[Mary Arnstein]

Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education / Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) seeking PhD Fellow in peace studies https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/190468/phd-fellow-in-peace-studies

A PhD fellow position is available at the Centre for Peace Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Social Science and Education for applicants interested in obtaining the degree of Philosophiae Doctor in Critical Peace and Conflict Studies. The fellowship is connected to the THREAT-DEFUSER project in addition to being being affiliated to the UiT research groups PEACE, and War and Peace Dynamics.

Critical Peace and Conflict Studies is concerned with interdisciplinary and critical theoretical and empirical understandings of peace and conflict dynamics. It promotes critique of the conventional debates about the nature of conflict and peace formation. To understand how local structures and actors can contribute to a fair and just peace, it interrogates concepts such as post-liberal peace, critical localism, hybrid peace, local peace infrastructures, and alternative, bottom-up and grassroots peacebuilding.

The successful candidate must be willing to engage in the ongoing development of Critical Peace and Conflict Studies, the Centre for Peace Studies and UiT as a whole.

This position will:

Examine the socio-political contexts in which language is embedded, and how these contexts provide meaning to how “threat” is understood using discourse analysis tools.

Apply discourse analyses on the central texts addressing hybrid threats to further identify threat-oriented language.Understand the ways in which perceived threats are spread and manipulated in mass and social/digital media

Examine the role of general populations/civilians in the spread of threat perceptions using qualitative methods to gather data on how individuals in the focus countries receive, negotiate, and potentially repurpose or subvert allegedly radicalizing content disseminated in and through digital networks.

Against this background, socio-political implications will be identified with further strategies developed to address gaps in knowledge.

Write up results in dissertation/articles for scholarly journals.Assist in production of a webpage and podcast series to disseminate results.

Assist in organizing conferences and outreach activities.

 

The appointment is a fixed-term position for a period of three years respectively. Working hours are reserved for research, research-related activities and research administration. The successful candidate must reside in Tromsø and have their daily workplace at the UiT Centre for Peace Studies (CPS) at te campus in Tromsø.

The objective of the position is to complete research training to the level of a doctoral degree. Admission to a PhD programme is a prerequisite for employment, and the programme period starts on commencement of the position. The PhD candidate shall participate in the faculty’s organized research training, and the PhD project shall be completed during the period of employment.

Information about the application process for admission to the PhD programme, application form and regulations for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor(PhD) are available at the following address: https://uit.no/phd-en#innhold_669276

The project

This position is part of the THREAT-DEFUSER project, funded by the Norwegian Research Council. The project explores the role of “soft” information strategies propagated through mass and social media that can be used in hybrid warfare. We investigate Norwegian perceptions of Russia, as well as Russian perceptions of Norway, in the context of Norwegian national security.

THREAT-DEFUSER is a multi-disciplinary project that combines state-of-the-art tools from political science, linguistics and media studies to forge new methodologies. Whereas academic disciplines tend to be disproportionately focused on the English-speaking world, THREAT-DEFUSER breaks away from that narrow view and focuses instead on Russian and two official languages in Norway: Norwegian and North Saami. Three cultural perspectives are opened up: 1) a major international language, since Russian is the second most-used language on the Internet; 2) a majority national language (Norwegian); 3) a minority indigenous language (North Saami). The tools created by THREAT-DEFUSER are portable to other languages, cultures, and domains, and will be shared open source with the international research community.

THREAT-DEFUSER actively disseminates research findings to political authorities (via evidence briefs and closed workshops), to academics (via high-quality open access scholarly journals), and to the public at large through a dedicated, regularly updated website, podcasts, school visits and an app that facilitates rapid response to the dynamic landscape of news and social media. THREAT-DEFUSER assesses Russia’s increasingly important role in matters of foreign and security policy, particularly with regard to hybrid warfare. The same tools are implemented also to analyze Russian attitudes to Europe that have a direct bearing on Norwegian-Russian relationsFor further information about the position, please contact professor

Gunhild H. Gjørv:              – Phone  +47 77 64 55 93

– E-mail:  gunhild.hoogensen.gjorv@uit.noor leader

Marcela Douglas: Phone: +47 77 64 64 71  E-mail:   marcela.douglas@uit.no

or office manager Elisabeth Sandersen:  Phone: +47 77 64 47 44     E-mail:   elisabeth.sandersen@uit.no

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