European Joint Doctorate: 15 PhDs for understanding poverty dynamics

ADAPTED is a consortium led by Prof Wilhelm Löwenstein of Ruhr University Bochum and Prof Wil Hout of ISS as founding partner. The project is called Eradicating Poverty: Pathways towards Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. It fills a gap by bringing together studies on the interplay between economic growth, social protection, governance and poverty reduction from a multidisciplinary perspective.

Three PhD researchers will be based at ISS to perform research in one of the three sub research programmes identifying governance mechanisms that increase the relevance and the quality of delivery of social protection schemes (ESR13, ESR14, ESR15). They will be supervised by Prof Wil Hout, with a second supervisor at one of the partner institutions (Duisburg-Essen, Bogacizi and VU). These PhD researchers will receive complementary training and secondments at Bahir Dar University (Ethiopia), University of the Western Cape (South Africa), and University of Development Studies (Ghana). Three other PhD researchers will spend at least 6 months at ISS in cotutelles agreements with Ruhr University Bochum, Boğaziçi University and CNRS/University of Paris 1. ISS staff involved in training and supervision of these researchers are Prof Arjun Bedi (ESR5) and Dr Andrew Fischer (ESR3, ESR12). Prof Wil Hout also leads the work package on recruitment and training.

The other partners of the consortium that will host 12 PhD researchers are Ruhr University Bochum, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), Bogazici University (Turkey) and CNRS (France). The project will start in spring 2021 and recruitment for PhD positions is expected to be completed before the start of the new academic year in 2021.