HDR Scholarship - Critical phenomenologies of race

Location

Melbourne Burwood Campus

Research topic

A full PhD scholarship is being offered as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) project entitled 'No place like home? A phenomenology of racialised non-belonging', led by Deakin philosopher Dr Helen Ngo. This project seeks to better understand the experience of racialised otherness and uncanniness through the concepts of ‘place’ and ‘home’, and in doing so, to reframe our understanding of racism as not just a political problem, but an ontological one. Drawing on critical phenomenology and its theorisation of racism as an experience in the alienation from one’s own body and lived environs, this project will extend this by developing a philosophical account of alienation as a mode of feeling ‘not at home’ - while examining the ontological necessity, precarity, and variability of the home. Developing this in the settler-colonial Australian context, this project will investigate how alienation is experienced by those racialised in different but connected ways, and examine the practices of home-making that racialised communities have developed in the face of racism’s persistence.

The PhD student will engage the emerging philosophical field of ‘critical phenomenology of race’ in order to contribute new analyses of racism and its lived experience. The project may, for example, investigate the way racism and racialisation shape one’s experience of embodiment, temporality, place, language, affect, (inter)subjectivity, community, politics, and so forth. While there is flexibility in the PhD project’s central focus, the project should intersect and engage with the theme of racialised alienation in some significant way.

Project aim

This PhD project should aim to build capacity in the phenomenological study of racism, settler-coloniality, and/or the refugee and diasporic experience in so-called Australia. In doing so, it should also contribute philosophical insights on the advantages and limitations of critical phenomenology as a conceptual framework for investigating and intervening in socio-political injustice more broadly. The project should engage methodologies that centre the perspectives and knowledges of First Nations people and people of colour in order to develop an account that is both theoretically innovative, while doing justice to the lived experiences of racial violence.

Important dates

Applications will remain open until a candidate has been appointed.

Benefits

This scholarship is available over 3 years.

Stipend of $35,550 per annum tax exempt (2025 rate)
Relocation allowance of $500-1500 (for single to family) for students moving from interstate
Up to $5,000 conference assistance, $3,500 fieldwork assistance, and $1,600 completion assistance (Faculty of Arts and Education)
$1,000 Alfred Deakin Institute (ADI) HDR grant
International students only: Tuition fees offset for the duration of 4 years. Single Overseas Student Health Cover policy for the duration of the student visa.

Eligibility criteria

To be eligible you must:

be a domestic or international candidate. Domestic includes candidates with Australian Citizenship, Australian Permanent Residency or New Zealand Citizenship.
meet Deakin's PhD entry requirements
hold an honours degree (first class) or an equivalent standard master's degree with a substantial research component.

Please refer to the research degree entry pathways page for further information.

Additional desirable criteria include:

a tertiary degree in Philosophy or demonstrated familiarity and facility with philosophical phenomenology, existentialism, and critical philosophy of race.

How to apply

Please email a CV, cover letter and one page proposal to Dr Helen Ngo. The CV should highlight your skills, education, publications and relevant work experience. If you are successful you will then be invited to submit a formal application.