We are looking for three PhD students to join our team! Deadline 21 February 2022.
Application and full description:
PhD projects description: These PhD studentships are part of a lively and cutting-edge project in the philosophy of science, seeking to provide empirical and conceptual understanding of the implications of Open Science policies for everyday research practice. In particular, the project is interested in how Open Science can be applied in highly diverse and often unequal research environments, where researchers may have very different understandings of what “openness” means and different capacity to engage in Open Science activities. To help advance existing understandings of what Open Science means to researchers on the ground, each PhD project will explore how the characteristics of one specific research site, including conceptual perspectives as well as material and social infrastructures, affect the interpretation and implementation of Open Science.
Working closely with the Principal Investigator and project partners, students will conduct a 6-month-long ethnographic study of a research site. They will then use the resulting data to analyse local efforts to implement Open Science, and the relation between such efforts and research practices and outcomes. To help with comparison and capitalise on the existing contacts and expertise of the Principal Investigator, all the subprojects will focus on institutes for plant and agricultural research (a field that has received little attention in science studies relatively to physics and biomedicine, and yet is fundamental to addressing current and future environmental challenges).
The choice of each site will be finalised by the applicants at the start of the PhD project, based on the applicants’ interests/skills and the projects’ existing contacts. The choice of which aspects the PhD thesis shall focus on is also completely up to the students, also depending on whether they aim to get a PhD in Sociology, Philosophy or Anthropology, and will be supported by the supervisor and wider project team. The Egenis centre and the Department of Sociology, Philosophy and Anthropology will provide training in ethnographic methods to the students who do not have that background, and/or teaching in relevant scholarship in the philosophy and social studies of science for students who come from a science background.
For any further questions, please email s.leonelli@exeter.ac.uk