The doctoral project The Urban Opportunities and Challenges of Airbnb focuses on the world’s most popular home-rental platform. Through three ethnographies in Berlin, Amsterdam and New York City, you will compare Airbnb’s operations in particular neighborhoods, by examining the practices of four stakeholders: hosts using the platform, businesses that operate 'on top of' the platform (e.g. key pickup/drop-off, luggage storage, and cleaning services), neighborhood residents, and local government actors. Besides connecting these stakeholders’ everyday experiences to Airbnb’s broader impact on institutions and environments in these cities, you will analyze gender, class, and racial issues that have so far played a marginal role in previous research on asset-sharing platforms. Accordingly, the project aims to answer the following questions:

• Who uses Airbnb to create value and generate a livelihood and how is this accomplished? Which stakeholders are not included in such processes of valorization and/or experience Airbnb as an impediment to their interests or survival? How does Airbnb affect the socio-economic dynamics of the neighborhoods in these cities, particularly as they pertain to gender, race, and class? 

The doctoral project Alternatives to the Corporate Sharing Economy will focus on community-based alternatives to the corporate sharing economy in New York, Berlin, and Amsterdam. You will conduct one eight-month ethnography in each city, focusing on grassroots initiatives that promote egalitarian, commons-based models of platform-based value creation. Such initiatives are dedicated to, for example, food sharing and borrowing household goods, but also include cooperatively owned home care and cleaning services. One main objective of this subproject is to compare how such initiates are developed and maintained in each city. Accordingly, the three case studies aim to answer the following questions:

• How do small-scale, community-based platforms support the maintenance of everyday life for its participants? Do they offer resources that otherwise wouldn’t be available? Who is included and enabled to participate through these local platforms and who isn’t? How do these in/exclusions interact with broader gender, racial, and class inequalities? How do these platforms survive? Do they receive some form of public support? To what extent do these platforms take over functions usually associated with market or state actors? 

Tasks: Successful completion of a PhD thesis within the period of appointment; regular presentations of intermediate research results at national and international workshops/conferences and completion and submission of four journal article manuscripts, preferably within the period of appointment.

You must have:

• a relevant Master’s degree in the Humanities or Social Sciences, preferably in the fields of sociology, anthropology, urban studies, or political science;
• a strong academic record with relevant and demonstrable work experience, preferably including publications;
• proven affinity with and knowledge of digital platforms and their political economy, especially with respect to “sharing economy” platforms and their wider socio-economic context/impact;
• proven affinity with and knowledge of ethnographic research practice (i.e. fieldwork and its ethics); familiarity with ethnography as well as other qualitative research methods and tools is considered a strong asset;
• excellent written and spoken command of English; at least a working knowledge of German is highly desirable;
• willingness and ability to travel and conduct fieldwork in the aforementioned cities;
• affinity with working in an interdisciplinary and international environment;

Previous work/study experience at civil society organizations is desirable.

We are committed to increasing diversity in the field. We especially welcome applications from women, LGBTQ researchers, members of minority groups, and individuals with disabilities.

You will be appointed at the University of Amsterdam’s Faculty of Humanities, Department of Media Studies. The appointment will be for 48 months, full-time, under the terms of employment currently valid for the Faculty. You will be members of the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). The first contract will be for 12 months, with an extension for the following 36 months, contingent on a positive performance evaluation. The intended starting date of the contracts is 1 February 2019.
The gross monthly salary will be €2,222 during the first year to reach €2,840 during the fourth, based on 38 hours per week. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable. You will additionally benefit from travel grants, and will be required to take active part in a structured, international program of workshops, summer schools, and conferences. 

University of Amsterdam

With over 5,000 employees, 30,000 students and a budget of more than 600 million euros, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) is an intellectual hub within the Netherlands. Teaching and research at the UvA are conducted within seven faculties: Humanities, Social and Behavioural Sciences, Economics and Business, Law, Science, Medicine and Dentistry. Housed on four city campuses in or near the heart of Amsterdam, where disciplines come together and interact, the faculties have close links with thousands of researchers and hundreds of institutions at home and abroad.  

The UvA’s students and employees are independent thinkers, competent rebels who dare to question dogmas and aren’t satisfied with easy answers and standard solutions. To work at the UvA is to work in an independent, creative, innovative and international climate characterised by an open atmosphere and a genuine engagement with the city of Amsterdam and society.

http://www.uva.nl/en/home

Faculty of Humanities

Research at the Faculty of Humanities is carried out by six research schools under the aegis of the Amsterdam Institute for Humanities Research. The Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis, one of six research schools of the Faculty of Humanities, has two vacant PhD positions as part of the ERC project 'Platform Labor: Digital Transformations of Work and Livelihood in Post-Welfare Societies' (ERC Starting Grant, 2018-2023, Principal Investigator: Dr Niels van Doorn).

For a description of the overarching project, please see Platform Labor. 

http://www.uva.nl/en/faculties/faculteit-der-geesteswetenschappen/faculty-of-humanities.html?origin=1cnbpyIQQACPTlEmA0qX3g