PhD position in Environmental communication at SLU

Description

The PhD position is part of a project that adopts multispecies perspectives on agrarian change in South Africa, using maize as a lens for a wider analysis of factors that shape smallholder agriculture trajectories. This might include analyses of how insect-resistance or drought-tolerance properties in crops produce certain outcomes and how these properties are enacted as a result of relations with other human and non-human actors. We will work with South African smallholders to investigate how locally used maize varieties are appreciated and used; how maize is entangled with smallholders’ practices, insects, and agricultural policies as well as wider political economies and ecologies to produce outcomes across time and space. The result will be an improved understanding of the wider set of factors that together impact whether or not smallholders can benefit from new crop technologies.

Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a relevant subject leading to documented acquired competence in qualitative social science methods and social theory.
• Experience in theoretically grounded, qualitative empirical research.
• Excellent English skills, written and spoken.
• Additional desirable qualifications include practical or theoretical knowledge of agriculture, experience from smallholder farming contexts, and interest in interdisciplinary work and more than human/multispecies perspectives.