AlterTech is an ethnographic study of how rights and grassroots movements across Asia navigate deepening digital repression by experimenting with new practices and uses of technologies, both to dodge the repression and to disrupt the infrastructures that enable it. It examines how political and technological action intersect and how movement infrastructures are reconfigured in a context where state surveillance and surveillance capitalism coalesce. By decentring the digital in our concept of technology, and exploring how technologies are crafted and infrastructures are reassembled bottom-up, we aim to uncover how a novel type of technopolitics and utopian imaginaries evolve in practices of resistance and everyday struggle.

Inspired by decolonial epistemology and using a multi-modal collaborative methodology, AlterTech seeks not only to analyse these processes but also to engage in them. We therefore seek to form a team of dedicated researchers who are committed to exploring the generative possibilities of engaged scholarship. The research team – consisting of three PhD candidates, one postdoctoral researcher, and the Principal Investigator (PI) – will conduct ethnographic research at different scales. While the PI will examine hemispheric entanglements among transnational NGOs, and the postdoctoral researcher will study dissident infrastructures among diaspora in Europe, the PhD candidates will develop ethnographic case studies in specific settings in Asia. 

For the PhD projects, suggested cases include technologies and infrastructures of activism among youth activists in Papua, Indonesia; among grassroots groups in India; and among Myanmar activists-in-exile in Thailand. However, PhD candidates with strong proposals on different case studies in Asia are welcome to apply. The project overall is a collective effort, emphasizing joint analysis and knowledge production, therefore close teamwork is an essential part of the job.

Your tasks

• Your main task as PhD candidate will be to develop your own PhD project within the framework of the overall project.
• You will follow mandatory and optional coursework as part of the PhD programme of the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), and participate in pre- and post-fieldwork PhD groups at the Department of Anthropology.
• Next to working on and managing your own research, you will contribute to collaborative aspects of the project. This will include collecting data for jointly written publication(s) and lending respective expertise to team members.
• You are expected to conduct 12-months of ethnographic fieldwork in the country of your case study.
• You are expected to live in the Amsterdam area and take active part in team meetings and the research environment at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR).
• Teaching (up to 10% of your time) and organisational support for the project leader will be part of your job responsibilities. These tasks will allow you to gain valuable professional experience next to working towards your PhD.

• a master’s degree or equivalent with a relevant specialization within the social sciences or humanities, preferably in social and cultural anthropology. The degree must have been obtained before the employment starting date;
• excellent oral and written communication skills in English;
• good oral and written communication skills in the country where you will conduct fieldwork;
• good command of ethnographic research methods and the ability and willingness to conduct challenging fieldwork on a sensitive topic;
• independent thinking and critical analytical skills;
• good collaboration skills and the ability to join interdisciplinary academic communities;
• the skills needed to finish the PhD thesis in four years; i.e., independent and pro-active work attitude, good planning and academic writing skills.

You preferably have:

• previous research experience with ethnography of activism;
• affinity with current debates in anthropology of infrastructure, technology and activism;
• affinity with decolonial and engaged anthropology and commitment to exploring multi-modal, visual, and co-creative methodological approaches.