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PhD in the history of biological fieldwork and gender (Maastricht University) – deadline 31 October 2024
The History Department at Maastricht University is looking for a PhD candidate to conduct research into the gender dimensions of biological fieldwork in the second half of the 20th century. The focus will be on networks between women doing biological fieldwork. The position will consist of 85% research and 15% teaching.
The candidate will combine approaches from the history of science, Science and Technology Studies (STS), gender studies and postcolonial history to study the formal and informal relationships between women biologists working in different field sites.
In the second half of the 20th century, Asian and African national parks experienced a gradual, yet unprecedented inflow of women researchers with their own credentials. Besides a handful well-known primatologists, this generation of women researchers, their networks, and their contributions to research and conservation projects and practices in remote and often colonized or formerly colonized landscapes, remains under-researched in the history of science. Yet, studying these networks can give important insights into mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the making of environmental knowledge and its local embeddedness. The PhD candidate will document and analyze the networks of women biologists who entered the field during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
The PhD candidate will take active part in the activities of the interdisciplinary Globalization, Transnationalism and Development research group. The project’s theme additionally connects with work done in the Maastricht University Science, Technology and Society Studies research group and FASoS’s Center for Gender and Diversity.
Applications should be submitted ultimately 31 October 2024 via the Academic Transfer portal.