PhD position: 'Climate mobility in the Bengal and Pacific Borderlands'

Do you have a background in human geography, political science, anthropology or a related social science field, and do you want to join an exciting new project on 'Climate Mobility in the Borderlands'? Its core objective is to offer an in-depth and interdisciplinary study of the interplay between climate change and regional borderlands - their history, politics, social relations and drivers of mobility - in shaping cross-border human mobility. Understanding the historical and social nature of mobility avoids assuming climate change-related mobility is per se "new" and "exceptional". Instead, this project aims to uncover how cross-border climate mobility is rooted in mobility histories, contexts and understandings. The project is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO).

There are 2 positions available within this project:
PhD1: Climate mobility in the West-African borderlands
PhD2: Climate mobility in the Bengal and Pacific borderlands
This advert concerns the second position. For the first, please click here

PhD2: You will conduct research on the relation between climate change and patterns of mobility in the Bengal borderlands (Sunderban region, West-Bengal and Khulna) and in the Pacific Borderlands (Tuvalu, Australia). It is important to highlight there are clear differences between the two borderlands, making it vital for the PhD project to research the case-studies in their own right. This PhD project will also examine the connections, mainly in examining the ways in which (international) governance or state agencies, NGOs and funders working on climate change and mobility shape and govern local livelihoods and discourses on climate mobility in the Bengal and Pacific borderlands, and in turn how local communities in these regions respond to (e.g. challenge, reframe, join) these influences of governance. Each case contains about 9 months of fieldwork and knowledge utilization activities in the areas of research; although adjustments to the work plan may be made in the context of the pandemic. You will be based at the Environmental Policy Group (ENP) at Wageningen University, and will work in collaboration with the Calcutta Research Group (India), the United International University (Bangladesh), the University of Melbourne (Australia), and Deltares (The Netherlands).

More information on the project
Climate Mobility in the Borderlands is a 5-year research program funded by the Netherlands Scientific Organisation (NWO)'s Vidi program, led by Dr. Ingrid Boas (PI). Its objective is to examine the nexus between climate change and human mobility in borderland contexts. The project will focus on communities who have historically been mobile in relation to environmental challenges. Think of pastoralists or nomadic fishers, or people living in dynamic deltas. We aim to uncover how their mobility is being affected by climate change. Is climate change disrupting or changing their mobility patterns and if so, how? How do the historical and socio-cultural ways of moving intersect with these dynamics? And how does this play out in settings of cross-border movement and border controls? How is the relation between climate change and mobility mediated by the drivers, politics and history of the borderlands in question? The project will centralize the lived experiences and perspectives of those moving, both through participatory mobile/visual methods and collaborative forms of knowledge utilization. In collaboration with Deltares, we will also use interdisciplinary tools to identify the role of climate change in accounts of mobility.