PhD Fellow in Arctic Mobility, Landscape and Spatial Justice

The position

At The School of Business and Economics at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, ROADS is seeking a highly motivated doctoral researcher interested in questions of mobility, infrastructure, northern landscapes, environmental change, and spatial justice in the Arctic. The successful applicant will become part of an interdisciplinary research team combining geography, environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, critical infrastructure studies, heritage research, and spatial analysis. The PhD position is funded for three years, starting 1 March 2027 and ending 28 February 2030, and is embedded within an international and collaborative research environment.

The objective of the position is to complete research training to the level of a doctoral degree. Admission to the PhD programme is a prerequisite for employment, and the programme period starts on commencement of the position.

The workplace is at UiT in Tromsø. You must be able to start in the position within a reasonable time after receiving the offer.

Working and living in Tromsø 

Tromsø/Romssa serves as an important hub for research, culture, governance, and mobility in the region of Northern Norway and Sápmi. Its position as a regional gateway between coastal, inland, and cross-border northern landscapes makes it a particularly meaningful base for ROADS. The School of Business and Economics at UiT hosts a growing community of scholars working on sustainability, governance, mobilities, Arctic transformations, and societal change. The successful candidate will become part of a dynamic interdisciplinary environment, including UiT’s Environmental Humanities thematic network that ROADS is closely connected to.

The project

ROADS offers the first systematic study of residual road infrastructures in Northern Fennoscandia—roads and pathways that have fallen out of official purpose but continue to shape landscapes, memories, and mobility practices across the region. These include bypassed roads, abandoned transport corridors, former military and extractive infrastructures, and old roads and seasonal pathways embedded within local and Sámi land-use traditions.

While many remain visible in the landscape, their histories increasingly persist through local knowledge systems that risk disappearing as generations pass. Rather than approaching such infrastructures as obsolete remnants, ROADS conceptualizes them as living archives: material traces through which memory, power, mobility, resistance, and future possibilities continue to unfold.

Drawing on feminist and decolonial Science and Technology Studies, critical infrastructure studies, political ecology, environmental humanities and Indigenous ontologies, ROADS seeks to broaden conventional understandings of infrastructure by integrating relational, seasonal, and more-than human mobility systems into analyses of northern landscapes.

The project combines GIS-based spatial analysis, archival research, ethnography, repeat photography and artistic methods, and collaborative countermapping. It is grounded in close collaboration with local and Sámi communities and culminates in community-responsive public outputs, including a multilingual digital storymap and participatory mapping platform.

While GIS and spatial analysis provide important analytical foundations, ROADS combines these approaches with ethnographic, archival, visual, and artistic methods. The project therefore welcomes applicants interested in methodological experimentation and interdisciplinary research across the social sciences, humanities, environmental sciences, and arts.

The PhD project, responsibilities and research methods

The PhD project and responsibilities

The successful candidate will undertake doctoral research mainly within Work Package 2: Mapping Conflict and Relational Mobility in the North. The PhD candidate will take a leading role in the WP and receive close supervision from the Principal Investigator while collaborating with the project's postdoctoral researcher and the project network.

The PhD project explores how contemporary road development in Northern Fennoscandia—including infrastructure connected to resource extraction, military activities, and regional development—interacts with older roads, seasonal pathways, and Indigenous and local mobility systems. Rather than treating infrastructure as fixed physical objects, the PhD project investigates roads as dynamic political, cultural, and material assemblages that shape relationships between people, landscapes, governance, and more-than-human worlds.

Particular attention is given to questions such as:

The PhD candidate will have the opportunity to shape the detailed direction of the dissertation within the broader aims of the project.

Research methods

The project combines:

GIS analysis forms an important component of the project, but it is integrated with qualitative, participatory, and community-engaged approaches. The project therefore welcomes applicants interested in combining spatial analysis with ethnographic and critical social science methods. Fieldwork will involve collaboration with local residents, Sámi communities, municipal planners, land users, and other stakeholders across Northern Fennoscandia.

Applicants are required to submit a project description (3–5 pages, literature references included) outlining how they would approach the proposed doctoral research within Work Package 2 of ROADS. The project description should demonstrate the applicant's understanding of the aims of ROADS and discuss how they would investigate questions related to infrastructure, mobility, landscape, territorial governance, and Indigenous and local land use in Northern Fennoscandia.

While the dissertation is situated within Work Package 2, applicants are encouraged to develop their own research focus within the overall objectives of the project. The final project description will be developed in cooperation with the supervisor.

The description should reflect on relevant theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches appropriate for doctoral research. Applicants are encouraged to discuss how methods such as GIS and spatial analysis, participatory and critical mapping, ethnographic fieldwork, archival and policy analysis, visual methods, and interdisciplinary collaboration could contribute to their proposed research. The proposal does not need to include all of these approaches but should demonstrate thoughtful consideration of the methods most appropriate for the applicant's intended doctoral project. Applicants should also indicate how their academic background, research interests, and methodological competencies would contribute to the interdisciplinary research environment of ROADS while supporting the development of an original doctoral dissertation.

Contact

For further information about the position and the ROADS project, please contact:

Email: tarja.t.salmela@uit.no

Qualifications

Required qualifications: 

Desired qualifications: 

We also value applicants who are motivated to develop language skills relevant to the project's geographical and cultural contexts. Applicants with backgrounds in geography, archaeology, digital heritage, landscape studies, environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, anthropology, planning, and related disciplines are particularly encouraged to apply. ROADS is grounded in long-term collaboration with local and Sámi communities and engages critically with Indigenous knowledge systems and questions of self-determination and cultural heritage. We encourage applications from researchers whose experiences and perspectives can contribute to the project's commitment to plurality, community engagement, and inclusive knowledge production.

In the assessment, the emphasis is on the applicant's potential to complete a research education based on the master's thesis or equivalent, and any other scientific work. The project description will also be considered. In addition, professional experience and other experience of significance for the completion of the doctoral programme will be taken into consideration.

We will also emphasize motivation and personal suitability for the position. We are looking for candidates who:

As many people as possible should have the opportunity to undertake organized research training. If you already hold a PhD or have equivalent competence, we will not appoint you to this position.

Admission to the PhD programme 

For employment in the PhD position, you must be qualified for admission to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Biosciences, Fisheries and Economics and participate in organized doctoral studies within the employment period.

Admission normally requires:

Grade requirements applies both to the master thesis as well as courses part of the master’s degree. The minimum requirements are grade B or better on the master’s degree, and an average grade of B or better on courses that are part of the master’s degree. For integrated master's degrees, applicants are required to have achieved a grade of B or higher on their master's thesis and an overall average grade of C or higher across all courses comprising the integrated degree programme. A more detailed description of admission requirements can be found here.

If you are employed in the position, you will be provisionally admitted to the PhD programme. Application for final admission must be submitted no later than two months after taking up the position.

Applicants with a foreign education will be subjected to an evaluation of whether the educational background is equal to Norwegian higher education, following national guidelines from Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills. Depending on which country the education is from, one or two additional years of university education may be required to fulfil admission requirements, e.g. a 4-year bachelor's degree and a 2-year master's degree. UiT normally accepts higher education from countries that are part of the Lisbon Recognition Convention.

Inclusion and diversity

UiT The Arctic University of Norway is working actively to promote equality, gender balance and diversity among employees and students, and to create an inclusive and safe working environment. We believe that inclusion and diversity are a strength, and we want employees with different competencies, professional experience, life experience and perspectives.

If you have a disability, a gap in your CV or immigrant background, we encourage you to tick the box for this in your application. If there are qualified applicants, we invite at least one in each group for an interview. If you get the job, we will adapt the working conditions if you need it. Apart from selecting the right candidates, we will only use the information for anonymous statistics.

We offer

The successful candidate will join an internationally connected and intellectually vibrant research environment at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Handelshøgskolen, and the thematic network of Environmental Humanities at UiT. The successful candidate will become part of an innovative research project addressing pressing questions concerning infrastructure, mobility, cultural heritage, and environmental change in the Arctic.

Norwegian health policy aims to ensure that everyone, irrespective of their personal finances and where they live, has access to good health and care services of equal standard. As an employee you will become member of the National Insurance Scheme which also include health care services.

More practical information about working and living in Norway can be found here: https://uit.no/staffmobility

Application 

Please note that the application will only be assessed based on the information submitted by the application deadline via Jobbnorge. It is therefore important that you include all necessary documents demonstrating your qualifications for the position.

Your application must include:

Qualification with a master’s degree is required before commencement in the position. You may still apply if you are in the final stages of the master’s degree, but the master’s thesis must be submitted for evaluation within the application deadline. You must submit the thesis and transcript of grades for the master’s degree with your application.

All documentation to be considered must be in a Scandinavian language or English. If English proficiency is not documented in the application, it must be documented before starting in the position.

Assessment 

The applicants will be assessed by an expert committee. The committee's mandate is to undertake an assessment of the applicants' qualifications based on the written material presented by the applicants, and the detailed description draw up for the position. A copy of the assessment report will be sent to all applicants.

The applicants who are assessed as best qualified will be called to an interview. The interview should among other things, aim to clarify the applicant’s motivation and personal suitability for the position.

General information 

The appointment is made in accordance with State regulations and guidelines at UiT. At our website, you will find more information for applicants.

Remuneration for the position of PhD Fellow is in accordance with the State salary scale code 1017. A compulsory contribution of 2 % to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund will be deducted. You will become a member of the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund, which gives you many benefits in addition to a lifelong pension: You may be entitled to financial support if you become ill or disabled, your family may be entitled to financial support when you die, you become insured against occupational injury or occupational disease, and you can get good terms on a mortgage. Read more about your employee benefits at: spk.no.

A shorter period of appointment may be decided when the PhD Fellow has already completed parts of their research training programme or when the appointment is based on a previous qualifying position PhD Fellow, research assistant, or the like in such a way that the total time used for research training amounts to three years.

We process personal data given in an application or CV in accordance with the Personal Data Act (Offentleglova). According to the Personal Data Act information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure. You will receive advance notification in the event of such publication, if you have requested non-disclosure.