I’ve been dreadfully remiss in forgetting to post a note here about the PhD fellowships that are currently available at our department. We have seven open fellowships for the whole department (so any topic within digital culture, Nordic, linguistics, comparative literature, classics and theatre studies) and one earmarked stipend for a project examining extremist discourse online. As I’ve mentioned before, Norwegian PhD fellowships are really very good, as they are treated as regular jobs with benefits and rights like any other employee has. The salary is extremely good as compared to most PhD students’ income internationally, at 416,000 NOK (~73,000 USD) which is respectable even with Norway’s high cost of living. You also receive standard Norwegian benefits such as universal health care and 10-12 months parental leave.

I’m always excited to see whether digital culture projects are funded, but this year I’m particularly excited to see what comes of the extremism online fellowship. The description is very open – here, go and read it yourself.

Here’s the story behind it: Not long after July 22 last year, our faculty leadership asked whether the departments had any requests for earmarked PhD stipends, and the question was sent out to all of us. Having become very aware of how much more common than we had realised extremist discourse and communities are online, I proposed a stipend to research extremist discourse online, and several months later, we were told that the request had been approved. The debates after July 22 showed how desparately we need more knowledge about online extremism, and there has not been much, if any, research on this from the humanities. This is one step towards building more humanistic knowledge about online extremism.

We don’t have an internal candidate for this fellowship, so we have sent out information about the fellowship far and wide, and the job is advertised in both Norwegian and English. Candidates much have a research based MA degree, and must prepare a five page project description with their application. If you are interested, you must also find an advisor at the department – so contact me, and either I can be that person or I can put you in touch with someone more suited.

Of course, I’d welcome applicants to the open fellowship as well! Anything within digital culture 🙂

Here’s a description of the process of applying for a Norwegian PhD that I wrote a couple of years ago. The process is more or less the same today. And please ask if you have questions – and pass the ad along to anyone who might be interested!