PhD Positions in Anthropology for NWO Eco-Imagining Project in South Africa

Are you interested in doing ethnographic research on issues of urban ecology and climate change in South Africa? Is your ambition to contribute to co-creating real-world solutions for complex socio-ecological problems? Do you want to learn how to do participatory qualitative research and be part of an international, interdisciplinary team?

The Department of Anthropology  is one of the departments at the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. The Department is currently seeking two PhD candidates for the NWO project, Ecological Community Engagements: Imagining sustainability and the water-energy-food nexus in urban South African environments (Eco-Imagining), led by Professor Eileen Moyer. The PhD track is part of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) programme group Moving Matters .

About the project

Eco-Imagining studies community understandings, responses and actions to regenerate damaged urban ecologies. Working in three sites in South Africa (Johannesburg, Makweng, and Alice), we will engage with current projects on urban farming, local gardening, water and soil pollution, flash flood mitigation and the supply of potable water to co-create models for socially innovative and community-driven urban responses to water, energy and food (WEF Nexus) precarities. 

Many promising ideas to address insecurities of food, water and energy fail at the design stage due to limited institutional support, challenges of scale-up and active actor engagement. Lack of compelling evidence for innovation reflects limited support for bottom-up approaches, hence our commitment to learn from community members, support them to identify local innovations, and to support citizen scientists to generate evidence for policy and programme uptake.

The WEF Nexus framing is an example of systems thinking designed to conceptualise and address the complex interconnection of these related socio-ecological challenges. To date, the WEF Nexus has been primarily utilised to explore the relationship between these vital resources and sustainability of the (global) economy. Efforts to securitise these resources for the future have often been top-down and technocratic, without attention to community priorities, social justice, inclusivity, livelihoods, or environmental issues.

How might the WEF Nexus framing be used to promote inclusive and sustainable urban ecologies through a transdisciplinary, engaged grassroots approach? How can inclusive societal engagement build local participation and action, and contribute to culturally driven and locally sustainable urban ecologies? 

What are you going to do?

As one of two PhD candidates working on the project Ecological Community Engagements: Imagining sustainability and the water-energy-food nexus in urban South African environments (Eco-Imagining), you will do ethnographic research on:

• public space, infrastructure, and governance, examining public sector and community-led responses to ecological challenges linked to water, energy and good activities;
• or
• urban farming practices, focusing on food and water security in one or more of the three study areas.
• You will be part of a research team consisting of two PhD candidates and a Principal Investigator based at the University of Amsterdam and a post-doc, PhD and Co-Principal Investigator based at the University of Witwatersrand.
• Your main task will be to develop your own PhD project within the framework of the overall project (for the project description please contact the Principal Investigator).
• Next to working on your own PhD project, you will contribute to collaborative aspects of the project. This will include collecting data for jointly written publication(s), and lending respective (language) expertise to team members, as well as coordinating the activities of community-based Citizen Eco-Labs.
• You are expected to conduct in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in one or more of the project field sites in South Africa (Lorentzville, Johannesburg; Makweng; Alice).  
• For those parts of the employment period in which you will not do fieldwork, you are expected to live in Amsterdam and take active part in team meetings and the research environment at the AISSR.
• Teaching (up to 10% of your time when you are not on fieldwork) and organizational support for the project leader will be part of your job responsibilities. These tasks will allow you to gain valuable professional experience next to working towards your PhD.
• Once appointed, you will be affiliated with the AISSR’s organized PhD training programme.
• Your PhD thesis will be defended at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. PhDs will also have the opportunity to participate in a “sandwich” programme with the University of Witwatersrand.