2 PhD Positions "Digital Geographies of Urban Drug Markets in Amsterdam and Rio de Janeiro"

In cities across the world, drug sales are starting to resemble other forms of ultrafast delivery, as drug dealers turn to mobile, app-based communication and city-wide home delivery to expand their markets and evade the police. The everyday activities associated with illicit urban economies, and drug markets in particular, are often held to have a strong territorial basis, with supply and consumption concentrated in specific, often marginalized areas. As illicit transactions increasingly involve digital technologies, it is precisely these socio-spatial patterns that have shifted, with profound consequences for the risks experienced by drug dealers and by people who use drugs.

The PhDs in this project will study such shifts and how they connect to differentiated exposure to harm across urban spaces and populations, asking: How does the uptake of digital technologies in drug dealing transform uneven urban landscapes of risk? Focusing on micro-transactions in illicit drugs, the project aims to understand the everyday digital geographies of the illicit urban economy. Specifically, it seeks to understand how drug dealers and consumers experience unequal and shifting risks – including the risk of problematic substance use and exposure to criminal or state violence – as mobile, digitally‐enabled deliveries replace place‐based sales.