MITIME Is Hiring: 15 Fully Funded PhD Positions Exploring Migration, Time, and Post-Industrial Cities
The Migration and Time (MITIME) programme has announced 15 fully funded PhD positions, offering an outstanding opportunity for early-career researchers interested in migration, mobility, labour, borders, and urban transformation. The programme brings together leading European universities, city institutions, and civil society organisations to explore how time and temporality shape migration experiences and governance in post-industrial cities.
MITIME is designed as an interdisciplinary doctoral network that combines academic excellence with practical engagement. Doctoral candidates are encouraged to familiarise themselves thoroughly with the programme’s overall vision, thematic focus, and recruitment requirements before applying. Each PhD position is carefully structured, combining individual research projects with shared training activities, international mobility, and professional development.
An Interdisciplinary and International Research Network
The 15 doctoral positions span a wide range of disciplines, including cultural anthropology, sociology, political science, social sciences, public administration, and human rights. Host institutions include highly regarded universities in Finland, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, and Türkiye, ensuring a truly international research environment.
Several projects focus on urban sociality, conviviality, and everyday encounters in post-industrial cities. These PhD topics examine how migrants and non-migrants live together under conditions of uncertainty, how social bonds are formed and sustained, and how online and offline interactions reshape urban life. Using ethnographic and qualitative methods, candidates will explore how inequalities linked to migration status, gender, race, class, and age influence access to social and digital connectivity.
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Labour, Work, and Temporal Precarity
A central theme within MITIME is the relationship between labour markets and time. Multiple PhD positions investigate how migrants navigate increasingly fragmented and precarious urban labour markets. These projects examine how time regimes imposed by employers, institutions, and migration policies affect migrants’ working lives, mobility strategies, and everyday resilience.
Other research topics focus on remote work and digital labour, analysing how new forms of work transform mobility, control, and inequality in post-industrial cities. These projects address pressing questions around global divisions of labour, workplace monitoring, inclusion, and the governance of emerging work arrangements. Mixed-methods approaches, combining qualitative interviews, surveys, and policy analysis, are encouraged across several positions.
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Borders, Belonging, and Placemaking
MITIME also places strong emphasis on borders, legal status, and belonging. Several PhD projects explore how waiting, uncertainty, and delayed access to rights shape migrants’ everyday lives and future aspirations. Topics include access to housing, welfare, education, and legal recognition, as well as the role of local institutions in producing inclusion or exclusion through time-based practices.
Other projects examine placemaking and homemaking, focusing on how migrants create a sense of home in cities despite restrictive migration regimes. Research on diasporas highlights how memory, identity, and political mobilisation are negotiated in diverse urban contexts, and how diasporic communities shape social, cultural, and political life in post-industrial cities.
Training, Secondments, and Professional Development
All MITIME PhD candidates benefit from structured doctoral training, interdisciplinary supervision, and international secondments. These secondments may take place at partner universities, city administrations, labour market institutions, non-governmental organisations, or cultural and policy-focused organisations. This structure ensures that doctoral researchers gain both strong academic foundations and valuable practical experience.
The positions are salaried according to host-country regulations and provide a supportive environment for completing a PhD within a collaborative European research network. Several host institutions also offer opportunities for additional funding to support candidates in the final stages of their doctoral studies.
A Unique Opportunity for Emerging Scholars
MITIME offers a rare chance to pursue a fully funded PhD at the forefront of migration and urban studies. By combining theoretical innovation, empirical research, and societal engagement, the programme equips doctoral researchers with the skills and networks needed for careers in academia, policy, and beyond. For motivated candidates interested in understanding migration through the lens of time, MITIME represents a compelling and transformative opportunity.
