Eutopia co-tutelle fellowships: PhD in Data access rights as methodology?
This concerns a call for expressions of interest from prospective PhD students to conduct a doctoral research project on the subject of 'Data access rights as methodology' at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. The project is expected to be co-supervised by Professor Noortje Marres (Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick) and Professor Gloria González Fuster (Law, Science, Technology & Society, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). They plan to put this project forward for a PhD co-tutelle fellowship within the EUTOPIA Alliance, with a proposal submission deadline in April 2021, and expect to be working with the candidate to finalize the proposal (see the project summary below).
The EUTOPIA PhD co-tutelle programme supports high-quality PhD projects in all research areas co-supervised by academics of the EUTOPIA member universities (more information about this below). Should the project be awarded, the successful candidate would be enrolled in the PhD programme in Interdisciplinary Studies offered by the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, and they will be expected to undertake several research visits to the LSTS group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Please send your expression of interest to Professor Marres by 21 March 2021, including a one-page CV and a few sentences to substantiate your interest in this project. If you have any questions, please contact Professor Marries.
Data access rights as methodology: Analysing regulatory, epistemological and socio-technical constraints and opportunities for public interest research with online platforms
PhD project proposal
This project will investigate the deployment of personal data access rights as a methodology in platform-based public interest research from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining digital sociology with law, critical data studies and science & technology studies (STS). The project finds its starting point in the convergence between, on the one hand, an increasing interest among scholars across fields in gaining access to platform-based data for research purposes, including through innovative uses of rights to information (such as freedom of information requests) and, on the other, the ongoing exploration of the potential of individual privacy and data protection rights for the pursuit of civic objectives, where access rights to personal data, too, are increasingly used as an investigative tool. Through the design of platform-based computational analysis, we will study how software tools can in a legal and scientifically-sound way support access-rights-based approaches in online research. To this end, the project will integrate CIM's methodological capacity in platform-based research and LSTS work on privacy & data protection law. The overarching aim is to explore in a practice-based manner the limits and potential of reliance on personal access rights for public interest research with online platforms, covering regulatory, epistemological, and socio-technical aspects.
About the EUTOPIA call for proposals for PhD co-tutelle fellowships
The EUTOPIA PhD co-tutelle programme supports high-quality PhD projects in all research areas co-supervised by academics of the EUTOPIA member universities. It offers PhD fellowships for 3 to 4 years, depending on the length of doctoral studies in the partner universities. It is expected to lead to high-quality research projects with global impact, providing exciting research opportunities for PhD or doctoral candidates
The fellowships will start between October 2021 and January 2022.
Applications are to be submitted by the prospective supervisors of the project. PhD candidates are not entitled to apply directly to the call. The deadline for submission of applications to the present call is: 28 April 2021, 13:00 (Central European Time). Applications submitted after the deadline will not be considered.