We welcome applications from PhD candidates interested in conducting research in line with the subject areas covered by the Civic Innovation research group.
Take a look at the type of research conducted by our faculty and the PhD supervisions they are interested in. More information about the ISS PhD programme and how to apply can be found on the ISS PhD Programme page.
I welcome PhD projects that deal with local (rural) governance issues such as participatory development programs in a decentralising context, state-society relations and public service provision at the local level, as well as social accountability issues, especially in the Middle East and North Africa region, including in the context of the ‘Arab Spring’. I also welcome projects researching gender questions and local development, such as gender-responsive budgeting initiatives.
My research examines the impact of innovative information and communication technologies (ICT) as transformational tools for marginalized populations, with an increasing emphasis on the socio-structural contexts of power within which social change occurs.
Programmatically, the two broad domains studied are healthcare settings of developing countries and the context of transnational migration, tied by an over-arching interest in social justice for the marginalized. In both lines of inquiry, I critically examine identity formation and power negotiation processes, focusing on the intersections of culture, gender and race. These areas find deep resonance with the social protection and inequality, and migration and diversity research themes at ISS, and with the ICT for Development field.
I welcome doctoral candidates interested in developing conceptual contributions, taking critical perspectives and embracing methodological diversity and innovation in topics related to technology and development on the themes described.
I am fascinated by the diversity of forms of organizing local economic schemes. My interests focus on patterns of collaboration and competition around the configuration of money, markets and enterprises. My research covers complementary currency systems, local markets, local production systems and social economy organisations. I consider these are niches for learning-by-doing and experimenting with alternative economic activities that may later expand or contest the capitalist system at large. I approach these topics from a historical and institutional perspective, because I consider institutions are the most essential brick in the structuring of socio- economic life.
I welcome PhD projects that deal with organization and transformation of exchange systems at the local level, particularly money, markets, and new forms of entrepreneurship. It may include topics on market-making, like creating a complementary currency, engineering a new local market, re-coordinating a value chain or a local system of production, forming producers' associations, and so on.
I welcome PhD candidates in the field of feminist engagements in diverse social justice movements, explorations of the nexus among global, feminism ecology and critical development studies.
My main research interests are to do with post-genocide reconciliation and rights in the African Great Lakes region, especially in Rwanda, and with asylum and refugee advocacy and governance in Europe.
I work from a critical, rights-based perspective on these issues, and am especially interested in creative approaches to reconciliation in post-genocide Rwanda, and advocacy for refugee rights and rights of undocumented people in Europe. I see these as 'two sides of the same coin' in terms of global rights and peace issues.
I am interested in supervising PhD researchers with a range of topics, and have so far successfully supervised around thirty PhDs in total.
I welcome PhD students interested in doing research on social movements, politics (both state politics as well as everyday politics) and gender and sexuality (i. e. sex work/ migration and ‘trafficking’, sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender-based violence; religion and sexuality).
I very much welcome candidates who are interested in exploring the ways in which social struggles contribute to a continuous questioning of the meaning and practice of ‘international development’.
I welcome PhD proposals on the developmental implications of private sector activities, such as: value chain analysis and private governance, role of social standards and codes of conduct; fair trade, ethical trade, and Corporate Social Responsibility; frugal innovation; new middle class consumers in the Global South; informal sector entrepreneurs, survival business and graduation.
I lived for the most part of my life in Kerala in India, but I have worked in New Delhi, in Charlottesville in the United States and in Den Haag in the Netherlands.
My academic research interests have been linked to my activist experience. I am interested in collaborating with students on projects that challenge and seek to understand structural political economic issues linking the global south with global capitalism, along with critiques of the existing Eurocentric knowledge production in the social sciences.
My areas of academic interest span theories of gender and political economy, women welfare workers in South Asia, feminist theories and epistemologies, anti-caste politics and activism, racialization, women in precarious work, globalization and transnational corporations, home care industry and its workers, masculinities, robotics in care, land rights movements in India and the Kerala model of development.
I would like to work together with students toward incorporating activist-informed knowledge rooted in the subaltern. I think it is important to decentre both the North and the South, and seek knowledge rooted in the experiences of the exploited and marginalized in multiple locations.
I welcome proposals from prospective candidates for PhD. or Post-doctoral research who are interested in any of the broad areas of research mentioned above and are passionate about progressive thinking and developing transformative epistemologies and methodologies.
I have supervised, co-supervised and examined PhD candidates on themes such as CSR (1), Labour in Global Value Chains (2) and enterprise learning (1). I could do likewise on such themes and those noted in 2) above again. More broadly, I could be called on for most themes with a focus on labour, skills, capability and work issues, value chains, representation and human (in)security.
Topically, I welcome PhD supervisions that aim to understand how precarious workers challenge and change the social, economic and political structures that marginalize labour. Methodologically, I encourage PhD students to conduct research jointly with actors who have a direct stake in progressive social change. This is based on the assumption that academia can make an important societal contribution, especially if the ways in which knowledge itself is produced embody alternatives to the status quo. Geographically, the focus of my work has been South Asia, Pakistan in particular.