The department welcomes applications within three fields of research as specified below. The PhD specialisations offered by the Department of Professional and Intercultural Communication aims to give dedicated students solid training in performing high quality research. The students must undertake relevant course work equivalent to 45 ECTS. Given the international focus of the department, the PhD research scholars are strongly encouraged to carry out some of their coursework abroad or at other Norwegian institutions.

Qualifying education in the PhD specialisations in Professional and intercultural Communication should normally be a master’s degree in language/linguistics or translation. Emphasis will be placed on the quality and relevance of the research proposal. Some formal education in economics, business administration or other social sciences is an advantage.

In the application, candidates should state explicitly which research area they are applying for. Research proposals should preferably include a sustainability perspective.

  • Specialised translation

The research proposal should focus on translation of specialised texts preferably from or into Norwegian or a Scandinavian language, but other language combinations may also be relevant.

  • Digital text analysis

The research proposal should include computational approaches and focus on data and topics relevant for business organisations.

  • Discourse analysis/Conversation analysis

The research proposal should focus on the qualitative study of professional communication. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to, intersubjectivity, pragmatic strategies, multilingualism, or English as a business lingua franca.

PHD Studentship: Effectiveness of Intercultural Educational Interventions (The Netherlands)

“Studentships“PhD Candidate & Lecturer: Effectiveness of intercultural educational interventions in (international) higher education, Hotel Management School Maastricht and Eramus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Deadline: 18 June 2023.

The PhD project is a collaboration between Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in Maastricht and Erasmus University Rotterdam. You will be employed at Zuyd as a PhD candidate / lecturer and embedded as a PhD student in the Erasmus Graduate School of Social Sciences and the Humanities.

Over the past decades, educators in higher education have been designing and analyzing a variety of educational interventions and strategies to support students’ intercultural learning. The goal of these activities is to promote intercultural competences among students, and prepare them to become professionals and citizens that can thrive in a challenging, diverse and globalized world. Some programs aim to internationalize their overall curriculum, while others set up (virtual) exchange programs with international partners, offer shorter projects or courses on intercultural learning, promote international internships, or try to internationalize their staff and students and use English as a language of instruction.

The goal of this PhD project is to conduct a structural analysis on how different educational interventions affect the long-term development of intercultural competences of students in higher education. To do so, the PhD candidate will use quantitative data from a large-scale longitudinal research project from Zuyd University’s research Center Global Minds @ Work that has been running since 2017: the Global Mind Monitor (GMM). Using the GMM dataset as a basis, the PhD project will specifically focus on the long-term development of intercultural competences in higher education, applying advanced quantitative methods such as Multilevel Modeling, Latent Growth Curve Modeling or Latent Class Analysis.

PHD Studentship: Reframing Postcolonial Discourse in East European Studies (UK)

“Studentships“PHD Studentship in Reframing Postcolonial Discourse in Eastern Europe, Queen Mary University of London and British Library, London, UK. Deadline: 8 May 2023.

Queen Mary University of London and the British Library are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship from 1 October 2023 under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme. This doctoral project seeks to advance postcolonial discourse in East European studies by focusing on the British Library’s unique Belarusian collection, the history of its development during the Cold War, and the collection’s evolution in response to Belarus’ ‘decolonising moment’ as it broke out of the Soviet fold in 1991. This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Natalya Chernyshova (School of History) and Prof Jeremy Hicks (Department of Modern Languages and Cultures) at Queen Mary University of London and by Dr Katie McElvanney, Dr Katya Rogatchevskaia, and Dr Olga Topol at the British Library. The student will spend time with both QMUL and the British Library and will become part of the wider cohort of AHRC CDP funded PhD students across the UK. QMUL and the British Library are keen to encourage applications from the widest range of candidates and particularly welcome those currently underrepresented in doctoral student cohorts.

Project Overview: Slavonic and Eastern European collections at the British Library are one of its strengths. However, despite the diversity of the collections, the British Library co-supervisors have identified postcolonial research and its application to curatorial practices as a priority approach to these collections, likely to reveal many meaningful gaps and contested interpretations. The project will explore the British Library’s Belarusian resources, i.e., resources relating to Belarus and its diasporas, as a case study through which to develop an analytical framework that could be subsequently applied by future scholars and information professionals to the entire Slavonic and East European collection. The project will investigate how the establishment of independent Belarus in 1991 affected the British Library’s policy and approach towards collecting, describing, and interpreting its Belarusian material. The challenges here are many, from navigating the politically charged waters of choosing the right spelling for transcription in the resources’ metadata to finding ways of bringing into dialogue two parallel depositories of Belarusian culture: Soviet-based and diaspora-based, the latter represented by the considerable collection of material at the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library in London. The research will seek to identify what further work needs to be undertaken to lead the decolonisation of discourse on Belarus and will develop recommendations on how such work can be carried out.

Swansea U PHD Studentship: Digital Restorative Approaches in Wales (UK)

“Studentships“Empirical Studies in Law: ESRC Wales Doctoral Training Partnership – Collaborative Studentship: Digital Restorative Approaches in Wales, Swansea University, Wales, UK. Deadline: 3 Febuary 2023.

Today’s perpetual crisis (BLM, Brexit, Covid19, inflation…) brings injustices and the need for dialogue into focus. Restorative approaches (RA) enable individuals and communities to develop the skills to pre-empt and respond to conflict and harm, while acknowledging trauma (1,2). In Wales, RA are used to build resilience and repair relationships in schools, families and housing contexts. Within the criminal justice system, victims are entitled to Restorative Justice, a type of RA, as an alternative and/or alongside the traditional justice process. It plays a role in rehabilitation, reducing re-offending and is central to youth justice. However, RA necessitate reflection and dialogue which, in a digital society, presents challenges and opportunities. The aims of this research are to explore how digital restorative practices (DRA) are evolving and how co-production and trauma-informed approaches can shape DRA.

The use of digital technology in restorative contexts (referred to as DRA) expanded during the COVID19 pandemic e.g., to facilitate mediation, virtual circles, specialist support and training (3–5). Indeed, technology has the potential to improve the sustainability and accessibility of interventions, help evidence ‘what works’, improve awareness of services and address misconceptions of RA (6–8). Beyond the traditional intervention model, technology could empower restorative communities to self-direct. Nonetheless, there are significant challenges associated with the integration of digital tools, including concerns regarding their misuse, digital exclusion, confidentiality, data security and building trust (9). Additionally, restorative practices should create opportunities for participants to connect and collaboratively re-construct their shared lived experience. Whether and how this can be achieved in a world dominated by instant and digitally mediated interaction, including online harms, needs investigation.

Using a mixed-methods socio-legal approach, this proposal sets out to meet three objectives [1] explore stakeholder experiences of the use of digital technology for the delivery of RA in England and Wales, [2] explore how co-production and trauma-informed approaches can shape DRA, plus [3] identify best practice and propose a model to aid practitioners in determining whether and how technology should be used. A baseline survey of practitioners is suggested, followed by focus groups with practitioners and community participants, to explore how and whether digital technology is used and experienced, vis-à-vis restorative principles and participants rights. Community participants may include adults engaged in Restorative Justice programmes, as well as young people taking part in school-based restorative initiatives. These methods may be complemented by an evaluation of the impact of specific technology use-cases, through a case-study approach.

Keele U PhD Studentship: Cosmopolitan Collection and Regional Resource (UK)

“Studentships“PhD Studentship: Cosmopolitan Collection and Regional Resource: The Social Life of Tatton Park Library, Keele University, Keele, UK. Deadline: 31 January 2023.

Applications are invited for an AHRC-funded PhD in English Literature, supervised collaboratively by Keele University and the National Trust: ‘Cosmopolitan Collection and Regional Resource: The Social Life of Tatton Park Library’. This is offered under the AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award programme. The student will be supervised by Dr Jonathon Shears and Dr Rachel Adcock (Keele), and Mr Tim Pye (National Curator, NT Libraries). This full-time studentship, which is funded for three years at standard AHRC rates, will begin on 1 September 2023. It is especially suitable for students with a background in eighteenth- or nineteenth-century studies and book history, whether or not they have worked directly on the topic of the project.

The project makes a timely contribution to research on collecting, material culture and the circulation of ideas by exploring the way regional elites understood themselves and their impact on local, national, and international stages. It focuses on the library at Tatton Park, Cheshire as a site where issues of race, class and gender intersect. This project will extend understanding of the generations of the Egerton family who owned Tatton, their acquisitions, tastes, and the role of the library as a resource for the family and the wider community. It will provide the student with privileged access to the unique collection at Tatton which holds over 8,000 rare books, rigorous training in archival research, and co-produced public engagement opportunities through Tatton Park. The study of the social life of libraries and reading contexts is fast developing but Tatton is one of the least documented major libraries owned by the Trust meaning there are significant opportunities for the student to open up hidden stories that will have a lasting impact on the way country house libraries are understood.