PhD scholarship : Critical awareness in contemporary Francophone writings of mobility (Aberystwyth Univ.)

PhD scholarship on the project:

‘Beyond the white saviour?

Critical awareness in contemporary Francophone writings of mobility’

We are inviting PhD proposals for the Margaret Wooloff PhD Scholarship, to commence in September 2021.

Three fully funded PhD scholarships (covering fees, maintenance allowance and access to a travel and conference fund) are open to applicants qualifying for UK fees status, and will be allocated on a competitive basis by each faculty. Candidates in Modern Languages are invited to propose a research project broadly related to the topic of ‘Beyond the white saviour? Critical awareness in contemporary Francophone writings of mobility’, supervised by Dr Gábor Gelléri and Dr Marieke Mueller. Please find the project outline below.

The doctoral researcher will be part of the Modern Languages Department and the Research Centre for the Movement of People (CMOP) at Aberystwyth. 

You can find out more about the scholarship on our dedicated page: 

https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/postgrad/fees-finance/uk/research/margaret-wooloff-phd/ 

For a description of this specific project, see below.

Deadline for applications: 1 May 2021

Informal enquiries can be addressed to Gábor Gelléri (gag9@aber.ac.uk) or Marieke Mueller (mam139@aber.ac.uk).

Project description:

This project investigates the different approaches by contemporary, geographically mobile authors from ‘Western’ societies, used in their narratives of ‘non-Western’ cultures. The corpus can include, beyond travel writing itself, accounts of academic fieldwork, narratives by migrants and long-term residents in countries of the Global South, as well as mobile professionals, such as NGO workers. It will examine their awareness and use of the complexity of the intercultural context they encounter, and assess whether the extensive theoretical framework developed over the last decades (from Said’s Orientalism through theories of ‘third space’ to intersectional approaches) about crosscultural contacts genuinely penetrates into contemporary narratives of mobility. This line of investigation has implications for a wide range of non-academic practitioners in NGOs, policymaking, journalism, publishing and education. Possible themes may include but are not limited to colonial tropes such as the ‘myth of innocence’, the ‘white gaze’, gender and sexuality, sex tourism, and engagement with categories such as exile, migration, and the ‘expat’.

The project will allow a PhD student to complete an interdisciplinary dissertation project on a topic of high societal and ethical relevance. The research topic sits in proximity to the areas of expertise of Dr Marieke Mueller and Dr Gábor Gelléri. The Research Centre for the Movement of People will provide an opportunity to explore issues in mobility studies further. The researcher will also be able to gain valuable experience by being centrally involved in the development of a planned research network on mobility and ethics.