Three prestigious Scientia PhD Scholarships in Environmental Humanities and STS at UNSW, Sydney

31 May Three prestigious Scientia PhD Scholarships in Environmental Humanities and STS at UNSW, Sydney

The Environmental Humanities programme at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, is advertising three PhD scholarships in specific areas in the environmental humanities and science and technology studies (with collaboration from colleagues in a range of other areas).

1.) Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Confronting Biopiracy
2.) The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Education Policy
3.) Multispecies Studies: Rethinking Human/Wildlife Interactions
(See below for descriptions)

These Scientia PhD Scholarships are specifically designed to attract high quality PhD candidates across a range of strategic research areas.

PhD Scholarship benefits under the scheme include:
— $40K a year stipend for four years
— Tuition fees covered for the full 4 year period
— Coaching and mentoring will form a critical part of your highly personalised leadership development plan
— Up to $10k each year to build your career and support your international research collaborations

Candidates would most likely already have completed work at Masters level and published work with leading academic publisher to be competitive (or equivalent).

More information on these scholarships is available here: http://www.2025.unsw.edu.au/apply/
More information on the Environmental Humanities programme is available here: https://hal.arts.unsw.edu.au/disciplines/environmental-humanities/

1.) Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Confronting Biopiracy
Supervisory team: Daniel Robinson, Paul Munro and Danielle Drozdzewski

This project analyses the commodification of nature/natural products and of Indigenous knowledge. It would seek to conduct a range of case studies, legal analyses, and ethnography, aimed at identifying biopiracy cases. It will also seek to analyse Indigenous mechanisms for protecting their environmental knowledge, including through customary laws and community protocols. This project will reflect upon implementation of the UN Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological Diversity and its role in preventing biopiracy, as well as the World Intellectual Property Organization Intergovernmental Committee on Traditional Knowledge.
http://www.2025.unsw.edu.au/apply/scientia-phd-scholarships/protecting-indigenous-knowledge-and-confronting-biopiracy

2.) The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Education Policy
Supervisory team: Kalervo Gulson, Matthew Kearnes and Andrew Murphie

This project will be part of investigations into the ongoing and potential impact of artificial intelligence on both education policy making and analysis. PhD projects that address any or all of the following questions are welcome (1) what are the possibilities and challenges for education and education policy that are occurring and will occur by implementing artificial intelligence into governance, instructional and assessment settings? How might these possibilities and challenges relate to changes already occurring around algorithmic governance and big data in education? (2) what are the ethical, economic, and political biosocial considerations of implementing artificial intelligence into educational organizations? This includes issues of trust and transparency relating to the ‘black box’ of AI and prediction; and (3) how does artificial intelligence, including machine learning, use ideas from social policy, including policy and value networks, and how can policy analysts use these same ideas? What are the epistemological and ontological issues, such as those around representation, posed by AI for policy and analysis?
http://www.2025.unsw.edu.au/apply/scientia-phd-scholarships/impact-artificial-intelligence-education-policy

3.) Multispecies Studies: Rethinking Human/Wildlife Interactions
Supervisory team: Thom van Dooren, Eben Kirksey, Lindsay Kelley

Multispecies Studies is an emerging field of interdisciplinary research that draws the humanities into dialogue with the biological sciences and ethnographic methods to better understand the shifting and highly consequential relationships between human communities and wildlife in a period of escalating social and environmental change. Providing new perspectives on issues as diverse as biodiversity loss, climate change and globalization, work in this area seeks to better understand and intervene in human/wildlife interactions to produce more sustainable, equitable and flourishing outcomes for all parties.
http://www.2025.unsw.edu.au/apply/scientia-phd-scholarships/multispecies-studies-rethinking-humanwildlife-interactions