Open International Scholarships

Two Ph.D. Studentships Available for EU-funded Project on “Early Warning and Conflict Prevention”, Department of War Studies / European Studies - King’s College, London

Two three year (full-time only) doctoral studentships are to be made available in the context of a major project entitled ‘Do Forecasts
Matter? Early Warning and the Prevention of Armed Conflict’. The project is led by Dr Christoph Meyer and will receive funding by the European Research Council, a new body set-up by the EU to support frontier research.

The successful applicants will work within a project team that is hosted by King’s College London, one of the UK’s foremost research-led institutions. The project team will further comprise a postdoctoral researcher (to be recruited via separate vacancy note).The Times Higher Education Supplement ranked King’s 6th in the UK and 24th worldwide.

Full tuition fees (Home/EU-level fees) will be covered and a tax-free stipend starting at £15,000 per annum will be available. In addition, there are funds for project-related research trips and books.

The project seeks to better understand the interplay of communication and political perception of early warnings about impending intra-state armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. In a second step, the project team will compare the findings about early warnings regarding armed conflict to insights about the impact of forecasts concerning other threats such as environmental or economic crises. The empirical work will involve interviews, process-tracing, and computer assisted content analysis.

You will:

• Complete a doctoral thesis on a topic-closely related to the project, for instance: Governmental Early Warning Systems and
  Intelligence; The Role of the News Media in Mobilising Conflict Prevention; International Advocacy Coalitions and Early Warning
  Networks; Political Perceptions of Early Warnings, Co-ordination of Conflict Prevention Responses in the EU; or similar.
• Contribute to the research and organisational activities of the project by
  • Analysing the process of early warning generation, communication, reception and political response in three cases of intra-state conflicts and in two selected member states (sample from France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden,Germany and the UK). This will also include interviews with practitioners.
  • Gathering early warnings from open and governmental sources regarding impending state conflicts and analyse them through software package Atlas.TI with the support of research assistants and the project leader.
  • Participating in written and oral dissemination of research findings and the organization of workshops and confere

  nces.

You should have:

• 1st class or Upper 2nd Class Honours BA degree (or equivalent) in the social or political sciences (for countries with BA/MA-system)
• Masters degree or equivalent passed with distinction/merit or equivalent mark in an area relevant to the project, in particular but not limited to international relations, security and peace studies, media/communication studies or comparative public policy.
• Keen interest in conflict prevention policies as well as in collaborative and interdisciplinary research
• IT-skills (MS-office/internet) and the willingness to acquire skills

in computer-assisted content analysis
To apply, please send

• a cover letter describing your academic interests (including a paragraph on the desired PhD topic) and reasons for applying,
• a CV including a description of your language and IT skills,
• two academic references (in sealed envelopes) and (4) your academic transcripts to Sebastian Matzner, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS (mark envelope “ERC”). For informal inquiries contact Dr Christoph Meyer (email: christoph.meyer@kcl.ac.uk

Deadline: 31 March 2008 (5pm) - Interviews will be held on 23 April 2008.
The two successful applicants will be invited after the interview to apply to the PhD Programmes of the Departments of War studies (SSPP) and European Studies (Humanities) - one to each.

Further information about the respective PhD programmes, please go to

• For War Studies
  http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/ws/ps/rp/mp-phd/
  and
• For European Studies
  http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/european/phd-eurostudies.html

Category: Postgraduate-PhD, United Kingdom