The DFG Emmy Noether Research Group Hazardous Travels: Ghost Acres and the Global Waste Economy invites applications for three funded positions for doctoral candidates (salary group TV-L 13, 65%, 3 + 1 years, additional funds for research and archival trips available).
Successful applicants will be graduates in the humanities or social sciences who wish to research the ecological and economic aspects of the international trade in hazardous waste from a global historical perspective. Doctoral candidates in the project will work on case studies from Germany, India, or Ecuador and should have background knowledge and language skills relevant to the respective area.
The research group investigates the structures and dynamics of the international trade in hazardous waste starting in the 1970s. It seeks to understand how this system could be built simultaneously on structures of “voluntary exchange” of toxic materials and on what critics have labeled “garbage imperialism.” The project situates hazardous waste at the core of historical debates on the pitfalls and power inequalities of globalization. Moreover, it uses waste as a tool to understand the forces, structures, and actor networks driving globalization as well as the interlinkage of global structures and specific politico-economic and ecological systems in the late twentieth century. To this end, we will employ two fundamental concepts: (1) hazardous waste mobility, and (2) the emergence of “ghost acres”—i.e., hazardous waste disposal sites across national borders—following the environmental turn in industrialized countries in the 1970s. The project consists of one overarching study conducted by the PI and three individual hazardous waste case studies.
Dissertation projects will focus on the following topics: (1) the inter-German hazardous waste trade during the Cold War and into German reunification, (2) the shipbreaking industry in India, or (3) the history of Texaco’s oil drilling in the indigenous Amazon region of Ecuador. In addition to one of the three projects, individual project outlines in line with the larger research agenda are also welcome.
The Hazardous Travels Research Group is hosted by the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) in Munich, a joint initiative of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität and the Deutsches Museum. Doctoral students will also be affiliated with the Doctoral Program Environment and Society at the RCC. The RCC as a host institution ensures that all doctoral students have work space at the RCC and can benefit from participating in a lively research community of international scholars in the environmental humanities.
Please submit your application by 15 November 2016 as a single PDF to haztrav@rcc.lmu.de.
The following documents are required:
- Documentation of university degree(s) held
- University entrance qualification
- Your master’s thesis (if in a language other than English or German, please provide a table of contents and a summary of max. 5 pages in English)
- An academic curriculum vitae (including publications, if applicable)
- A project outline detailing which regional case study you would like to work on as well as a sketch of how you would address the topic (up to two pages)
- The names and contact information of two academic referees
Interviews for the positions will be held in early December. Positions will start April 2017 at the earliest, but can also be filled at a later date.
For further information please visit the project website: http://tinyurl.com/haztrav
Please contact principal investigator Dr. Simone M. Müller (simone.mueller@rcc.lmu.de) for all queries not covered on the website.