项目介绍

2025年1月23日

In cities across the world, drug sales are starting to resemble other forms of ultrafast delivery, as drug dealers turn to mobile, app-based communication and city-wide home delivery to expand their markets and evade the police. The everyday activities associated with illicit urban economies, and drug markets in particular, are often held to have a strong territorial basis, with supply and consumption concentrated in specific, often marginalized areas. As illicit transactions increasingly involve digital technologies, it is precisely these socio-spatial patterns that have shifted, with profound consequences for the risks experienced by drug dealers and by people who use drugs.

The PhDs in this project will study such shifts and how they connect to differentiated exposure to harm across urban spaces and populations, asking:How does the uptake of digital technologies in drug dealing transform uneven urban landscapes of risk? Focusing on micro-transactions in illicit drugs, the project aims to understand the everyday digital geographies of the illicit urban economy. Specifically, it seeks to understand how drug dealers and consumers experience unequal and shifting risks – including the risk of problematic substance use and exposure to criminal or state violence – as mobile, digitally‐enabled deliveries replace place‐based sales.

What are you going to do

As a PhD candidate, you will conduct digital and urban ethnographic research on illicit micro-transactions between consumers and low-level suppliers, and contribute to a comparative analysis of the relationship between urban inequalities and the digitalization of illicit economies. Your fieldwork will be conducted in either Amsterdam or in Rio de Janeiro. Throughout your research, you will work closely with the other members of the research team.

Your work will include:

• conducting independent field research in either Amsterdam or Rio de Janeiro;
• helping to co-design, test and finetune an interdisciplinary digital, spatial and economic methodology and ethical framework;
• writing and completing a PhD dissertation within four years;
• participating in the AISSR PhD program;
• 10% teaching;
• collaborating with supervisors and peers in research and publications;
• participating in team meetings, conferences, workshops, seminars and other scholarly activities.

What do you have to offer

• (Research) master’s degree in human geography, anthropology, urban studies or other relevant social science;
• Demonstrated passion and aptitude for research;
• Relevant fieldwork experience: ideally, ethnographic research on illicit economies, digitalization and/or urban inequalities;
• Excellent written and spoken English
• Linguistic skills relevant to the research location (Dutch for Amsterdam and Portuguese for Rio de Janeiro)
• Independent work attitude and ability and interest to work collaboratively; willingness to work within the framework of, and contribute to, a larger team project and existing research design

If this vacancy speaks to you, but you are uncertain whether you might be THE person we are looking for, please do apply. We strongly encourage applications from all qualified candidates, and specifically from people with backgrounds underrepresented in academia. In light of the department’s and the PI’s commitment to diversity, we aim to create a team of researchers who each contribute to the project in their own way – our objective is complementarity rather than homogeneity.

What else do we offer

A four-year, full-time appointment: the initial employment is for one year, and following a positive assessment, this term will be extended by an additional three years, which should result in the conferral of a doctorate.

As a PhD candidate within the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research(AISSR), you will be able to follow a range of courses focused on improving your academic writing, methodological and analytical skills. You will also be invited to join a diverse set of reading groups, writing groups, and various convivial activities within the programme group, the department and the AISSR.