1 PhD position – Environmental/Rural History of Human–Cat Relations and Socioecological Conflict – ERC-CoG FRONTCAT (4 years)

About this position

This fully funded 4-year doctoral position is embedded in the ERC Consolidator project FRONTCAT (Frontier Cats: Reimagining Multispecies Governance and Care Ethics beyond Post-politics), starting after mid-2027 hosted at IPNA-CSIC within the Social Sciences, Heritage and Food department. FRONTCAT examines cat-related controversies as a multispecies governance problem in which animal welfare, biodiversity expertise, rural livelihoods, public health, and everyday care practices become publicly disputed and institutionally negotiated.

PhD focus: environmental and rural history, with optional interest in human–animal relations and socioecological conflict.

The PhD will develop an original, archive-based historical study of how cats have been problematised, governed, and lived-with in rural and environmentally sensitive contexts (Spain as the primary frame; insular contexts, including the Canary Islands are particularly relevant). The dissertation should be grounded in environmental and/or rural history, and must engage human–animal relations, multispecies history, and the historical formation of socioecological conflicts (e.g., hunting, conservation, agriculture, public hygiene, veterinary governance, invasive-species framings, and moral economies of care).

Indicative research questions (to be refined with the supervisor and doctoral committee):

• How have rural communities, administrations, and experts historically framed cats as pest, companion, useful predator, public-health concern, or biodiversity threat?
• What historical events, ecological knowledge regimes, and institutional tools (ordinances, campaigns, registries, veterinary protocols, hunting regulations, conservation programmes) shaped these framings over time?
• How did rural–urban relations, class, and political cultures influence conflict and legitimacy in cat-related governance?
• How do long-run histories illuminate current polarisation between welfare and biodiversity-led approaches to free-roaming cats?

Core responsibilities and tasks

Task H1 – Archival mapping and corpus construction

• Identify and access relevant archives and repositories (municipal/provincial archives, institutional archives, BOE/official bulletins, veterinary/agricultural publications, conservation and hunting materials, local press and ephemera).
• Build a curated documentary corpus suitable for a doctoral dissertation and subsequent publications.

Task H2 – Historical analysis and writing

• Produce a historically rigorous account linking governance instruments, expert debates, and rural environmental change to shifting human–cat relations.

Task H3 – Project integration and dissemination

• Participate in FRONTCAT internal seminars, comparative discussions with other subprojects, and public dissemination where appropriate.
• Prepare peer-reviewed outputs aligned with the doctoral plan (typically 3 journal articles, depending on thesis format and disciplinary norms).