PhD scholarships within the Interreg project FUSION at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU)

Job description

The thesis will be an integral part of the FUSION project. Climate change is a phenomenon that threatens the Danish – German Interreg region on both sides of the border, requiring well aligned actions across nation states as it can only be mitigated through collaborative collective efforts and behavioral changes of all citizens. At the same time, we observe that the majority of high school students in the Danish-German border region suffers from climate anxiety and a lack of positive outlook that makes them feel powerless. FUSION aims to break the paralysis in which these students are trapped, educate them in the collective imagination of positive climate futures, and empower them to develop and implement joint climate change initiatives across borders in the program region. It is a collaborative project involving two university and seven school partners from Denmark and Germany.

To reach these overarching objectives, FUSION will develop an innovative education format: A teaching module for English language education at secondary education institutions. This module includes creative future fiction writing, cross-border in-class analysis, and a cross-border camp with job profile fair. FUSION starts from the collection of English short stories which it then, through a process of match making amongst pupils with similar future perspectives across high schools and nation states, uses as a bridge to rekindle curiosity into the language of the other.

The module will facilitate the establishment of cross-border networks amongst like-minded young people, the collective imagination of positive climate change futures, and the development of individual actionable strategies, job profiles and common climate change initiatives across borders. FUSION further develops a learning platform that ensures open access to all produced teaching material, (anonymized) stories, and automized story overview summaries. This platform will ensure the further implementability of the teaching module in high schools and the continuous actualization of the overview on pupils’ future climate visions and cross-border collaboration initiatives beyond the project’s end, thereby establishing an important resource of information for decision making oriented towards climate change mitigation in the region. 

The PhD will be involved in all parts and activities of FUSION. The workload will be geared towards

• eliciting youth-imagined far-future climate narratives, 
• identifying common social imaginaries across borders,
• designing and conducting event formats that apply performative play and improvisation theatre to stimulate the creation of collective cross-border narratives and initiatives,
• evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the created networks and initiatives. 

FUSION is part of the project portfolio of the SDU Climate Elite Centre “Mobilizing Post-Anthropocentric Climate Action: A New Root Narrative” (PACA). PACA seeks to map post-anthropocentric social theories that challenge the nature-culture divide and investigate traces of these theories in the population. It assesses the extent to which such practices and beliefs can provide a positive narrative for a new organization of production and consumption practices and, finally, the role of universities as mediators of the emergent post-anthropocentrism. 

As part of the PhD program, an individual education program within the field of business and management must be completed. The successful candidates will be expected to complete a six-month stay at a research institution abroad and, over the period of the program, to acquire experience of teaching or other types of presentation. S/he will also be expected to participate in the various activities within the center and – apart from the stay abroad – to be present on a daily basis.