PhD in English Literary Studies

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Applications are invited for one fully funded three-year PhD fellowship in Literature in English, based in the Department of Language and Literature (ISL) at the Faculty of the Humanities (HF) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). The PhD position is funded by NTNU Sustainability (TSO Sustainability), and is tied to the transdisciplinary research project, Narratives of Sustainability, across the fields of Literature, Psychology, and Design. The project is led by Hanna Musiol (Literature / NTNU Environmental Humanities), Christian A. Klöckner (Psychology), and Casper Boks (Design). The PhD student will be part of a transdisciplinary network of scholarship addressing ethical, cultural, aesthetic, communicative, sociopolitical, and historical dimensions of sustainability (Narrating Sustainability ; TSO Sustainability ; NTNU Environmental Humanities ; TransLit ; NTNU Oceans ). Thus, applicants are encouraged to discuss how their research may contribute not only to the Narrating Sustainability project but to NTNU’s research ecosystem more widely, the city, or other relevant research networks.

TSO Sustainability promotes transdisciplinary collaborations and inclusive research involving the humanities, social sciences, and art/design approaches, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals ’ (UN SDGs), which redefine sustainability as a matter of sociopolitical, cultural, and environmental justice. The proposed PhD project should, therefore, employ intersectional and critical perspectives to narrative/storytelling and concepts of sustainability in print and/or nonprint or transmedia literature in English from any region of the world. 

While the proposal can explore any topic related Narrating Sustainability, the following questions are pertinent to the project and may be addressed in the application:

• How does literature contribute to, de-habituate, or challenge the contemporary discourse of sustainability?
• How does it imagine and narrate sustainability as complex biosocial processes and relations across different temporalities, worlds, and cultures?
• How do specific literary works/genres/traditions anticipate, challenge, and expand the UNSGDs?
• How can narrative/aesthetic literacy and literary training in multiple modes of reading/interpretation help scholars outside the humanities understand how other stakeholders also “plot” narratives of sustainable futures, the crisis, equity, or the imperiled present or extinct pasts? 

We invite PhD project proposals on literature broadly understood—print fiction, poetry, theatre, orature, transmodal literature, or transmedia storytelling, etc.—with a firm basis in research methodologies relevant to the chosen medium/genre; and we especially encourage proposals that take up literary productions that embrace post/decolonial, diasporic, Indigenous, feminist, queer, trans, materialist, and other nonhegemonic approaches to sustainability and environmental justice. The successful applicant will be based in the English Literature Section of ISL, but is encouraged to collaborate broadly with
1) the NTNU Environmental Humanities Research Group within the HF, and Translit at ILU;
2) the Narrating Sustainability team outside the Faculty of Humanities Faculty, and specifically senior scholars in Psychology and Design, a doctoral fellow in Psychology, and a postdoctoral fellow in Design, directly linked to the project;,
3) and, and regional and wider networks which cross disciplinary and cultural boundaries.

Thus, applicants are encouraged to discuss how their research may contribute not only to the Narrating Sustainability project but to NTNU’s research ecosystem more widely, the city, or other relevant research networks.