CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Doctoral Scholarship, Environmental Humanities

Application Deadline: 30 September 2023 or until position is filled. The intended start date is January 2024.

The Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) at the University of Pretoria invites applications for a doctoral scholarship in Environmental Humanities focusing on Environmental Sociology. CAS is a multidisciplinary research entity founded with the intention to host projects that emphasize multi- and trans-disciplinary inquiry on topics of social, economic, and environmental importance. The selected candidate will be admitted to the doctoral programme at the Faculty of Humanities, Department of Sociology. Although the successful candidate will be hosted by CAS’s Environmental Humanities project, the supervision will by provided by the Department of Sociology and the CAS staff. The scholarship is for three years, with research duties exclusively.

Research Topic

The PhD Fellow will be affiliated with the project: Poetics and Politics of Extraction within Environmental Humanities Programme. The Environmental Humanities project is underpinned by the assumption that the degradation, conservation, and sustainability of the environment are driven and dependent on the general behaviour of people. It, therefore, centres the importance of disciplines rooted in humanities in making scholarly interventions through research to address the impact of the Anthropocene. The candidate will be required to generate scholarly enquiry and to establish a new grammar for framing relations of power between, state, science, ecologies, and people with regards to layered problems of extraction and the environment. The candidate must choose any topic that fall within the following broad areas of resource extraction:

• People and Parks
• People and Fisheries
• People and mining
• People and water

Qualification requirements

The successful candidate must have a master’s degree in Environmental Sociology, Environmental Management and Policy, Political Ecology, History, Political Geography, Hydropolitics, Economic History, Climate Justice, Natural Resources Governance, Environmental Studies, or any other related fields. Candidates will be required to register with the University of Pretoria, and therefore should meet the Department of Sociology’s requirement for registration. Other requirements include:

• Proficiency with online collaboration tools, such as Zoom, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
• Ability to work well in an interdisciplinary research team.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills in English.

Application procedure

The applicant must submit the following documents:

• Curriculum vitae;
• Motivation letter of no more than two pages;
• Two references with contact details;
• Writing sample; and
• Copy of master’s degree certificate and transcript.

The scholarship will consist of a stipend of R150 000 per year, with renewal based on satisfactory progress. Doctoral fellowships are awarded tax free through the University of Pretoria.

Enquiries for further information should be directed to Dr Tafadzwa Mushonga: [email protected], 012 420 5892

Submissions to Mrs Kirsty Nepomuceno: [email protected], 012 420 4178