New Funded PhD Program: Decolonizing International Climate Change Discourse

The University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K. has recently announced a new, fully-funded PhD program, Climate Crisis and Indigenous Storywork: Decolonizing International Climate Change Discourse and Policy. The deadline to apply to this program is January 19, 2022.

This interdisciplinary PhD will explore the relationships between Indigenous storywork, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), and climate resilience. The project will compare published traditional Indigenous stories with storyworks emerging in the 2020s, and engage with a range of significant sources, including current locally-told Indigenous oral stories, personal testimonies of Indigenous climate activists, the fictional works of contemporary Indigenous writers since 2015, plus story maps, visioning exercises and other participatory approaches.

This project addresses key questions about how Indigenous storywork can guide local, national, and international climate policy decisions.   This project considers how Indigenous understandings of the rights of diverse other-than-human beings can steer future international climate policy decisions and legislative action, including the potential of an international expansion of environmental laws informed by Indigenous TEK, to enshrine the rights of the natural world in law. Through creative engagement with 21st-century Indigenous storytellers and climate activists, this project will diversify and decolonise climate change discourse to widen public understanding of more sustainable ways of living and being beyond conventional data-based scientific approaches.

Students in this program will have full access to the training programs, including skills workshops and interdisciplinary research training seminars.

Successful candidates will be awarded a 4-year studentship covering tuition fees, a maintenance stipend (£15,609 per year in 2021/22) and funds to support the research project and associated training. Additional funds are not available to assist with relocation or visa costs.

The program’s organizers anticipate that up to two awards will be made to international students for October 2022 entry.