Location University of Melbourne, Australia
I am pleased to announce a new PhD scholarship with Wolfram Dressler and Serene Ho at the University of Melbourne and colleagues at the KIT. the call will remain open until a suitable candidate is found. Please see the link and selection criteria below:
'An analysis of expanding road infrastructure on Indigenous land rights, food security, and forest cover in southern Palawan, the Philippines'
Project Summary
A fully funded PhD project on "An analysis of expanding road infrastructure on Indigenous land rights, food security, and forest cover in southern Palawan, the Philippines" is available. This joint PhD project will be primarily based at the University of Melbourne and includes a minimum 12-month stay at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).
The successful applicant will receive a scholarship package that includes a tuition fee waiver, living allowance, health insurance, and relocation support.
Across the Southeast Asian uplands, expanding road infrastructure is increasingly penetrating remnant forests and Indigenous territories, with major consequences for land rights, food security, and biodiversity (Clements et al., 2014; Reddiar and Osti, 2022). In the Philippines, where only 10 percent of original forest cover remains, new road networks linked to critical minerals mining, oil palm, and tourism estate expansion are affecting forests long managed by Indigenous peoples (Sze et al., 2022; Nolos et al., 2023; Mason et al., 2025). As the country's last ecological frontier, Palawan loses roughly 5,500 hectares of forest annually as roads penetrate forest reserves and ancestral lands (Nolos et al., 2023), yet their impacts remain poorly understood.
This PhD project examines the historical and contemporary expansion of road networks penetrating the upland forests of southern Palawan, where Indigenous communities face intersecting pressures on land, resources, and governance. It analyses how roads intersect with ancestral domain claims, livelihood change, shifting land classifications, territorial disputes, and changing accessibility, and how these processes affect Indigenous food security, forest cover, and biodiversity.
Using spatial analysis and ethnographic methods, the project traces the spatial and temporal dynamics of road expansion, land use conversion, livelihood change, forest degradation, and biodiversity decline.
Grounded in political ecology and Indigenous land politics, the project examines how competing claims intersect along roads as socioecological corridors that facilitate market integration while catalysing dispossession and the reconfiguration of customary authority. Through ethnographic fieldwork and spatial analysis, it generates a multiscalar account of road building as a political project reshaping ancestral lands, food systems, forest cover, and biodiversity in southern Palawan.
Experience working/ living in the Philippines or elsewhere in SEA, knowledge or willingness to learn Filipino, a background in ethnography, strong analytical and writing skills, and a competitive GPA are essential criteria.
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