PhD position in the history of biological fieldwork and gender – Maastricht University

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Are you interested in doing a PhD on the history of biology, the environment, and gender?

Job Description
The History Department 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 candidate will investigate 1) how both research practices and research topics in biology changed in the second half of the twentieth century with women researchers studying animals other than primates entering the field; and 2) how, in the case of women field researchers, gender intersected with the politics of research and environmental protection in colonized and formerly colonized regions.

More information and full call at this link.