Job Information
Organisation/Company: IPNA-CSIC
Department: Ciencias de la Vida y de la Tierra
Research Field: Anthropology » Other; Sociology » Other; Geography » Human geography
Researcher Profile: First Stage Researcher (R1)
Positions: PhD Positions
Application Deadline: 1 Aug 2027 - 00:00 (Africa/Abidjan)
Country: Spain
Type of Contract: Temporary
Job Status: Full-time
Hours Per Week: 37
Offer Starting Date: 15 Nov 2027
Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Horizon Europe - ERC
Reference Number: 101230500
Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No
Offer Description
Position within the ERC project FRONTCAT
The Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology of the Spanish National Research Council (IPNA-CSIC) invites applications for a fully funded doctoral position within the ERC-funded project FRONTCAT – Beyond the Cat Wars: Reimagining Multispecies Governance and the Ethics of Care amid Rural Populism, led by Dr Pablo Alonso González.
FRONTCAT investigates conflicts surrounding free-ranging, feral and community cats as a privileged site for understanding wider transformations in multispecies governance. Bringing together anthropology, environmental social science, history, digital research and multimodal methods, the project examines how competing forms of knowledge, care, ecological concern and political legitimacy shape relations between humans and other animals.
The doctoral researcher will develop an original project in multimodal and more-than-human ethnography, investigating how multispecies relations are perceived, experienced, documented and negotiated in situations of controversy and everyday governance.
Rather than approaching visual anthropology primarily as the production of representations of human social life, the project will explore how audiovisual and other multimodal methods can contribute to forms of ethnographic inquiry attentive to the perspectives, agencies, movements, sensory worlds and material traces of nonhuman animals.
The researcher will combine sustained ethnographic fieldwork with multimodal methods that may include photography, ethnographic film, sound recording, sensory ethnography, walking and mobile methods, visual and video elicitation, mapping, animal-borne or environmental perspectives where ethically and technically appropriate, and experimentation with other forms of more-than-human observation and documentation.
The precise doctoral project will be developed jointly by the selected researcher and the FRONTCAT team.
Research focus
The doctoral project should make an independent contribution to anthropology and multispecies studies while engaging with FRONTCAT's broader concern with the governance of contested human–animal relations.
Potential areas of enquiry include:
- how humans and other animals encounter, perceive and respond to one another in everyday environments;
- how cats become visible, identifiable and classifiable as pets, community cats, feral animals, predators, invasive animals or subjects of care;
- how visual, sensory and material forms of evidence participate in multispecies governance;
- the role of photographs, videos, camera traps, monitoring practices, maps, digital devices and other technologies in producing knowledge about animal populations and behaviour;
- how different actors perceive and interpret the same animals, environments and events;
- how animal movements, absences, traces and behaviours complicate human systems of classification and control;
- relationships between visibility, evidence, affect, care, expertise and political conflict;
- methodological experimentation with multimodal and more-than-human forms of ethnography;
- the possibilities and limits of representing nonhuman perspectives without reducing animals to passive objects of human observation.
Particular emphasis will be placed on ethnographic depth. The doctoral researcher will undertake sustained participant observation and qualitative research in selected FRONTCAT field sites rather than functioning primarily as an audiovisual documentarian for the wider project.
Doctoral research and expected outputs
The position is designed as a conventional academic PhD with a strong multimodal dimension.
The researcher will be expected to develop a coherent doctoral thesis and produce approximately three publishable academic articles during the project. These may address, for example:
- Multimodal evidence and the production of governable animals: how animals become visible, classified and actionable through particular observational, visual and institutional practices.
- Everyday more-than-human governance: an ethnographic analysis of how multispecies relations are practically negotiated through encounters among animals, caregivers, residents, professionals, institutions and environments.
- Multimodal mediation of multispecies controversy: methodological and theoretical work exploring how visual, sensory or participatory approaches can reveal divergent ways of perceiving and understanding contested human–animal relations.
These themes are indicative rather than prescriptive and will be refined in relation to the researcher's interests and fieldwork.
Alongside academic publications, the researcher will develop a portfolio of multimodal research outputs. These may include short ethnographic films, visual or audiovisual essays, photographic work, sound pieces, interactive or experimental formats, and materials developed for elicitation, collaborative research or public engagement.
The doctoral researcher will also contribute material and conceptual input to FRONTCAT's wider audiovisual activities and may participate in the development of the project's documentary output.
Role within FRONTCAT
The researcher will join an interdisciplinary team working comparatively on multispecies governance.
In addition to developing their own doctoral research, they will contribute expertise in multimodal methods to the wider project and to the development of a multispecies governance toolkit. This may involve collaboration on visual and sensory research protocols, audiovisual ethics and consent, multimodal data management, visual elicitation, comparative ethnographic exercises and selected collective outputs.
Candidate profile
We welcome applicants from anthropology, visual anthropology, social and cultural anthropology, human geography, sociology, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, multispecies studies and related fields.
Candidates should have a strong interest in ethnographic research and in human–animal or more-than-human relations.
Knowledge of Spanish is required, as the research will involve sustained ethnographic engagement with local communities, institutions and other actors in Spanish-speaking field sites.
Previous experience with photography, film, sound or other audiovisual methods will be highly valued, but we are equally interested in candidates seeking to develop innovative multimodal approaches beyond conventional ethnographic filmmaking.
Particularly relevant backgrounds may include:
- ethnographic fieldwork;
- visual or sensory anthropology;
- multispecies or more-than-human ethnography;
- environmental anthropology;
- human–animal studies;
- science and technology studies;
- qualitative research on environmental or political controversies;
- photography, documentary filmmaking or sound ethnography;
- participatory and experimental research methods.
Candidates are not expected to arrive as professional filmmakers. More important are ethnographic sensitivity, intellectual ambition, methodological curiosity and the capacity to develop a theoretically substantial doctoral project.
Research environment
The researcher will be based at IPNA-CSIC in Tenerife, Canary Islands, within FRONTCAT and its emerging Multispecies Governance Lab.
FRONTCAT provides an interdisciplinary environment in which doctoral and postdoctoral researchers will examine multispecies governance from historical, ethnographic, environmental, digital and political perspectives.
The successful candidate will have opportunities for collaboration across these research strands while developing an independent scholarly profile at the intersection of anthropology, multispecies studies and multimodal ethnography.
Where to apply
E-mail: pablo.alonso.gonzalez@ipna.csic.es
Requirements
Research Field: Anthropology » Other
Education Level: Master Degree or equivalent
Research Field: Geography
Education Level: Master Degree or equivalent
Research Field: Sociology
Education Level: Master Degree or equivalent
Languages: SPANISH
Level: Good
Languages: ENGLISH
Level: Excellent
Work Location(s)
Number of offers available: 1
Company/Institute: IPNA-CSIC
Country: Spain
State/Province: Santa Cruz de Tenerife
City: La Laguna
Contact
State/Province: Santa Cruz de Tenerife
City: San Cristóbal de La Laguna
Website: https://www.ipna.csic.es/
Street: Avda. Astrofísico Francisco Sánchez, 3
Postal Code: 38206
E-Mail: pablo.alonso.gonzalez@ipna.csic.es
Phone: 646114287
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