项目介绍

2026年5月25日

The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at KU Leuven University is a vibrant community of 8 lecturers, 12 postdoctoral scholars, and 40 PhD students.
The research at the Department is clustered around three axes: “making”, “living” and “moving” around the world. The department faculty are committed to long-term ethnographic research in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how individuals and groups organize their lives, relate to pasts and prefigure futures.

Unit website

Project

The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Leuven (KULeuven), in collaboration with the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo (UiO), invites applications for one fully-funded 3-year PhD fellowship in social and cultural anthropology starting on 1 September 2026. The positions are funded by the EU Research and Innovation programme Horizon Europe, under a grant by Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Networks (MSCA-DN). The successful candidates must commence their PhD degree programme on 1 September 2026.

Background HEALENAE:

KULeuven and UiO have embarked on the collaborative project HEALENAE: Health and Environment in Africa and Europe run by a consortium of universities: in Aarhus (Denmark), Edinburgh (UK), Leuven (Belgium), Nairobi (Kenya), and Oslo (Norway) and Makerere University (Uganda).

The HEALENAE Doctoral Network offers a cross-continental, innovative, interdisciplinary, and multi-sectoral anthropological approach to pressing, interrelated health and environmental challenges across contemporary Africa and Europe. HEALENAE seeks to develop a strong interdisciplinary network that is based in anthropology, global one health, environmental and regional studies, to examine connections, correspondences and new challenges for health and environmental contexts in and between Africa and Europe.

By exploring specific topic areas of health and environment through long-term anthropological fieldwork, the research will provide insights into, and enable the future mitigations of, challenges related to current demographic, disease, climate and environmental changes, accelerated urbanisation, uneven growth, refugee issues, and gender and generational dynamics. The HEALENAE Doctoral Candidates will collaborate across projects to bring together insights anchored in different sectors and countries. They will analyse these in relation to each other creating clarity of interlinkages between specific health and environmental domains in an intercontinental perspective. Together, approaches from anthropology, post-colonial and regional studies on health and environment offer unique research perspectives and methods providing grounded, bottom-up understandings of how environments and health issues play out in everyday settings.

The research network offers an academically stimulating and interdisciplinary working environment, an innovative training programme that allows the PhD fellows to obtain specialist knowledge on a specific research topic as well as transferable skills that can be employed in academic as well as non-academic institutions. The HEALENAE PhD education includes one year of fieldwork in Africa and/or Europe (in total), annual training schools and writing retreats and 6 months stay with the secondary university. HEALENAE also offers an attractive salary, the opportunity of favourable pension benefits as well as funding for research, travel, conference participation and dissemination, books and equipment.

The HEALENAE project strives equal opportunity for diversity among the DCs. We encourage candidates from all continents, applicants with disabilities and minorities to apply. The salary will include social security and be composed of living and mobility allowances and a family allowance where appropriate, as outlined in the table on p.118 of the MSCA Work Programme 2023-2025: wp-2-msca-actions_horizon-2023-2024_en.pdf

Aim: To study forms of ‘chronic living’ in and around zones, sites or regions in Africa with heavy exposure to toxicity and pollution and environmental change. The focus will be on how different generations experience, recognize and register harms, which may extend from bodily harms to the more-than-human environment and the livelihoods it provides. Elderly people will be foregrounded here, as they have lived through and observed environmental change, long-term, toxic exposure, or pollution hazards, which are registered in their bodies and lives. This project could explore forms of chronic disease, or registers of bodily harm (including mental distress and mourning) that do not (yet) congeal into recognizable disease categories. The project could also attend to local registers of such harms as they traverse bodies, relations, ecologies and landscapes, as well as to how these local understandings and experiences, embedded in lived experiences, become recognized (or not) and translated (or not) into ‘chronic’ disease categories or forms of redress, repair, and remedial action.

Objectives: 1. To explore how communities exposed to toxicity, pollution or other forms of ecological change experience and articulate harm to their bodies, minds and environments – with a focus on older generations or the elderly. 2. To explore how older generations/the elderly observe and explain the longer-term transformations and distributions of harm that have become embedded in everyday life. 3. To trace attempts to make such harms visible, recognized and registered, including attempts to translate them into forms recognized by e.g. medicine, science, policy and governance – or examine why such attempts are absent or unsuccessful. 4. To understand how everyday forms of care, repair or recovery are imagined and practised, and the respective roles played by different generations, as well as by local and non-local organizations or activist groups in these processes.

Expected Results: The project will contribute to a better understanding of ways of living with, and well as attempts to care for, damaged bodies and worlds, with a focus on the experiences of older people and the elderly in Africa. It will map various chronic harms and create analytical perspectives on forms of ‘chronic living’, boundaries between bodies and environments, and the ways harm may be registered in bodies and its impact on mental health, seeking long-term perspectives through attention to generational experiences.

Planned Secondment:

1. UiO, one semester, to engage in another academic environment and get face to face supervision from co-supervisor Ruth Jane Prince;

2. During fieldwork, the DC may also spend time with NGOs or activist groups working in the study area.

Profile

Eligible candidates must have an internationally recognised Master’s or an equivalent degree in anthropology or related social sciences and humanities disciplines. They must have received their Master’s degree or equivalent (120 ECTS) no later than 31 August 2026. They must have less than four years of research experience after their Master’s degree and not hold a PhD degree. All applicants must have achieved a high grade point average in their Bachelor and Master’s studies and must have fluent oral and written communication skills in English and submit their dissertation in English. All applicants must document English language qualifications (see the formal requirements here: https://www.kuleuven.be/english/study/apply/language-requirements/english-proficiency-tests).

Applicants can be of any nationality. We encourage applicants who have African language skills and relevant experience outside the academy. However, in order to be eligible, candidates have not resided more than 12 of the last 36 months in Belgium before the recruitment date.

The Doctoral Candidate is required to spend time at each university, have a supervisor at each institution and will receive a dual degree issued by each university.

The Doctoral Candidate is expected to take part in the HEALENAE dual degree PhD programme and to complete the project within the set fellowship period. Since the doctoral student will receive a dual degree, his/her research project will be subject to an evaluation meeting according to the standards of both the University of Leuven and the University of Oslo. At UiO, the candidate will be hosted for 6 months at the Department for social anthropology, and registered for the PhD programme at the faculty of social sciences.

The details regarding supervision, evaluation as well as other legal matters will be specified in a contract prior to the start of the PhD project.

Offer

HEALENAE will recruit altogether 14 PhD fellows, referred to as Doctoral Candidates (DCs). The Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Leuven (Belgium) and the Department of social anthropology of the University of Oslo (Norway) invite applications for 1 dual PhD fellowship in the field of anthropology where the two universities have mutual strengths and can offer excellent research environments. The available position is hosted by the University of Leuven (Primary University) and the University of Oslo (Secondary University).

This will be one fully-funded 3-year PhD fellowship in anthropology of health and environment under the broad topic Chronic harms, environmental change, and generational vulnerability. The successful candidate must commence their PhD degree programme by 1 September 2026.

Project 11: Chronic harms, environmental change, and generational vulnerability

Supervisors: Ann Cassiman (KUL) & Ruth Jane Prince (UiO)

See Project Description above

Enrolment and employment at University of Leuven:

The PhD student must complete the studies in accordance with the current regulations for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences at KULeuven: https://soc.kuleuven.be/fsw/doctoralprogramme

The PhD scholar will be employed as a PhD student at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Leuven. In general, the student is expected to be present at the school on an everyday basis when he/she is in Belgium.

KU Leuven strives for an inclusive, respectful and socially safe environment. We embrace diversity among individuals and groups as an asset. Open dialogue and differences in perspective are essential for an ambitious research and educational environment. In our commitment to equal opportunity, we recognize the consequences of historical inequalities. We do not accept any form of discrimination based on, but not limited to, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, ethnic or national background, skin colour, religious and philosophical diversity, employment disability, health, or socioeconomic status.

For questions about accessibility or support offered, we are happy to assist you at this email address.

• Job application procedure
• Working conditions
• Career opportunities

Interested?

Interested candidates should submit an application including the following documents:

• Motivation/cover letter (statement of motivation and research interests, max one A4 page of 2,400 characters including spaces)
• CV (including a complete list of education, positions, publications and other qualifying activities)
• Project description outlining:

–       Brief description of the topic (approximately ½ page)

–       3-5 research questions or objectives with explanatory text (max 1 page)

–       Discussion of background literature and theory (1-2 pages)

–       Description and justification of sites and methods (1-2 pages)

–       Ethical considerations relevant for the project and site (approximately ½ page)

The overall project description (excl. list of project literature/bibliography/reference list and timetable) must not exceed 12,000 characters including spaces, tables, diagrams, footnotes, endnotes and illustrations (5 A4 pages of 2,400 characters each)

• Project literature/reference list
• Timetable
• Cover sheet (no template)
• Copies of educational certificates (Bachelor and Master’s degrees). The diplomas or diploma supplement/transcript of records must state: name of university, education (Bachelor or Master), duration (number of years, full-time), courses, marks and (if given) ECTS credits.

You can apply for this job no later than June 07, 2026 via the online application tool