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Do you want to explore the relations between technology, security and nature conservation and their political consequences in Kenya and East Africa? Are you interested in working at the intersection of Human Geography and Science and Technologies Studies? Come and work as a PhD candidate on the project NatureSecurities: The Techno-Securitisation of Nature Conservation in Kenya and East Africa.
As a PhD candidate you will conduct ethnographic fieldwork in Kenya and/or East Africa and write a PhD thesis on the social and political consequences of techno-securitisation practices in wildlife and nature conservation programmes (in Kenya and East Africa). You will be expected to write an article-based dissertation within four years and contribute to the department's teaching activities at the Bachelor’s and Master’s levels. Your teaching load is 120 hours per year for the first three years.
The increasing relevance of private actors (both commercial and non-profit) and the use of ever diverse sets of technologies in the management and protection of natural reserves and national parks are characteristic of a globally spread phenomenon that deploys military and security tactics in environmental management programmes. In this project you will unpack such phenomena. You will study how differences between - for instance - legitimate hunters and poachers, or between those who have access to natural resources and those who do not are made in practice, and beyond formal and legal rights and definitions. You will interrogate how these practices contribute to processes of political subjectification and explore the socio-political processes through which spaces of wildlife and biodiversity become places of inequalities and securitised inclusions and exclusions; and how they bring to the fore ongoing neo-colonial relations between different countries and between different groups of people within the same country. NatureSecurity adopts an interdisciplinary approach at the crossroad of human geography and science and technology studies and intervenes in timely debates about the neo-colonial nature of environmental conservation practices.
Fixed-term contract: You will be employed for an initial period of 18 months, after which your performance will be evaluated. If the evaluation is positive, the contract will be extended by 2.5 years (4 year contract).
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