Three PhD positions for the ERC project, 'Making Sense of Communities of Arms'

ARMIES is a five-year project supported by a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. The project aims to establish a new research agenda that centralises the firearm as a sensational actant that shapes everyday practices and relations, creates divergent communities, and (re)produces power structures within local and global spheres. The project centres around an ethnographic analysis of the everyday deployment of firearms and their societal impact. It examines and compares the various ways firearms produce communities and focuses on groups that are overlooked in the field of gun studies, such as gun owners' associations and hunting clubs. ARMIES hypothesises that these communities are disruptive and transformative ones that exert tremendous power.

The project members are guided by the following research question: 'How do firearms produce communities, how do these communities relate to one another, and what is their societal impact?' This question will be answered through a comparative and multiscalar analysis of such communities and their members in Brazil, Germany, and South Africa, and global communities, such as international disarmament organisations. Due to the highly embodied, sensational, and affective nature of firearms, ARMIES will use and develop a multisensorial ethnographic approach (and toolkit) that comprises ethnographic methods that explicitly target the senses.

Utrecht University seeks three PhD candidates who have the necessary research experience and language skills to conduct one of the subprojects in Brazil, South Africa and Germany.

You will be part of team comprising three PhD candidates and the principal investigator (PI). The three PhD candidates will focus specifically on 'communities of arms' in the respective locations (Brazil, Germany, and South Africa). The PI will focus on international communities of arms and be responsible for conducting the comparative analysis of the different research sites. Based on an ethos of team ethnography, the team members will collaborate on addressing larger theoretical questions, developing a multisensorial toolkit, and organising academic events. The entire team is expected to reside in the Netherlands and work from Utrecht for the duration of project, except for the fieldwork periods.