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Funded PhD Sanctuary Studentship at UCC
A funded PhD Sanctuary Studentship at UCC focusing on forced migration from Ukraine is available from October 2024. Deadline for applications is Monday 27th May 2024.
We are inviting applications for a funded PhD studentship (up to 3 years) to undertake research on migration and mobilities from Ukraine to Ireland as part of the large scale international project "MIGMOBS - The Orders and Borders of Global Inequality: Migration and Mobilities in Late Capitalism". The studentship is available as a Sanctuary Studentship for up to three years to a Ukrainian resident with official temporary protection status as a forced migrant in Ireland. It includes student fees, stipend, and financial support for research and dissemination activities, and will commence on 1st October 2024. University College Cork is an accredited University of Sanctuary.
The successful candidate will pursue a PhD in Social Science, jointly supervised by ERC PI Prof Adrian Favell (University College Cork, Radical Humanities Laboratory) and Dr Caitríona Ní Laoire (University College Cork, School of Applied Social Studies), as a sub-project of the ERC Advanced Grant project MIGMOBS. They will jointly be based in the Radical Humanities Laboratory, and School of Applied Social Studies at UCC.
The PhD will follow all requirements (including coursework, completion of mobules, training, a learning plan and annual progress review) of a PhD in Social Science at the School of Applied Social Studies, and the student will be an active member of the Research Cluster in Migration and Integration in the Institute for Social Sciences in the 21st century. They will also join a large team of international researchers at all levels based at UCC and elsewhere in the ERC MIGMOBS project. Renewal of the studentship each year is conditional on a satisfactory review of progress at the end of each year.
We welcome atypical academic profiles and personal trajectories.
Essential criteria include:
- An honours level degree (NFQ level 8) with a minimum of a 2H1 (second class honours, grade 1) in social science or other relevant discipline (Please see here to check for international qualifications comparison);
- Research interests in migration or refugee studies or other relevant field;
- Ukrainian native speaker, and full proficiency in English (see here to check minimum English language requirements);
- Be an officially recognised forced migrant with temporary protection status as a Ukrainian in Ireland. This means you are a person displaced from your homeland or place of residence for political, economic, ethnic, environmental, or human rights pressures. This will require appropriate documentation in the application process.
- Familiarity with Ukrainian politics and society;
- Strong qualitative methods training (or comparable research experience);
- Excellent ability in written work.
Desirable criteria include:
- Masters degree in a relevant discipline;
- Prior engagement with refugee issues in a professional capacity (e.g., in the humanitarian, legal, administrative, or arts sectors), or through activist, artistic or community organisation work;
- Familiarity with the experience of Ukrainian refugees in Europe;
- A background in forced migration studies;
- Creative and/or technical abilities that could be applied in the context of the PhD research.
To apply, please submit: a cover letter explaining your motivation and relevant personal experiences; curriculum vita/resumé with names and contact details of two academic referees; a 2-3 page potential project proposal that you would see as your contribution to the MIGMOBS project described below (in English); 1 sample of written work (academic or other).
The successful candidate will be required to confirm whether they will take up the offer within two weeks of an offer being made.
Candidates should apply before 12 noon (Irish Local Time) on Monday, the 27th of May 2024.
All documents should be combined into one pdf document to be submitted by email to: migmobs@ucc.ie
You may have to complete a fee assessment as part of this application, as the award is dependent on the applicant being assessed as eligible for EU fee status. The successful candidate will need to submit an application via the university’s online application portal at a later date.
Full description
MIGMOBS REFUGE, a sub-project of MIGMOBS*, is concerned with documenting the contested landscape of refuge in Ireland, UK, Italy and Germany for refugees from the past 50 years, focusing on administrative and political frameworks, different environments of solidarity and racialisation, and key struggles and organizing efforts of refugee communities.
We are looking for a suitably qualified Ukrainian researcher to develop a PhD project linked to MIGMOBS REFUGE that will focus on Ukrainian refugees and migrants in Ireland, as part of a team looking comparatively at the European reception context for refugees in the three countries and Ireland. We take our cue from the shifting reception and attitude towards Ukrainian workers, migrants, families and refugees in Europe, as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has developed, and in the light of dramatically varying responses compared to the preceding Syrian conflict and Syrian refugees, and the ongoing conflict in Palestine. We ask: Why have recent “European” refugees been racialised differently to Middle Eastern and African migrants? What have been the qualitative shifts in the perception and categorisation of Ukrainians as a mobile population in Western Europe over time? How have Ukrainian refugees experienced their forced movement westwards, and has their reception varied across different destinations? How does gender, family, education, networks and origins impact these differences? We anticipate a project based on in-depth interviews and community-based work in Ireland. A background in forced migration studies and a comparative interest in the UK, Germany and/or Italy, and in Middle Eastern or African cases would be an advantage. Your 2-3 page project outline should be clearly aligned with at least some of the concerns and methods in the brief outline above, as well as the broader goals of the MIGMOBS project detailed below.
Qualitative methods and a research approach in dialogue with non-academic knowledges (e.g., humanitarian practitioners’ or legal workers’ expertise, artistic production, journalism and activist organisation) are particularly welcome.
*MIGMOBS, the ERC AdG funded project to which MIGMOBS REFUGE contributes, investigates how borders and hierarchies are maintained between “the West and the Rest”, even as those who are internationally mobile sometimes succeed in challenging the “birthright lottery” - i.e. that citizenship at birth most determines someone’s chances in life. It asks: How does changing categorisation of subordinate populations worldwide in terms of “migration”, “free movement”, and “minorities” relate to these in- and between- country inequalities? It echoes critical migration, mobilities and borders scholars who argue that late capitalism in liberal democracies continues to advance through an ever more sophisticated differentiation and management of population – at the border as well as internal to states. Such work, though, has not adequately examined variation regionally, or across historical shifts in political economy: from postwar liberalism, through neoliberalism, to the era of COVID and beyond. MIGMOBS thus explores in unprecedented empirical breadth and detail how states reproduce sovereign power in an otherwise porous world: selecting and extracting wanted or recognised movers as “immigrants”, brutally excluding many other “migrants”, while simultaneously rendering fluid and untroubling a vast range of banal “mobilities” such as tourism and business travel. Mapping physical, virtual and non-human mobilities, the project details demographic and social connections over time between 21 states. This quantitative comparative historical work underpins co-productive ethnographic case studies rethinking a range of archetypal “migration systems” (including asylum and refugee migration) in and from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. These investigate how subordinate populations resist the categories, statuses and borders imposed upon them.
For more information on MIGMOBS see here.
For more information about the supervisory team, see here for Caitríona Ní Laoire and here for Adrian Favell. For further information and inquiries about the position please contact Adrian Favell via email: adrian.favell@ucc.ie
See more information about the Radical Humanities Laboratory, the School of Applied Social Studies, and the ISS21 Research Cluster on Migration and Integration.