Doctoral Researcher POPAGANDA at PRIO

Doctoral Researcher on the project POPAGANDA: Pop Culture, Art, and Ideas of Legitimacy in Struggles over Democratization and Peace.

The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) invites applications for a three-year, full-time position as Doctoral Researcher. The position provides the opportunity to work in a leading international research institution with high academic standards and an interdisciplinary environment.

This position is financed as part of a grant from the Research Council of Norway to PRIO for the project “POPAGANDA: Pop Culture, Art, and Ideas of Legitimacy in Struggles over Democratization and Peace”, led by Senior Researcher Marte Nilsen.

Working within the field of Humanities or Social Sciences, the Doctoral Researcher to be employed in this project will conduct fieldwork-based research on how indigenous belief systems and cosmologies are utilized in popular culture and art in Myanmar or Thailand, to generate political legitimacy in struggles over democratization and peace. The work conducted here will result in a PhD dissertation in English.

About the POPAGANDA project  

Several countries face difficult challenges in their political transitions from autocracy to a more democratic system. How do political opposition groups in these countries use popular culture and art to generate legitimacy for their political causes and propagate their messages?

Myanmar and Thailand are both examples of countries that are caught up in long-standing conflicts and disagreements where minorities and opposition groups have built strong political visions and systems of ideology that are incompatible with the current political order of the ruling elites. 

We find that opposition movements in these two countries utilize popular culture and art to generate political legitimacy in their struggles over democratization and peace. We also find that indigenous belief systems and cosmologies in these countries are not irrelevant relics of the past. They are phenomena with direct influence on today’s politics and conflicts. The POPAGANDA research team therefore aims to unpack the role played by myths, cosmology, religion, spirituality, and magic in both generating and challenging political legitimacy. The research team investigates how such opposition groups and their supporters among artists reinvent narratives rooted in these ancient belief systems in their artistic expressions. We examine how popular culture and art are used to both generate the legitimacy of political opposition groups and contest that of the state. We then explore how this practice of contestation affects political processes and power structures.

The doctoral project

A successful application is one that makes clear how it will contribute innovatively to the project as a whole, and candidates are encouraged to read the background material closely before writing their proposal. A complete description of the project will be made available to interested candidates upon request.

The Doctoral Researcher will work with an interdisciplinary team of researchers at PRIO and partner institutions in Myanmar (Naushawng Development Institute) and Thailand (Ubon Ratchathani University). The Doctoral Researcher will have a supervisor at PRIO, and a second supervisor at the PhD-granting institution. The Doctoral Researcher will be encouraged to apply for a place in the Research School in Peace and Conflict hosted by PRIO. Progress on the doctorate will be supported through regular presentations at internal seminars and involvement in appropriate research groups at PRIO, and opportunities to present work at international academic conferences and workshops. The PhD progress plan will be closely tied to the overall project plan.

The candidate will be expected to live in Oslo and will have a workplace at PRIO. The PhD degree, however, must be awarded by a degree-granting institution. Hence, the Doctoral Researcher will be responsible for applying to, and enrolling in a compatible PhD program. Different institutions may have different requirements, and candidates are encouraged to make enquiries about their eligibility for enrolling in a given program in advance. Tuition fees are not covered by the project.

Please read the full text of the advertisement here: https://www.prio.org/About/Careers/Doctoral-Researcher-POPAGANDA/