PhD bursary for an ethnography of climate urgency in Congolese fishing villages

Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Katrien Pype (anthropology, KU Leuven); Co-Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Giuliano di Baldassarre (hydrology, Uppsala University)

Aim: To gain an understanding of how villagers living around the Congo river (between Tshumbiri and Mbandaka) experience and make sense of the climatological changes (lower water levels of the Congo River), its consequences (food insecurity, less fish to trade, commercial boats are less frequent), and how they respond to these.

Objectives:

Obj. 1: Document the various climate change narratives produced in villages, and their effects on local political institutions;

Obj. 2: Document how people in fishing communities experience the effects of climate change in their economic activities; 

Obj. 3: Document the various technological responses that Congolese fishing communities implement as a consequence of lower water levels;

Obj. 4: Analyse the representations of climate change and its effects in village symbolic spaces (rituals, songs, architecture, etc.)

Expected Results: Detailed knowledge about the socio-economic and political effects of climate change in a fishing village in central Africa, to be presented in a PhD thesis and in policy brief

In the frame of the project, the candidate will carry out a 3 month secondment with the Ecofish Program-Commission of the Indian Ocean. (Supervisor: Anne Bonne)

Purpose: To gain familiarity with stakeholders in African countries; to learn how to contribute to the daily workings of an African-EU program; to gain experience in networking; to gain an understanding of the challenges of overfishing and water pollution from the level of ports, states, and formal economies; to learn to set up problem-solving efforts that combine macro-to-micro and micro-to-macro perspectives; to analyze big data and translate these into policy recommendations; to campaign in African societies; to campaign on a EU level; to learn how to evaluate implementation projects; to learn how to write reports for EU funder.

The doctoral student will be enrolled in the PhD program at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven.

Job description:

As a PhD student, candidates are expected to: 

– comply with the PhD requirements of that PhD program in Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven;

– move to Leuven (or its vicinity);

–  carry out 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork;

– work for a duration of 3 months of non-academic secondment in the indicated organisation. The candidate thus will be requested to move again for the duration of this secondment;

– commit to the basic premises of ethically sound research in anthropology and to the H2020 Program Guidelines on FAIR Data.

–carry out individual PhD research, but engage in team work in the field (with citizen scientists), and in the network.

– comply with deadlines, and participate in the various training activities the consortium is organizing.

–write a PhD dissertation.

– contribute to the various academic and non-academic outputs of the project (research communication and public outreach)