Dear all,
Please see below details of a full-time PhD studentship opportunity with Plymouth University, supported for 3 years including full Home/EU tuition fees plus a stipend of £14,057 per annum and fieldwork/conference costs.
PhD Studentship:
‘Rewilding’ the Anthropocene: the development and impact of rewilding conservation in Europe
Rewilding, the ecological restoration of land to its ‘natural’ state, is a concept gaining increasing momentum within the popular media and the UK conservation movement. The key focus of the concept is to enable ways to protect, conserve and ‘rewild’ large areas of wilderness in a process that also includes the reintroduction of keystone species in some instances. Over the last 5 years a number of rewilding initiatives have been developed in the Europe but so far evaluations of European projects have been primarily quantitative and environmentally-focused in nature, with socio-political understandings largely absent from both the academic and policy evaluations. Yet whilst rewilding can enhance biodiversity it can also bring social, economic and cultural benefits to marginal rural areas and a qualitative approach is necessary to investigate such potential impacts as well as to develop a better understanding of the context within which rewilding is emerging as a dominant conservation paradigm.
This PhD studentship will take an intra-disciplinary approach to explore the development and impact of rewilding conservation in Europe. It will take three case study locations as sites of exploration (sites to be negotiated). The studentship will benefit from supervisors specialising in geographies of nature from both a human and physical geography perspective; providing the potential to develop a unique intra-disciplinary investigation of the rewilding concept within the context of the Anthropocene.
Potential research questions include:
• Investigate the relationships between the social, political and economic factors within the development and application of the rewilding movement.
• Investigate the social, cultural and economic impacts of rewilding initiatives.
• Reflect on and develop a critique of the Anthropocene within a critical analysis of the rewilding concept.
• Draw on recent research from more-than-human geographies to explore how ‘rewilded’ landscapes are cofabricated.
Supervisory Team:
Dr Kim Ward ([log in to unmask])
Professor Geoff Wilson ([log in to unmask])
Associate Professor Nicola Whitehouse ([log in to unmask])
Applicants should have (at least) a first or upper second class honours degree in Geography or a related discipline and preferably a relevant MSc or MRes qualification.The successful candidate will be part of the Plymouth University DTC in Social Science, with associated research training opportunities. For an application form and full details on how to apply, please visit https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/student-life/your-studies/the-graduate-school
Applicants should send a completed application form along with a covering letter detailing their suitability for the studentship, a CV and 2 academic references. The closing date for applications is April 30th 2015, with interviews due to take place in May.
For any further information regarding the studentship please contact Dr Kim Ward ([log in to unmask]).
Kim
Dr Kim Ward
Lecturer in Human Geography
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Science
Room A527, Portland Square
Plymouth University
|