Doctoral Researcher; f​/m​/diverse POESIS Submerged Dependencies

The German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) conducts high-quality research, offers independent policy advice, and facilitates transregional knowledge cooperation and training at the intersection of “development” and “sustainability”, with the aspiration to co-shape a collaborative multipolar world for sustainable futures.

We offer an excellent and support-intensive research environment in the field of development policy with regular research workshops with internationally recognized scientists, international conferences, and the opportunity to participate in research stays abroad.

The Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies (BCDSS), a German Research Council-funded “Cluster of Excellence” provides an outstanding setting for interdisciplinary and comparative research of different forms of Strong Asymmetrical Dependencies (SADs) across time periods and world regions. During its first phase (2019–2025), the BCDSS successfully developed the concept of SADs as a comprehensive analytical framework to understand how power imbalances have been shaped in the past, and continue to influence societies around the world today.

In its second funding phase (2026–2032), the BCDSS will investigate the underlying causes and mechanisms that contribute to the persistence of SADs across historical and contemporary contexts. We aim to anchor historically-informed “Dependency Studies” as a key interdisciplinary field, encouraging scholars across the humanities and social sciences to systematically integrate the analysis of SADs into the study of social, economic, and cultural phenomena.

Together, BCDSS and IDOS offer a rich, interdisciplinary, and supportive research environment that brings historically grounded work on asymmetric dependency relations into dialogue with contemporary debates in global politics, development, and sustainability cooperation.

The BCDSS–IDOS research group, POESIS, invites applications for a:

Doctoral Researcher (m/f/diverse) - Position No. 2026-A2-01
Part time 65%, 25,35 hours/week
German public sector tariff, EG 13, TVoeD Bund , according to qualifications
60.000 – 86.000 Euro gross (65%)

Subject to final approval of funds, the position may be filled as of 01 October 2026 and is limited to four years, with possibility of further extension.

The doctoral position is embedded in the BCDSS-funded collaborative research group with IDOS,
Power, Knowledge and Servitude at Sea
. POESIS turns to maritime and littoral worlds to trace the asymmetric dependencies that land-centred accounts often obscure, asking how power takes shape through epistemic hierarchies, labour regimes, and more-than-human relations, and how these formations are navigated and contested in everyday life.

Based in Work Package 3: “Submerged Dependencies,” this PhD project explores environments below the waterline as sites where biodiversity conservation, cultural heritage management, and security regimes converge. It invites proposals that examine how heritage governance, conservation, and security reshape access, custodianship, and the very definition of biocultural heritage under particular conditions. Projects may focus on marine protected areas, UNESCO biosphere reserves, and other submerged zones, particularly where these intersect with militarised spaces and extractive frontiers.

Applications from all geographical regions are welcome. We encourage historically grounded, methodologically diverse projects combining ethnographic practices with multimodal approaches such as participatory (counter) mapping, art-based collaboration, archival research, oral history, and policy analysis. Proposals that connect contemporary struggles over security and marine governance to longer histories of empire and developmentalism, while engaging debates on restitution, climate reparations, biodiversity, and/or custodianship, are especially welcome.

We invite candidates who aspire to combine the acquisition of professional experience with the preparation of a PhD dissertation in the context of the BCDSS-IDOS joint partnership programme. In its semi-structured PhD programme, IDOS combines a focus on research with policy…