About the position
The University of Agder, Faculty of Social Sciences, is announcing 1 – 3 100 % positions as PhD Research Fellows affiliated to the Department of Global Development and Planning, for a period of three years, with a possibility of four years with 25% other career-promoting work. The positions are located at Campus Kristiansand, and the starting date is negotiable with the Faculty.
The Faculty has four departments: Department of Global Development and Planning, Department of Information Systems, Department of Political Sciences and Management and Department of Sociology and Social Work. More information can be found here.
The Department of Global Development and Planning offers Bachelor, Master, and PhD programs in Global Development Studies and Planning. The Department’s interdisciplinary staff bring together fields of development studies, planning, human geography, anthropology, among other critical and engaged social sciences, working in both the Global North and South. The PhD candidate(s) will be included in one of the Department’s research groups. You can read more here.
Responsibilities
We seek between 1 and 3 candidates interested in one (or more) of the three themes outlined below. To be considered for the positions, the project must align with the Department’s research focus and the activities of its research groups. We welcome projects that address one or combines two or all of the following three themes:
Theme 1: Contested Energy Transitions
This theme invites projects which critically examine dominant, contested, and alternative transitions to low-carbon and renewable energies. While new energy infrastructures and technologies may advance national and international climate and energy goals, they are typically conceived and driven by particular stakeholders and interests, and increasingly generate tensions around land use, environmental concerns, sense of place, democratic legitimacy, and local development across both the global North and South.
These tensions raise fundamental questions about how planning and development actors can navigate competing interests and complex governance arrangements involving state authorities, the private sector, and local communities — without reproducing inequalities through the uneven distribution of benefits, environmental burdens, and decision-making power. They also raise questions around how energy transitions are narrated, counter-narrated, and legitimized, by whom, and through what communicative means. Central to this theme are questions of social justice, institutional capacity, local governance, and community engagement with new energy infrastructures and technologies, where novel approaches to democratic and participatory engagement may encourage societal just transitions and build alternative visions of the future.
Theme 2: Reimagining and Repoliticizing Planning
This theme invites critical scrutiny of dominant trends which structure contemporary planning, often assumed to be apolitical in nature. Concepts such as economic growth, sustainability, smart cities, digitalization, green transition, security, participation, and democracy are routinely mobilized as self-evident goods rather than as contested political constructs. Projects under this theme should examine how such ideas become normalized, institutionalized, codified in law and communicated through planning knowledge, policy, and practice, and what kinds of exclusions, power relations, or blind spots are produced.
Projects may examine how planning ideas are produced and disseminated through professional knowledge cultures, policy documents, and communication flows; how the political uses of art, visual culture, or social media can open space for counter-hegemonic visions; or how marginalized communities deploy their own communicative resources to contest dominant development agendas. By destabilizing taken-for-granted assumptions, research can open space for alternative ways of understanding and enacting planning’s role in socio-ecological and political challenges. Areas of particular interest include experimental practices, making space for the voices of marginalized groups, counter-hegemonic approaches to planning, political uses of art or social media, or new forms of political engagement in planning processes.
Theme 3: Challenges and Alternatives in a Polarized and Unequal World
The global polycrisis of deepening inequalities, political polarization, climate change, environmental degradation, unemployment, armed conflict, authoritarian regimes, closing borders, declining democracy, criminalization, cuts in development and humanitarian finance, and new technologies impinging on the freedom of thought and expression, have acute and disproportional impacts on vulnerable populations worldwide. This theme invites investigation of not only the consequences of such crises but also the responses, strategies, and alternatives they generate for people´s livelihoods and equal access to income, health and education.
How do people respond to crisis and their consequences? How are such crises experienced from a gendered and intersectional perspective? How are rights and freedoms threatened or defended in the context of such crises? How are alternatives and counter-narratives circulated in repressive or crisis-ridden contexts? An area of particular interest may include exploring the potential role of the growing young population in the global South in driving social change, equality, secure livelihoods, and democratization, through a generational lens.
Required qualifications
- A master’s degree of 120 ECTS credits, with an average grade of B or higher in social sciences and relevant to the themes of the call
- An original, scholarly and academically strong project description
- Strong analytical skills
- Good knowledge of English, both written and oral, is required
This year’s candidate/candidates who are in the closing stages of their master’s degree can also apply. The master’s thesis must be submitted for assessment by the application deadline, and the master’s degree must be approved no later than 4 weeks after the application deadline.
Criteria for positions as PhD Research Fellow (in Norwegian).
Desired qualifications
- Strong commitment to scholarly originality and excellence experience from research project(s) and academic publishing
- Experience delivering academic teaching in a university context (lectures and/or seminars)
Any scientific publications will be given weight in the assessment of the application. If applicants have published any work previously, they are invited to enclose a maximum of two such works as well as a complete list of relevant publications.
Personal qualities
- Ability to carry out an original, scientifically excellent project that can make an independent contribution to the research literature and the field
- High work capacity
- Ability to work purposefully, in an organized, focused and independent manner
- Ability to collaborate within research communities
- Good communication skills (both written and oral)
- Interest in teaching and pedagogical quality in interactions with students
- Proactive, flexible and open to new ideas
- Motivation to contribute to a good academic and social work environment.
Personal qualities and suitability for the position will be emphasised.
We offer
- Professional development in a large, exciting and socially influential organisation
- A positive, inclusive and diverse working environment
- Modern facilities and a comprehensive set of welfare offers
- Membership of the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund
More about working at UiA.
The position is remunerated according to the State Salary Scale, salary plan 17.515, code 1017 PhD Research Fellow, NOK 550 800 gross salary per year. A compulsory pension contribution to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund is deducted from the pay according to current statutory provisions.
General information
UiA is an open and inclusive university. We believe that diversity enriches the workplace and makes us better. We, therefore, encourage qualified candidates to apply for the position independent of gender, age, cultural background, disability or an incomplete CV.
The successful applicant will have rights and obligations in accordance with the current regulations for the position, and organisational changes and changes in the duties and responsibilities of the position must be expected. Appointment is made by the University of Agder’s Appointments Committee for Teaching and Research Positions. A background check may be conducted to verify information that appears in available documents. Background checks are always done with the applicant's consent, and employment in the position requires an approved background check. Relevant applicants will receive further information.
Short-listed applicants will be invited for interview. With the applicant’s permission, UiA will also conduct a reference check before appointment.
Read more about the employment process.
In accordance with the Freedom of Information Act § 25 (2), applicants may request that they are not identified in the open list of applicants. The University, however, reserves the right to publish the names of applicants. Applicants will be advised of the University’s intention to exercise this right.
Application
The application and any necessary information about education and experience (including diplomas and certificates) are to be sent electronically. Use the link "Apply for this job".
The following documentation must be uploaded electronically:
- Certificates with grades
- Master’s thesis
- References
- Academic work and R&D projects, as well as a list of these
- Project description with a maximum scope of 7 pages, including reference list. The outline should present and discuss possible research questions, theory perspectives, material, a progress plan, and methods within the given framework
- Any other relevant documentation
The applicant is fully responsible for submitting complete digital documentation before the closing date. All documentation must be available in a Scandinavian language or English.
Application deadline: 01.08.2026
Contact
For questions about the position:
- Arnhild Leer-Helgesen, Head of Department, mobile: +47 90189672, e-mail: [email protected]
For questions about the application process:
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