Dear all,

Please find below details of a university-funded PhD studentship opportunity at the Department of Geography of The Open University.  It is associated with the ESRC-funded Biosecurity Borderlands project that will be starting in September at Exeter and the OU although we are not necessarily looking for a really tight ‘fit’ as the advert hopefully makes clear.  And just to further clarify, this is an additional studentship to the one that Steve Hinchliffe advertised on the forum a little while ago (which will be located at Exeter) and because this is a university-funded studentship it does not have the same nationality, residence, or training requirements as that one did.  I would be very grateful if you would forward this to anyone not on the forum that you think might be interested.

Ta,

Nick

University-funded 3 year PhD studentship

Department of Geography, The Open University

Securing Life: Biosecurity, Biopolitics, Biopower

Securing life has become a key problematic in contemporary societies.  Increasingly involving the differential valuing, promoting, and regulating of various forms of life and living as much as the attempt to make matters safe through the halting of movement, how to manage the vitality and circulation of human and nonhuman bodies is now a constant challenge in all kinds of spaces.

Following the award of an ESRC grant entitled Biosecurity Borderlands, a linked but independent university-funded PhD studentship with no nationality or residence restrictions is available to investigate such concerns for three years starting in October 2009 (or as soon as possible after).  Based in the Open University’s Department of Geography, the successful candidate will be encouraged to:

·         develop a project that investigates current concerns in one or more of the following broad areas: the production, regulation or excess of human and/or nonhuman ‘life’ and lives; the practice(s) of security; the politics of living with other bodies (human or nonhuman); the sites of life’s negotiation (e.g. sciences, agriculture, medicine, food);

·         explore how current theoretical understandings such as (bio)security, (bio)geographies, (bio)politics, or (bio)power or similar speak to or are challenged by these practices and their contemporary transformations;

·         have a sense of how their study might – in a broad sense – complement and extend the work of the team investigating biosecurity in the UK at Exeter and the Open Universities.

For further particulars please email [log in to unmask] .  Alternatively contact Dr Nick Bingham ([log in to unmask]) for informal discussion about the position.

The closing date for applications is Friday 17^th July.

 

 

 

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Dr Nick Bingham

Postgraduate Director

Geography Discipline

Faculty of Social Sciences

The Open University, UK

mailto:[log in to unmask]

Webpage

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