Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences

PhD students

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Under construction.

Grant

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The Dutch PhD-system differs from systems in other countries. PhD candidates in the Netherlands are employed by the universities to do research and conclude this with a PhD thesis. Usually PhD candidates are also involved in teaching. The PhD candidate usually is supervised by a small team of two or three professors or experts in the field. Since PhD candidates are emplyed by the university, they receive a salary. More information can be found on the website of the Association of Universities in the Netherlands.

Section 1: The Administrative Governance of European Public Policy-making

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Within this section of the Faculty's research programme, the focus is on administrative players and procedures in the making of European public policies. This implies attention to both the role of the European and national administration in the policy-process, as well as the interaction between administrative and other logics (e.g. representative, participatory and diplomatic) within the institutional dynamics of the European Union. Special consideration is being paid the more general lines of investigation of the research programme mentioned above, namely the need to open the 'black box' of European administrative governance by looking in-depth at the politics of information within and across the various administrative systems in Europe as well as investigating the role of expertise and peer review within and around international organisations and agencies. Beyond such empirical study, an emphasis of the work being done within this section will be on normative aspects of administrative governance, and especially on degree to which public administration in the EU meets key criteria of accountability and transparency. Finally, projects will also pay attention to the longitudinal evolution of European administrative governance, for examply through the use of approaches such as historical institutionalism.
Colleagues contributing to the research within the section of the programme are working, inter alia, on subjects such as the changing roles of the European Commission and the Council Secretariat after the Lisbon Treaty, the nature of agency governance in the European Union, the administrative dimension in the politics of the European Parliament, the nature of legislative implementation at both the EU level and within the member states, the institutional reforms in the area of financial services regulation in Europe, the development of a European public sphere, on the effectiveness of the Open Method of Coordination, and on the interplay between formal and informal governance in the EU. Within this context, individual colleagues are cooperating with the University's Montesquieu Institute on Europe's parliamentary and constitutional development, with EIPA (the European Institute of Public Administration in Maastricht), and with colleagues in many other universities in Europe and beyond.
In order to strengthen our research effort in this area, we are inviting proposals for doctoral projects on the following subjects:

Project 1: The Politics of Informing the EU: the Case of Eurostat Contact person: prof. dr. T. Blom

Project 2: The Role of Administrative Players within the European Parliament Contact person: dr. C. Neuhold

Project 3: The Organization of Accountability: Peer Reviews in Global Organizations Contact person: dr. Thomas Conzelmann

Project 4: Permanent Representations as a Source of Influence Contact person: prof. dr. Thomas Christiansen

Project 5: Governance in International Organizations Contact person: dr. Thomas Conzelmann

Administrative Governance

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Studying International Bureaucracies

The Administrative Governance research programme seeks to study bureaucratic organizations that are established to facilitate trans- and supranational policy coordination and integration. It is strongly motivated by theoretical, empirical and normative-political questions concerning these international secretariats and the officials working within them. Of particular interest are the conditions under which international civil servants are able to exert substantial influence on the content, scope and execution of decisions and policies that formally result from the negotiations among democratically elected political actors.

In the presentation of the Administrative Governance-PhD programme below, this rather broad research theme is structured along the following three sections

1. The Administrative Governance of European Public Policy-making
2. The Administrative Governance of Multilateral Foreign Policy
3. Administrative Governance in a Historical Perspective

Within each of these sections, we offer a number of opportunities for doctoral research projects.

In addition to these, the Faculty has recently been successful with an application to the European Union for the funding of the PhD training network INCOOP which brings together seven European universities to provide for doctoral training and exchanges on the subject of "Dynamics of Institutional Cooperation in the European Union". A number of PhD positions are arising within this context.

Within our research programme, the (multi-layered) administrative structures of the European Union are of a central concern. Yet the Administrative Governance programme has a broader focus as it will examine also the historical role of bureaucracies in the development of modern nation states, their role and functions in the emerging system of global governance, and the international bureaucracies that form the administrative infrastructure thereof.

The following conceptual themes provide a degree of overall coherence to the Administrative Governance research programme:

• The role of information in Bureaucratic Politics
• The Relationship between Structure and Process
• The Politics of Expertise
• The Normative Dimension of Administrative Governance
• The Historical Dimension of Administrative Governance

See here for a more detailed outline of these themes underlying our research.

Science, Technology and Society Studies (STS), including Globalization and Development

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The research programme on Science, Technology and Society including Globalization and Development issues investigates the following main questions.

The first concerns the relations between technology, science and society. This comprises a combination of philosophical, historical, sociological and anthropological approaches. The general question is how modern societies are constituted by science and technology, and how, vice versa, social and cultural conditions shape technological and scientific developments. The research focuses on the 20th and 21st centuries, with attention to the historical roots in the 17th-19th centuries. The central tenet is that science (including the humanities and social sciences) and technology (in its material forms and as a discipline) are such pervasive constituents of highly developed societies that our modern culture can only be understood when these key roles are recognized and explicitly studied.
More specifically, this research programme has one central theme and four specific areas of interest. Its overarching theme is Innovative Cultures. Within the core theme of Innovative Cultures, a limited set of focal areas of interest is defined:
• Digital cultures and development: on the use of digital research methods in social sciences and humanities, and their effects on research systems and societal development;
• Creative cultures: on the interactions between science, technology, media, and the arts, and on the innovations that result from those interactions;
• Vulnerability of technological cultures: on the inevitable, necessary, and problematic vulnerability of innovating societies;
• Industrial innovation and research cultures: with an historical perspective on the interactions between industrial and university research systems.
To study innovative cultures--and innovations in their symbolic and practical contexts--certain methodological approaches are called for. An interdisciplinary combination of ethnographic research, historical analysis, and discourse analysis of scientific and political texts in a comparative project design will be found in many projects.

The second main question concerns issues of globalization and development. In a globalizing world, transnational connections are increasingly important for the way social phenomena take shape locally, while also giving rise to new dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, cultural configurations, hybrid identities, transnational social and political formations, and processes of economic structuring and restructuring that link disparate areas of the globe. The basic tenet of research conducted in the GDI is that it is impossible to understand what is happening in developing countries without a focus on how globalization trends are affecting and interconnecting different areas of the globe while marginalizing others. Research is conducted from a social science perspective, combining both quantitative and qualitative approaches and is focused on developing countries and the transnational connections that exist between Global North and South and within the global South.

Core areas of interest are:

• Transnational migration: Migrants maintain connections with their countries of origin. At the same time they forge new relations in the countries where they pass through and move to. How do the norms underlying social relationships change in a transnational context? What are the implications for different family members when families are split up due to migration? How are families reconstituted, and how are gender and generational roles redefined?
• Environment and indigenous populations: Indigenous populations living in resource rich environments often find themselves caught between powerful, transnational resource extraction companies and environmental conservation organizations with normative ideas of what is nature and who should be allowed to live in it. How do indigenous populations claims rights to land and other resources vis-à-vis powerful transnational players? What alliances do they build, and what national and transnational advocacy networks do they form? How are their discourses and strategies affected by environmental protection platforms, largely initiated in the Global North?
• Transnational health care and HIV/AIDS: Health care and the fight against HIV/AIDS in developing countries can only be adequately understood when taking into account the global dimensions and transnational links between actors: victims and their communities, clinics, government departments, church groups, volunteers, international NGOs, transnational pharmaceutical companies, multilateral organizations. What is the impact of transnational connections that exist between the Global North and South and within the Global South? Why do the affluent generally have access to healthcare, while the poor are still largely excluded?
• Historical perspectives on development: A historical perspective on 'development' can shed light on the role of transnational actors in forging a discourse on development. In particular two aspects are focused upon. First, the formation of transnational civil society movements and non-governmental organizations in the nineteenth century and how these forged transnational 'epistemic communities' on global issues like peace, poverty and slavery. The way these global issues have been framed has influenced the conceptualization of 'development' in the Global North. A second focus is on how international development policy has historically conceptualized and related development with access to science and technology. How is the history of the concept of development related to global networks of science and technology? What role historically has science and technology played in development?

Candidates with an interest in any of the above themes are invited to submit a proposal for a PhD project. Examples of proposals that would fit this programme are listed below. You are encouraged to apply to one of the projects listed, or to formulate your own proposal closely related to one of the listed examples.

Project 1: Televisual spill-over: Border regions, transnational infrastructures, and mediated identity formation in the early days of European television Contact person: dr. A. Fickers

Project 2: Risk Cultures in Coastal Engineering Contact person: prof. dr. ir. W. Bijker

Project 3: Risk Governance in Technological Culture Contact person: prof. dr. ir. W. Bijker

Project 4: Constructing vulnerability: Standards, rules and protocols in high-risk technological practices Contact person: prof. dr. ir. W. Bijker

Project 5: Exnovation of cultures of resilience Contact person: prof. dr. ir. W. Bijker

Project 6: Science, technology, and policy in ecological networks Contact person: prof. dr. ir. W. Bijker

Project 7: Customize your monitor Contact person: dr. J. Wachelder

Project 8: Technological urbanism and knowledge production Contact person: dr. B. van Heur

Project 9: Digital technologies and the everyday life of scholars Contact person: prof. dr. S. Wyatt

Project 10: The Interlacement of technology, organization and religion in innovation in health care Contact person: prof. dr. M. Verkerk

Project 11: Mediating social relationships in transnational migrant networks: the role of information and communication technologies Contact person: prof. dr. V. Mazzucato

Project 12: Transnational migrant networks and flows Contact person: prof. dr. V. Mazzucato

Project 13: Environmental governance and indigenous rights Contact person: dr. V. Davidov

Project 14: ;South African nurses abroad and the inheritance of loss: a transnational ethnography of international nurse migration Contact person: dr. W. Nauta

Project 15: Global anti-slavery movement: the rise of a transnational civil society network of expertise, 1800-1900 Contact person: dr. Ch. Leonards

Project 16: Historical perspectives on science, technology and development Contact person: dr. Esha Shah

Project 17: ;Democracy & Vulnerability in South Africa: the role of state and non-state actors in fighting HIV/AIDS on the local level Contact person: dr. W. Nauta

Cultural Memory and Diversity

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We would like to involve PhD students in our explorations of the tensions between cultural memory and diversity. Commemorative institutions such as memorials, monuments, museums and cultural canons are necessarily selective. They are contested sites, or provisional solutions of the struggle over the question of who gets to define what is really worthy of preservation, whose perspectives count, and whose voices may just as well be silenced. Every re-appropriation of the past strongly impacts on contemporary organizations of social diversity. Now that Western societies are becoming increasingly multicultural, the selective nature of cultural memory becomes all the more pressing and complex, as the recent 'culture wars' over the canons of Western culture demonstrate. We study the impact of cultural memory on social in- and exclusion in the commemorative practices of the sciences, politics and the arts.

The media, genres and aesthetic conventions that are employed in the representation of the past co-determine our selections of stories and perspectives worthy of remembrance as tacit selection mechanisms. Hence, cultural remembrance is not just a deliberate, fully intentional process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, but also a largely 'unconscious' reiteration of conventional literary and aesthetic repertoires for representing historical actors within the parameters of nationality, gender, ethnicity, age, ability and religion. We aim to study the intentional and unintentional aspects of cultural remembrance in their mutual interaction.

Within the context of this overall frame of reference, we concern ourselves with the following three fields of interest, carried out in a number of specific projects that often interrelate:

I. MEMORIAL POLITICS
Politicians often attempt to muster the support of historians, journalists, writers and artists in their attempts to come to terms with the pressures of public opinion over painful episodes from the collective past. Intellectuals, scholars and artists are frequently commissioned by political institutions to 'repair' blemishes on collective identities and national pride, which raises serious issues of scholarly and artistic integrity and autonomy. At the same time, scholars, intellectuals and artists may also take the initiative in critically exposing taboo zones from the past, often touching upon the limits of freedom of speech. This field of interest explores the stressful 'marriage' between political institutions on the one hand and scholarly and artistic discourse on the other.

Project 1: History and Politics. Dealing with the Past in Times of Political Change Contact person: prof. dr. Georgi Verbeeck

Project 2: Democracy Contested: The Political Essay in the Twentieth Century Contact person: dr. Sjaak Koenis

Project 3: Biography and Diversity: the Dutch Case Contact person: prof. dr. Maaike Meijer

Project 4: Writing a Biography, Otherwise: reflexive biography Contact person: prof. dr. Maaike Meijer

Project 5: Imagining (un)intelligible lives Contact person: prof. dr. Maaike Meijer

Project 6: Mining as a past experience in the Euregio Meuse-Rhine:
a comparative study of heritage and memory culture in four mining districts Contact person: prof. dr. Ad Knotter

II. MEDIA AND AESTHETICS
This field of interest pertains to the Nachwirkung of established aesthetic and poetical conventions in the new digital media and vice versa: it also relates to the ways in which the new digital media might possibly open up new points of exit from deeply ingrained narrative scenario's and pictorial clichés. To what extent and in which ways do new media technologies remediate older media and genres, and to what extent do they facilitate the construction of new representational spaces? What are the effects of the democratization of new technologies - such as digital photography and film-devices, webcams, and digital social networks such as Hyves and Facebook? New objects for the study of culture arise as the arts themselves evolve. Choreographers and theater-makers increasingly use new media in performances, thereby increasingly addressing all the audience's senses. Museums are developing other than the conventional visual forms of exhibiting. The division between producers and consumers is eroding, no only in the commercial sphere but also in the arts. Contemporary art has become an international and global affair: the national framework is of limited relevance in that field nowadays. Intercultural perspectives on contemporary art are necessary. Art is also not only produced in the form of objects - such as paintings - that can be easily exhibited and stored for eternity. New art-forms pose new challenges to museums, even call into question the institution of the museum as such.

Project 7: Music Fans - New Cultural Citizens? Contact person: dr. K. Wenz

Project 8: New Media, Established Arts. Contact persons. prof. dr. Renée van de Vall and dr. Lies Wesseling

Project 9: New Strategies in the Conservation of Contemporary Art Contact person. prof. dr. Renée van de Vall

Project 10: Unofficial archives and collections of documented artistic practices Contact person. prof. dr. Renée van de Vall

Project 11: Convergence, flow and the changing dispositif of television Contact person. dr. Jack Post

Project 12: Narratives of Ageing. Personal blogs as virtual spaces where subversive narratives of ageing can be articulated Contact person. dr. Aagje Swinnen

III CULTURAL DYNAMICS: THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED
Cultures are in flux, permanently. Paradoxically change often happens by the continued effects, by rediscovery or re-introduction of cultural repertoires from the past. Antiquity still is present in many ways in contemporary culture. Literary genres - poetry, fairy tales - stay alive in ever changing forms and acquire new significance, are put to new uses, time and again. Romanticism is not bound to the historical time-frame in which it came into being. 'The romantic order' is still present in many corners, if not in the very centre, of western culture. Thus, the notion of romanticism can also be set at work as an interpretative tool. The same applies to the notion of 'baroque' - a term that was used since the eighteenth century to characterize the 'bad, excessive' art of the preceding period.
Striking instances of the return of the repressed are the discourses that construct gender, sexuality and 'race'. Notions of masculinity and femininity are permanently changing, yet also seem to re-integrate older configurations of gender constantly. Since the 'invention' of homosexuality in the mid-nineteenth century lesbians, gays, transsexual and inter-sexual people have been subject to many different categorizations, which always tacitly implied the reconfiguration of normative sexuality. Discourses of 'race' continue to (re) create cultural hierarchies and divisions on a global scale. The question of whether there can be 'points of exit' out of these deeply engrained discourses is a guiding one.

Project 13: Neobaroque tendencies in contemporary culture Contact person. dr. Karel Vanhaesebrouck

Project 14: Narrative models for configuring the Adoptable Child, 1980-2010 Contact person. dr. Lies Wesseling

Project 15: Re-inventing Contemporary Masculinities Contact person: prof. dr. Maaike Meijer

Project 16: Masculinities as Battleground of Identity Politics. Colonial transfers, Homophobia and Anti-Semitism in Germany around 1900 Contact person: dr. Ultike Brunotte

Section 2: The Administrative Governance of Multilateral Foreign Policy

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Traditionally processes of foreign policy formulation have been supported by diplomatic services based in the national ministries of foreign affairs and embassies in third countries. Processes of growing interdependence and globalisation are however increasingly putting sovereign states under pressure and as a result diplomacy, the main instrument through which foreign policy is formulated and implemented, is also changing. An important new development is the growing importance of multilateral forms of diplomacy through regional and international organisations.

The focus of this section is on the diplomatic bureaucracies underpinning processes of multilateral foreign policy formulation. Hereby special attention is paid to the EU as one of the most advanced - and complex forms of foreign policy cooperation. The emergence of the EU role in the field of crisis management and the entering into force of the Lisbon Treaty foreseeing the creation of a European External Action Service (EEAS) not only lead to the creation of a whole range of new Brussels-based structures, they also affect in an important way national foreign policy administrations.

Colleagues contributing to this section are inter alia working on the changing role of the Council Secretariat in CFSP; the influence of supranational actors in European Foreign Policy; processes of institutionalisation in the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP); the impact of CFSP on national administrations. Since September 2009, the faculty is involved in a Jean Monnet research project with the universities of Loughborough and Leuven on the 'The Diplomatic System of the EU' (see: http://dseu.lboro.ac.uk) focusing on the evolution, operation and challenges of the EU's diplomatic system.

Project 1: Politics of information in the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Contact person: prof. dr. S. Vanhoonacker

Project 2: Formal and informal mechanisms of cooperation in EU external relations. A Case Study on the European Commission Contact person: prof. dr. S. Vanhoonacker

Project 3: The Administrative Governance of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) Contact person: dr. G. Noutcheva

Section 3: Administrative Governance in a Historical Perspective

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It would be misleading to suggest that there is some kind of linear development "from nation-states to Europe", which concomitant effects on the development of bureaucracies, from classical "Weberian" national bureaucracies to complex trans- or supernational administrative structures. Hence, the birth of the EU or other international organization is not where our interest in administrative governance begins. Looking at the history of administration through the lens of administrative governance fits in perfectly with a widely accepted general definition of administrative history as the interaction between government and society. Administrative history is not just about rules and regulations governing bureaucracies, or about formal criteria for measuring the growth of bureaucracies, but rather about the concrete workings of public administration, both in its executive functions as in its involvement in policy-making.
The projects listed below embody different aspects of the administrative governance research programme, notably its emphasis on the transnational dimension of the role of information and expertise (project 1), on questions of legitimacy and democratic potential (project 2), and on transparency and communication (project 3). Staff members involved in the supervising teams of these projects are cooperating with research groups consisting of members from the universities of Geneva, St. Andrews, and Cologne, and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva).

Project 1: Internationalism and the transfer of administrative knowledge, 1840-1919 Contact person: dr. N. Randeraad

Project 2: The Reform of National Administrations in Belgium, Italy and The Netherlands, 1919-1999 Contact person: dr. N. Randeraad

Project 3: The Language of Bureaucracy from the 19th Century to the Present Day Contact person: dr. N. Randeraad

Links

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New research proposals online

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Please click on research suggestions to find our new research proposals.

Graduate School Blog

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The PhD candidates of the Graduate School have their own blog with latest news and tips.

Contact us

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Mail Address:
Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences Maastricht University
P.O. Box 616
6200 MD Maastricht
Netherlands

Visiting Address
Grote Gracht 90-92
6211 SZ Maastricht

Tel. +31 43 388 2539
Fax. +31 43 388 4917

Programme Officer:
Drs. P. Van Eijs

Research suggestions

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Here you find our research proposals The proposals are grouped into three focal points (1) administrative governance, (2) science, technology and society (STS), including globalization and development issues and (3) cultural memory and diversity. Please click on one of these themes below to find the research suggestions related to this theme.

Administrative governance

Science, technology and society studies, including globalization and development

Cultural memory and diversity

Admission

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Degree requirements
The key to success for any PhD candidate is an academic attitude and the ambition to become an excellent researcher. In addition, you should have the relevant educational background and skills required by a researcher in the specific field you have chosen. You have completed a research master (MPhil) or an equivalent degree. In some cases, applicants may be required to acquire additional qualifications, for example by entering the second year of our two research masters European Studies or CAST. Students with a regular master will only be accepted in exceptional cases. Each application will be assessed by the selection committee.

How to apply
There are two ways to apply for our Graduate School:

You can send us your (brief) ideas for a PhD project together with a CV. Send them directly to a proposed supervisor (for an overview of senior staff, click here) or to the programme officer. Your ideas should be in line with the research themes which you can find on this website. As a result, you may receive an invitation to work with the supervisor you proposed or selected by us, to work on an application. Please send us your proposal and your CV not later than Friday 5 March 2010;
You can express your interest in one of the research suggestions which can be found on this website (research suggestions) by submitting a CV to the programme officer. Aa a result, you may receive an invitation to work with a supervisor on an application. Please send us your CV not later than Friday 5 March 2010.

Final applications have to be submitted not later than Friday 7 May 2010. A complete application consists of a research proposal, a CV, a list of marks of both bachelor and master studies and two recent essays. You have to use the application form which you can find here. There are five positions available.

Procedure and planning

Not later than 5 March 2010: espress your interest in our Graduate School by sending us your CV;

Not later than 7 May 2010: submit your application;

June 2010: a selection of applicants will be invited to present the proposal for a selection committee;

Before 1 July 2010: the selection committee will reach a decision. Selection will be based on the CV and skills of the candidate, the quality of the proposal and the presentation;

Between 1 September 2010 and 1 January 2011: start of the project.

Alternative opportunities
The faculty regularly offers a number of PhD positions from its own budget. In addition, PhD places may be funded through projects supported by for example the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) or European funding bodies.

Another option is to become involved in our pogramme as an external PhD. To take up an external PhD you will have to find the necessary funding yourself. For more information, contact the programme officer.

Programme overview

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Introduction
Our PhD Programme focuses primarily on offering you education, training and supervision to enable you to become an excellent researcher. The emphasis is on the acquisition of research skills, intensive supervision and collaboration with other PhD candidates and senior staff inside and outside the Faculty. There will be room for other activities, such as teaching or organising a conference. You will have the opportunity to develop a broad range of academic skills.

Training and education
Training and education consists of the following elements:

An orientation course introduces you to the university, the faculty, the teaching system, the staff and of course your fellow PhD candidates;
A training programme offered by one of the national graduate schools enables you to acquire research skills and specific knowledge in your field of research (see below);
An additional training programme focuses on general research skills, e.g. academic writing, insight into academic life, English and publishing;
Intensive supervision;
Discussion with and feedback from other PhD candidates and senior staff both inside and outside the faculty by presenting your work in seminars, workshops and conferences;
Participation in the faculty’s seminar series.

National graduate school
You participate in a national training programme which is offered by a national graduate school. These national schools focus on a specific theme and bring together all PhD candidates and senior researchers working in this theme. The Faculty participates in four national graduate research schools: the Graduate School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC), the Huizinga Institute of Cultural History, the Graduate School for Literary Studies (OSL) and the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG).

Career opportunities
The purpose of the PhD Programme is to prepare you for a wide range of jobs. Recent PhD graduates from our faculty have found positions at as researcher at a university or research institute, policy advisor, staff member in a museum or consultant.