The University of Oslo is Norway’s oldest and highest ranked educational and research institution, with 26 500 students and 7 200 employees. With its broad range of academic disciplines and internationally recognised research communities, UiO is an important contributor to society.
The Institute of Health and Society is one of three institutes at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Oslo. The Institute covers various disciplines and consists of six departments: General Practice, Health Sciences, Health Management and Health Economics, Medical Ethics, Community Medicine and Global Health and Public Health Science.
The Institute of Health and Society bases its work on a complex understanding of disease, health and health systems. Culture, environment, economics, society and biology play direct and indirect roles. Our teaching responsibilities include seven Master’s programs, one Bachelor program and part of the Faculty’s medical school and PhD-program. We employ about 220 FTE and have almost 700 Bachelor and Master students. Annual income is about 200 mill NOK, half of which is external funding. Our researchers play an active part of public policy and disseminate new knowledge through many channels.
Faculty of Medicine
Institute of Health and Society
About the position
The Institute for Health and Society is recruiting 1 PhD position to do research on the history of plastics in healthcare. In this PhD position you will join an interdisciplinary and multinational team of researchers in the Wellcome Trust-funded Discovery Grant project ‘After the Single Use: Rethinking Medical Devices for Reuse, Resilience and Renewal’. It is a five-year anthropological and historical research project examining the history, circulation and discard of single-use plastics in global healthcare with the aim to understand how and why we came to naturalize and normalize disposability in healthcare and ways to collaborate to reduce it. The project involves research teams in 8 different countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and the US. This PhD position will be part of the Norwegian team, and focus on the history of healthcare plastics.
The appointment is a fulltime position for a period of three years. Depending on your competence and the teaching needs of the department, the fellowship can be extended up to four years for other types of qualification work, like teaching tasks and obligations.
After the Single Use is a bold global cooperative across four continents that promises to develop a new field of critical arts, humanities and social science research on medical waste and circular healthcare economies. The production, circulation and disposal of single-use medical plastics has a direct effect on human health and inflicts widespread environmental damage. Designed to be disposed of immediately after use, single-use medical products such as surgical drapes, syringes, or diagnostics are part of a linear fossil fuel economy that contributes to global warming and generates highly localized medical waste flows. Single-use medical plastics emit harmful dioxins when burned, leak toxic chemicals into water sources, and pollute oceans. Their manufacture, transportation and incineration makes a substantial contribution to carbon dioxide emissions, ensuring that, if the global health care sector were a country, it would have the 5th largest carbon footprint in the world.
About the project
It was not always this way. Medical masks were made of reusable materials until the 1930s, and the majority of surgical masks were not disposable until the 1960s. One generation ago, the use of washable instead of disposable surgical drapes and reusable surgical tools was commonplace. A generation before that, the syringe was a reusable technology. Diagnostic tests in the mid-20th century involved standardized glassware, sterilized by autoclave. In a relatively short period of time, we have naturalized the use of single-use products and then forgotten there was ever any alternative. Today there is growing international recognition that we need to move to a more sustainable, circular economy for medical equipment and devices. What would it take to achieve this? Bringing together anthropologists and historians from eight countries (Scotland, Senegal, Tanzania, India, Norway, USA, Switzerland, Papua New Guinea), After the Single Use will employ innovative historical and ethnographic methods to document the crisis of medical waste in global context, analyse the long lifecycles of single-use medical devices designed for disposal in incinerators and landfills, and establish collaborations with policymakers, activists and engineers/designers to build circular healthcare solutions. The project team will pursue these objectives through a series of country-based case studies of particular devices, infrastructures, places and spaces involved in the historical and current transformation of medical device materialities and lifecycles. Cross-cutting research questions, and common methods, objects and spaces will provide a comparative framework for the project, ensuring that we work together across country settings to understand how shared and divergent histories, geographic inequalities, and situated value systems have shaped and are shaping healthcare materialities.
More about the position
About the PhD project
The PhD student will involve a historical (and possibly also ethnographic) investigation of one disposable medical device, exploring its emergence and advertisement as a commercial object and its introduction and development in the healthcare practice in social democracy, how it was normalized and naturalized (or not) and how it was affected by social and cultural processes of institutional and infrastructural change. Your research will be carried out in close collaboration with the international research team in After the Single Use, including the NGO Health Care without Harm. The PhD student will also contribute to other project-related tasks and activities.
We are seeking a candidate with a master degree in the social sciences, or humanities with good knowledge of the health sector, obtained either by research, or practrical research. We also welcome candidates with medical, or other health sciences degrees, as long as they can demonstrate experience with humanities and/or social science research.
The duration of appointment is 3 years.
More about the position
This position is intended to help you develop a research profile and competencies. To this end, the main focus of this position is to conduct research, including publication and dissemination. In addition, you will be expected to actively contribute to the broader research agenda and environment of the After the Single Use project, including project workshops, conference presentations and regular project meetings. The position may also provide teaching experience in a limited extension, or other competencies relevant to your future career.
The PhD-fellow will be employed by the Institute of Health and Society (Helsam) at the University of Oslo. Academic staff are formally employed by the Institute, but have their primary workplace and disciplinary home within one of its departments. The candidate will be based at the Section for Medical Humanities, one of three sections in the Department of Community Medicine and Global Health. The department is a dynamic, internationally oriented environment that brings together researchers from medicine, the social sciences, and the humanities. Its research spans global health, medical anthropology, epidemiology, and medical history, fostering a collegial and creative academic culture.
In the Section for Medical Humanities anthropologists and historians work together to investigate the cultural, historical, and social dimensions of health and medicine — from everyday experiences of illness to the ways medical knowledge, technologies, and policies shape societies.
Responsibilities
Lead the development of the case study on the history of one disposable device of your own choice, including: research design, development of methods, writing of protocol and application for ethics, taking a person-centred approach to the global story of health care plastics and waste. Ongoing refinement of research design and implementation (20%).
Conduct historical and ethnographic research on the history of one disposable device from production to emergence as commercial object, but focusing on its use in practice in healthcare institutions and its current use; including: stakeholder mapping, grey literature reviews, archive research, ethnographic research, and oral history interviews (20%).
Work closely with the Norwegian project lead and Healthcare Without Harm Work to develop and implement the Norwegian part of the project’s communications and stakeholder engagement plan, knowledge exchange and impact activities, and events related to governance of plastics in health care in Norway (20%).
Independently prepare and write academic publications related to the case study (at least one monograph and two articles) and contribute to co-authorship of wider project publications with partners in other countries and other outputs (e.g. blog posts, executive summaries, policy briefings, podcasts, etc. 30%).
Present research publications at academic and policy conferences and meetings (5%)
Contribute to the overall project activities (organising events, producing website content, data management and storage, etc.), including international travel for project meetings and events (5%).
Qualifications
In this role, you must
Hold a degree equivalent to a Norwegian master’s degree in social science or the humanities, or a master equivalent in medicine or health science with demonstrated experience or qualifications in the social sciences and/or the humanities
Have excellent written and oral proficiency in English
Have excellent organisational and administrative skills, including time management
Have demonstrated good academic writing skills
Have the ability to contribute to the production of high quality academic outputs
Be good at communicating complex information clearly, orally and in writing, to a range of different groups
In this role, it is an advantage if you have
Good written and oral proficiency in Norwegian and/or proficiency in one of the Sami languages.
A fit and complementarity with the project’s theoretical and methodological approach
Have an interest in developing skills in creative and collaborative research methodologies together with other researchers from different parts of the world
Experience in supporting academic events or seminars.
Knowledge of the social science and/ or history of plastics, infrastructure and health systems
Knowledge of sustainability in the health sector in Norway
Experience of working interdisciplinary and across cultures and regions
We are looking for a person who
Is willing to commit to do impactful research and be motivated to acquire the necessary skills
Has the ability to work effectively both independently and as a member of a team
Is willing to make an effort to contribute to a positive research community both among fellow phd researchers at UiO and in the project team as a whole and has ideas about what such contributions could be.
Commit to do impactful research and be willing to acquire the necessary skills
Is good to communicate about their progress and about challenges in work
Is in engaged and wants to make a difference with their research
Is organized and contributes substantially to the projects’ progress, not ony your own
Wants to be part of the intellectual and research life at the Institute for Health and Society through physical attendance for 2-3 days a week on campus, and attendance at seminars and events.
Employment in the position is based on a comprehensive assessment of all qualification requirements applicable to the position, including personal qualifications.
We need different perspectives in our work
UiO is an open and internationally oriented comprehensive university that strives to be an inclusive and diverse workplace and academic environment. You can read more about UiO’s work on equality, inclusion, and diversity at uio.no.
We fulfill our mission most effectively when we draw upon our variety of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives. We are looking for great colleagues—could you be the next one?
We will do our best to accommodate your needs. Relevant adjustments may include modifications to working hours, task adaptations, digital, technical, or physical adjustments, or other practical measures.
If you have an immigrant background, a disability, or CV gaps (Norwegian), we encourage you to indicate this in the job application portal. At least one qualified candidate from each group will be invited for an interview. In this context, disability is defined as an applicant who identifies as having a disability that requires workplace or employment-related accommodations. For more details about the requirements, please refer to the Employer portal (Norwegian). The selections made in the job application portal are used for anonymized statistics that all state employers include in their annual reports. More information about gender equality initiatives at UiO can be found here.
We hope you will apply for the position with us.
We can offer
Exciting and meaningful tasks in an organization with an important societal mission, contributing to knowledge development, education, and enlightenment that promote sustainable, fair, and knowledge-based societal development.
Involvement in a large international research project that provides opportunities to build a network with scholars researching political elites around the world
Opportunity to develop your interidisciplinary skills through working with shcolars with competences ranging from medicine and public health to anthropology and history and art.
A workplace with good development and career opportunities.
Membership in the Statens Pensjonskasse, which is one of Norway's best pension schemes with beneficial mortgages and good insurance schemes.
Salary in position as Doctoral Research Fellow, position code 1017 in salary range NOK 550 800- 610 000, depending on competence and experience. From the salary, 2 percent is deducted in statutory contributions to the State Pension Fund.
Read more about the benefits of working in the public sector at Employer Portal.
Application
Your application should include:
A CV of no more than two pages.
A full university transcript, showing the courses/modules taken and marks for individual courses and for a master thesis
Two references from academic staff who have direct experience of your work, including (if possible) your master thesis supervisor.
A writing sample of between 4,000-10,000 words (eg coursework essay or dissertation)
A personal statement of up to two pages that addresses the following questions and issues (in any format or order):
Why you are interested in this PhD project
Your relevant experience and training for this PhD project
How you would want to develop the project as a historical case study, including any particular issues and questions you would want to explore
Areas of scholarship and literature you would be interested in engaging with and contributing to as part of the project
Methodological approaches and tools that you would look to bring to the project or develop as part of the project
Your longer-term career plans and how this project will help you to progress them, including any training that you would hope to receive as part of the project
Application with attachments must be submitted via our recruitment system Jobbnorge, click "Apply for the position".
When applying for the position, we ask you to retrieve your education results from Vitnemålsportalen.no. If your education results are not available through Vitnemålsportalen, we ask you to upload copies of your transcripts or grades. Please note that all documentation must be in English or a Scandinavian language.
General information
The best qualified candidates will invited for interviews.
Applicant lists can be published in accordance with Norwegian Freedom of Information Act § 25. When you apply for a position with us, your name will appear on the public applicant list. It is possible to request to be excluded from this list. You must justify why you want an exemption from publication and we will then decide whether we can grant your request. If we cannot, you will hear from us.
