PhD Studentships in the Ideas of Anti-Autocratic Movements in Africa

Two 3.5 year scholarships for a PhD in Politics as part of the NEWREPUBLIC European Research Council project. NEWREPUBLIC is an ERC Starting Grant which investigates the ideas that animate anti-autocratic movements in Africa and beyond. The project focuses on people power philosophies and seeks to extend, enrich, and complicate understanding of how anti-autocratic movements in Africa critique autocracy, envisage democracy, and conceptualise their struggles. As a PhD student in the NEWREPUBLIC team, you will undertake an independent research project of your own design, focusing on questions such as how anti-autocratic movements in Africa articulate their ideas, how these ideas are instantiated in practice, and how they relate to other movements and theories. The studentships include tuition fees (domestic or international), a tax-free bursary for living costs, a generous research budget covering at least six months of field research, conference travel, and participation in NEWREPUBLIC academic workshops and practitioner-facing dissemination events. Students will be supervised by Dr. Dan Paget, Dr. Hannah Richter, and/or Prof. Paul Taggart at the University of Sussex.