PhD Scholarship for The Impact of Future Human Values and Practices on Australia’s Net Zero and Digital Transitions

Job No.: 663355

Location: Caulfield campus 

Employment Type: Full-time

Duration: 3-year 3-month fixed-term appointment 

Remuneration: The successful applicant will receive a Faculty-funded Stipend scholarship (Living Allowance) and Tuition Fee Remission Scholarship, Relocation Allowance (up to $1000 interstate and $1,500 overseas) and Single coverage of Overseas Student Healthcare Cover (OSHC) for a maximum of 57 months. (overseas applicants only). Living Allowance current value: $35,013 p.a. 2024 full-time rate (tax-free stipend); (annually indexed plus allowances as per RTP/MGRO stipend conditions: www.monash.edu/graduate-research/future-students/support/scholarship-conditions-of-award )

• Be inspired, every day
• Take your career in exciting and rewarding directions at one of the world’s top 80 universities

Everyone needs a platform to launch a satisfying career. At Monash, we give you the space and support to take your career in all kinds of exciting new directions with access to quality research, infrastructure and learning facilities. We’re a university full of energetic and enthusiastic minds, driven to challenge what’s expected, expand what we know, and learn from other inspiring, empowering thinkers. Innovative, supportive, successful and with great breadth and depth of talent. 

Monash University strongly advocates diversity, equality, fairness and openness . We fully support the gender equity principles of the Athena SWAN Charter .

This is an unprecedented opportunity for an outstanding PhD candidate working across the areas of futures, design and visual anthropology, to win a scholarship to undertake a PhD within a new programme of research and intervention, which investigates the Impact of Future Human Values and Practices on Australia’s Net Zero and Digital Transitions. This research programme is funded by a Prestigious five-year Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship awarded to Professor Sarah Pink (2024-2029). 

The PhD student will be located in Monash’s Emerging Technologies Lab (ETLab), one of Australia’s most innovative research facilities. They will work with the Laureate Programme team of Professor Pink, up to four Research Associates and three PhD students, and alongside the wider ETLab suite of projects and PhD cohort. They will also be active participants in FUTURES Hub. ETlab is positioned across the faculties of Art, Design and Architecture and Information Technology, and this PhD position will be located in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture. 

The Emerging Technologies Research Lab, directed by Professor Sarah Pink, is an interdisciplinary and international research and knowledge community. We investigate the futures, present and past of our social, experiential and political worlds. Our world-class academic and engaged scholarship innovates and delivers new techniques and knowledge carefully designed to deliver new, inclusive and effective understandings and impact in response to the urgent need to better plan for futures with and for people and other species, emerging technologies and climate. The Lab’s internationally leading researchers bring together academic scholarship with engagement with external stakeholders, and advocate for the design of better, responsible and ethical futures. Their work also advances new ethnographic and futures methodologies drawing from design, anthropology, sociology and science and technology studies. The Emerging Technologies Research Lab is across the Faculties of Information Technology and of Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) at Monash University, and was established in 2018.

The Impact of Future Human Values and Practices on Australia’s Net Zero and Digital Transitions research Laureate Fellowship is a five-year research programme: Transition to an inclusive, trusted sustainable future depends on successfully aligning technological, climate and human futures. Yet our knowledge about human futures is inadequate, lacking the qualitative foresight crucial to Australia’s transition to digital and automated technologies and net zero carbon emissions. This fellowship will innovate new ethnographic methods to investigate the role of future human values, practices and trust in developing a path towards technologically supported environmental sustainability. The research programme will deliver a sector-crossing base of knowledge about human futures and a framework for qualitative futures research with applications in planning for digital and net zero transitions. 

FUTURES Hub is a world-class research, communication, meeting and dissemination nexus for Futures research and activity. It is our response to this moment where we live with elevated future uncertainties in a changing climate, in our applications of emerging technologies, and for our communities and everyday life. At the moment there is simply insufficient knowledge about our possible futures, and a need for new qualitative techniques for investigating, understanding, communications and action in relation to possible futures.

The Opportunity

To grapple with the theoretical, methodological and ethnographic innovations into futures research that the Laureate Programme involves, we need the best and brightest minds. As such we invite suitable candidates to apply for this exciting opportunity.

To be considered for this position you should fulfil the entry requirements for Monash HDR candidates and have a background in social anthropology, design anthropology and/ or visual anthropology, an interest in developing innovative new research in futures anthropology and in interdisciplinary connections to arts and STEM fields. You should be committed to undertaking research into human, emerging technology and net zero futures, across the fields of city, homes and/or work futures. You will participate in the work of the Laureate Fellowship programme by undertaking your own original research designed to contribute to the Laureate Fellowship agenda, supervised by Professor Sarah Pink and one or more appropriate supervisors. You will also collaborate in team projects within the Laureate Fellowship programme, with up to four Research Fellows and two other PhD candidates. You will participate in the FUTURES Hub and ETlab international research community. 

Your research will be expected to align with and contribute to the Laureate Fellowship programme of research.

This position has a two-stage selection process.

To apply for this position please submit an Expression of Interest form via the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash, within the Department of Design here: www.monash.edu/mada/future-students/graduate-research/apply .

The proposal should demonstrate an enthusiasm for theoretical research into digital, emerging technology and net zero futures, across the fields of homes, cities (widely interpreted to include smaller and larger urban settlements) and work (focused in the construction and software industries). Your project might principally focus on one of these three fields, or might cross two or more of them. Fieldwork for the PhD will be undertaken in Australia. 

It should also outline your interest in being a PhD candidate within Professor Pink’s Laureate Fellowship programme; summarise the theoretical, methodological and practical approaches you are interested in pursuing in a PhD and your interests in engaging with innovative digital, visual and design ethnographic methodologies. 

Candidates who pass this stage of the selection process will be invited to discuss their ideas with Professor Pink before developing a full proposal and submitting an application. 

Enquiries 

Professor Sarah Pink, [email protected]  

Closing Date

Friday 19 April 2024, 11:55 pm AEST

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