Doctoral / PhD Researcher in Multimodal and More-than-Human Ethnography Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology, Spanish National Research Council in Spain

IPNA-CSIC (Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology of the Spanish National Research Council) invites applications for a fully funded doctoral / PhD position in Multimodal and More-than-Human Ethnography within the ERC project FRONTCAT – Beyond the Cat Wars: Reimagining Multispecies Governance and the Ethics of Care amid Rural Populism, led by Dr Pablo Alonso González.

The project examines conflicts surrounding free-ranging, feral, and community cats as a lens onto broader transformations in multispecies governance. It brings together anthropology, environmental social science, history, digital research, and multimodal methods to study how knowledge, care, ecological concern, and political legitimacy shape relations between humans and other animals.

The doctoral researcher will design an original PhD project focused on multimodal and more-than-human ethnography. The work will combine sustained ethnographic fieldwork with methods such as photography, ethnographic film, sound recording, sensory ethnography, walking and mobile methods, visual elicitation, mapping, and other forms of audiovisual documentation where ethically appropriate. The emphasis is on ethnographic depth and the ability to investigate how multispecies relations are perceived, experienced, documented, and negotiated in everyday governance and controversy.

Potential themes include how cats become classified as pets, community cats, feral animals, predators, invasive animals, or subjects of care; how visual and sensory evidence participates in governance; how technologies such as camera traps, maps, and digital devices shape knowledge of animal populations; and how visibility, affect, expertise, and political conflict intersect in contested human-animal relations.

The position is intended as a conventional academic PhD with a strong multimodal dimension. The researcher is expected to produce a doctoral thesis, approximately three publishable academic articles, and a portfolio of multimodal outputs such as short films, visual essays, photographs, sound pieces, interactive formats, or materials for collaborative research and public engagement.

The successful candidate will join an interdisciplinary team at IPNA-CSIC in Tenerife, Canary Islands, and contribute to FRONTCAT’s wider audiovisual activities and multispecies governance toolkit. The research environment is explicitly interdisciplinary and includes historical, ethnographic, environmental, digital, and political perspectives.

Eligibility highlights: applicants should hold a Master degree or equivalent in Anthropology, Geography, or Sociology; have strong ethnographic and more-than-human research interests; have good Spanish and excellent English; and ideally have some experience with audiovisual or creative research methods. The posting welcomes candidates from anthropology, visual anthropology, social and cultural anthropology, human geography, sociology, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, and related fields.

Application deadline: 1 August 2027. Applications are to be submitted by email to [email protected].