PhD Studentship in Global Mobility Law

Open PhD position in global mobility as part the Center of Excellence on Global Mobility Law. 

The PhD scholarship is fully funded and salaried. The PhD position can commence 1 January 2023. The start date is negotiable.

The positions will be affiliated with the new Center of Excellence on Global Mobility Law (MOBILE) at the Faculty of Law, funded by the Danish National Research Foundation. The Center aims to undertake the first comprehensive study of laws pertaining to human mobility as an emerging and societally important field. To this end, MOBILE pioneers a novel approach, focused on legal infrastructure and entanglement theory, to normatively and empirically study the complex interactions of diverse legal regimes impacting human mobility, as well as the interfaces between regional mobility law frameworks in both the Global South and North. MOBILE’s mission is to provide novel and broadly applicable insights into how different types of law interact, how legal outcomes are produced, and the intended and unintended effects of their enforcement in shaping specific mobility patterns. The Center’s research agenda is organized around three cross-cutting work streams: 

• Structures (the composition and interconnectedness of legal infrastructures in key regional systems of mobility, and their relationship to specialized legal regimes such as air and sea travel); 
• Practices (the legal and political processes through which legal infrastructures are enforced and contested; and how such practices directly and indirectly structure mobility opportunities); 
• Change (how ongoing practices prompt normative change in legal infrastructures, and the conditions under which socio-natural and political events reconfigure mobility law). 

In their letter of motivation and research plan, candidates are encouraged to clearly indicate how their project proposal relates to one or more of the work streams.

Candidates with pre-existing experience working and studying in the following regions, Economic Community of West African States - ECOWAS; East African Community - EAC; Common Market of South America - MERCOSUR; Association of South East Asian Nations - ASEAN; Cooperation Council of Arab States – GCC; and European Union - EU, are particularly welcome.

Laws related to mobility are found across highly diverse national, regional and international legal regimes, e.g. security, labour, trade, tourism, public health, refugees and human rights. Candidates are expected to have pre-existing training in one or more fields of law related to human mobility and be willing to explore mobility law as a cross-cutting and interdisciplinary field of study.

As a national Center of Excellence, MOBILE aims to create an enabling and interdisciplinary environment for ambitious, highly creative and scientifically daring research. For general information about what a Center of Excellence is and entails, see: https://dg.dk/en/what-is-a-center-of-excellence/

More information about the new Center of Excellence on Global Mobility Law can be found here: https://jura.ku.dk/english/news/2022/free-movement-new-centre-of-excellence-examines-global-mobility-rights/  

Closing date for applications 

The closing date for applications is September 29, 2022, 23:59 GMT+1. Applications received after the deadline will not be considered. Likewise incomplete applications (i.e. without all required documents) will be rejected.

Read the full job description and apply at the university homepage