Are you interested in doing ethnographic research around issues of mobility, corporatization and commodification of (transnational) care in Central Eastern Europe? If yes, check out
2 PhD positions (4 Years) in Amsterdam within the ERC project Relocating Care in Europe, PI Kristine Krause.
The positions will be placed in the Anthropology Department of the UvA, but candidates with other disciplinary backgrounds (History, Eastern European Studies, Human Geography, Sociology, STS) are also strongly encouraged to apply.
Please don’t hesitate to drop the principal investigator an email about questions you might have. k.krause@uva.nl
The ERC project ReloCare studies the entanglement of uneven European welfare states by investigating transnational commercial care infrastructures and their impact on places, care systems and people’s lives. It starts from the outsourcing of vulnerable (mainly elderly) populations to places where care is more affordable by focusing on care homes in Central Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic/Slovakia, and Hungary) that recruit patients from Austria and Germany, and offer care at roughly one-third of the cost of similar institutions in the home countries. Most of these care homes are located in regions characterized by a long German and Habsburg-Hungarian history, adding historical complexity to the story. Some serve only German-speaking patients, others serve local, wealthier elderly people as well. Some are run by former migrant care workers, others by international companies, bringing labour migration and real estate investment into the picture.
The overall research questions of the project are: What do care relocation and commercialisation do to the people and places involved? What kinds of subjectivities and relations are forged through care commercialisation and care relocation in these European care landscapes? What futures are envisioned and attempted in the entanglement of different welfare states and private and public infrastructures? The project will answer these questions by following all the different actors involved (families, elderly, entrepreneurs, care workers, middlemen, insurances, state representatives).
As one of the 2 PhD candidates you will do research for one of the case studies but will develop your own focus within the wider framework of the overall project. You will conduct up to 12 months of fieldwork. Once appointed you will be affiliated with the AISSR’s organized PhD training. Your doctoral thesis will be defended at the Faculty of Social Sciences.
The research team will consist of two PhD candidates, one Postdoc and the Principal Investigator.
For details on the positions see the respective links.
Please note: While the working language for the project is English, candidates who demonstrate ability to collect data in at least one of the following languages will be preferred: Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Polish, German. Candidates who have basic fluency in one or more of the mentioned languages and are willing to take language training (funded by the project) are also encouraged to apply.