The Herta Mohr building where KITLV is located. Photo: Eva Bloem.
30-10-2025
The project Tracing Evolutionary Pathways in Climate Adaptation in Southeast Asia (TRACE), a European Research Council-funded Advance Grant (ERC Adv) led by Professor Diana Suhardiman and hosted by the KITLV in Leiden, is looking for four PhD candidates. The project investigates how evolutionary pathways in climate adaptation are created, sustained, and changed over time.
TRACE
The project investigates how evolutionary pathways in climate adaptation are created, sustained, and changed over time. Which actors and symbiotic relations connect various place-based knowledge systems and past knowledge (re)production processes with present and future adaptation strategies? Which institutions, local institutional rules, arrangements, and practices serve as cultural and institutional foundations (re)shaping climate adaptation practices over time? Which forces and conditions shape types of agency and political spaces of engagement that are crucial for the creation, sustenance, and reproduction of locally nested inter-scalar adaptive networks?
We address these questions by focusing on and collaborating with communities living in four interrelated socio-ecological systems in Southeast Asia. These socio-ecological systems are: 1) upland cultivation in Laos; 2) irrigated agriculture in Indonesia; 3) forest conservation in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands; and 4) sea nomads’ fishing territories in the Philippines. Each of the four PhD candidates will identify and trace evolutionary pathways in climate adaptation of one specific socio-ecological system.
The project, consisting of a Principal Investigator and two Postdoc researchers studying grassroots adaptation strategies, is now seeking four PhD candidates to join the team. Each PhD candidate will also engage with the respective country researcher team. This research project is led by KITLV in collaboration with various partners in the Global South including national universities and civil society organizations in Laos, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, and the Philippines.
The four positions are:
PhD candidate on irrigated agriculture in Indonesia at KITLV_KNAW
PhD candidate on forest conservation in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands at KITLV_KNAW
PhD candidate on sea nomads' fishing territories in the Philippines at KITLV_KNAW
PhD candidate on upland cultivation in Laos at KITLV_KNAW