3 PhD positions: “Feeding the Earth – Synthetic Fertilizers and the Remaking of Agriculture in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”

The project “Feeding the Earth” enquires into the spread of synthetic fertilizers and the ways in which it transformed agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The use of synthetic fertilizers exploded over the twentieth century, boosting yields while fostering dependencies, land concentration, soil degradation, and water pollution. Despite their lack of sustainability and resistance from some farmers, synthetic fertilizers continue to dominate agriculture worldwide. As climate change, soil loss, and pollution compel a rethinking of food systems, this research project asks how societies in the past switched between different fertilizing regimes and adapted to changing conditions of agricultural productions.
The project investigates the uneven transition from traditional to synthetic fertilizers in northern Europe, South Africa, Turkey, and Morocco, addressing the largely understudied global history of fertilizer adoption.

The South Africa case study will be based at the Department of History of the University of Basel, Switzerland (https://dg.philhist.unibas.ch/de/).

The position

As a doctoral candidate you will work on the South African case study entitled “Synthetic fertilizers, contestations and alternatives in South Africa, c. 1900 to 1990”. This sub-project studies the uneven spread of synthetic fertilizers in South Africa in the segregation and apartheid periods, inquiring into the ways in which agricultural modernization was embedded in racial, class, and gendered politics. It investigates how synthetic fertilizers were promoted, the ways in which knowledge about their usage was communicated, the economic and environmental controversies this generated, as well as the relations between the state, corporate players, and farmers in shaping fertilizer application.

You will be expected to:

• conduct independent archival research and oral history research on and in the geographical area of your work package and complete the dissertation within the funding period
• publish one peer-reviewed article or book chapter and present your findings at international conferences
• actively participate in advancing the project's overall research goals, collaborate closely with the whole team
• help with admin tasks, conference organization, communication tasks, webpage content management.
  
  

Your profile

As a doctoral candidate, you are required to hold an MA degree (or equivalent) in History or a related discipline. You are fluent in English, our team's working language. Preference will be given to candidates who bring additional language proficiencies, such as Afrikaans, Xhosa, or another South African language.
Experiences in archival research and a robust understanding of South African history are essential. Furthermore, you are collegial and open-minded, work well independently and have a talent for organization. Proficiency in MS Office is required. Finally, you are flexible to travel for the project, and you are able to take residence in Basel during your entire contract period.

We offer you

• attractive employment conditions in an intellectually stimulating research environment as a part of an international project team: you will pursue your dissertation project within a collaborative framework, affiliated as a member of the Basel Graduate School of History.
• a thorough introduction process and ongoing support by peers
• the position is fully funded for a duration of four years (1 plus 3 years). The conditions of employment follow the regulations of the University of Basel and of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
  
  

Application / Contact

We are looking forward to receiving your application by December 8th, 2025. Applications must be submitted exclusively via the University of Basel job portal.

Applications need to include a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae, a list of publications, diplomas / MA certificates, a scientific writing sample (max. 10 pages) and two referees (name and contact). The University of Basel is committed to increasing the number of women in its scientific personnel and encourages well-qualified women researchers to apply.

It is anticipated that interviews will be held via videocall on 8/9 January 2026.

If you have any questions about the position, please do not hesitate to contact Prof. Dr. Julia Tischler (julia.tischler@unibas.ch).

The project “Feeding the Earth” enquires into the spread of synthetic fertilizers and the ways in which it transformed agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The use of synthetic fertilizers exploded over the twentieth century, boosting yields while fostering dependencies, land concentration, soil degradation, and water pollution. Despite their lack of sustainability and resistance from some farmers, synthetic fertilizers continue to dominate agriculture worldwide. As climate change, soil loss, and pollution compel a rethinking of food systems, this research project asks how societies in the past switched between different fertilizing regimes and adapted to changing conditions of agricultural productions.
The project investigates the uneven transition from traditional to synthetic fertilizers in northern Europe, South Africa, Turkey, and Morocco, addressing the largely understudied global history of fertilizer adoption.

The Turkey case study will be based at the Europainstitut / Institute for European Global Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland (https://europa.unibas.ch/en/).

The position

As a doctoral candidate you will work on the case study on Turkey entitled “Agents of trust: The spread of fertilizers in Turkey 1930s-1960s”. This sub-project asks how the use of chemical fertilizers emerged as a strategic issue in twentieth century Turkey, and how this is related to the question of building up trust between the farming population, international experts and the state. It inquires into the roles played by foreign (mostly German) fertilizer producers and farmer communities (1920s and 1930s), the nationalization of chemical fertilizers and the strategic interests attached to them by different interest groups, as well as the reappropriation of soil knowledge by farmers' associations in the late 1960s.

You will be expected to:

• conduct independent archival research and oral history research on and in the geographical area of your work package
• write and complete your dissertation within the funding period
• publish one peer-reviewed article or book chapter and present your research findings at international conferences
• actively participate in advancing the project's overall research goals, collaborate closely with the whole team
• help with administration tasks, conference organization, communication tasks, webpage content management.
  
  

Your profile

As a doctoral candidate, you are required to hold an MA degree (or equivalent) in History or a related discipline. You are fluent in English, our team's working language. Furthermore, you have a good knowledge of Turkish, preferably also a reading competence of late Ottoman Turkish, German and French.
Experiences in archival research and a robust understanding of Turkish history are essential. Furthermore, you are collegial and open-minded, work well independently and have a talent for organization. Proficiency in MS Office is required. Finally, you are flexible to travel for the project, and you are able to take residence in Basel during your entire contract period.

We offer you

• attractive employment conditions in an intellectually stimulating research environment as a part of an international project team: you will pursue your dissertation project within a collaborative framework, affiliated as a member of the Basel Graduate School of History
• a thorough introduction process and ongoing support by peers
• the position is fully funded for a duration of four years (1 plus 3 years). The conditions of employment follow the regulations of the University of Basel and of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
  
  

Application / Contact

We are looking forward to receiving your application by December 8th, 2025. Applications must be submitted exclusively via the University of Basel job portal.

Applications need to include a letter of motivation, a curriculum vitae, a list of publications, diplomas / MA certificates, a scientific writing sample (max. 10 pages) and two referees (name and contact). The University of Basel is committed to increasing the number of women in its scientific personnel and encourages well-qualified women researchers to apply.

It is anticipated that interviews will be held via videocall on 8/9 January 2026.

If you have any questions about the position, please do not hesitate to contact Prof. Dr. Corey Ross: corey.ross@unibas.ch or Prof. Dr. Heinrich Hartmann: heinrich.hartmann@hsu-hh.de.

The project “Feeding the Earth” enquires into the spread of synthetic fertilizers and the ways in which it transformed agriculture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The use of synthetic fertilizers exploded over the twentieth century, boosting yields while fostering dependencies, land concentration, soil degradation, and water pollution. Despite their lack of sustainability and resistance from some farmers, synthetic fertilizers continue to dominate agriculture worldwide. As climate change, soil loss, and pollution compel a rethinking of food systems, this research project asks how societies in the past switched between different fertilizing regimes and adapted to changing conditions of agricultural productions.

The project investigates the uneven transition from traditional to synthetic fertilizers in northern Europe, South Africa, Turkey, and Morocco, addressing the largely understudied global history of fertilizer adoption.

The Morocco case study will be based at the School of History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham.

The position

This case study re-interprets the history of chemical fertilizers in twentieth century Morocco, examining their role in reshaping the agricultural context of some of the world’s most influential mineral deposits. To date, Morocco’s part in the rise of synthetic fertilizer is typically studied through its role as a leading global exporter of rock phosphate. This project, however, moves away from the narrow focus on extraction and production, which treats Morocco mainly as a source of nutrient exports.

Artificial fertilizer is an understudied but central aspect of Morocco’s agricultural transformation from the 1920s-1970s. Often distributed for free or heavily subsidised at first, subsequent forced purchases of chemical fertilizer helped enmesh farmers in debt, or prompted them to join buyers’ cooperatives. These dynamics helped re-engineer modes of rural solidarity and racialised differentiation, as farmers suffered from dispossession and land commodification by settlers and from the disruption of pastoral transhumance. Fertilizer’s uneven uptake among farmers also captures the sharp limits and remixes to which dominant agro-chemical knowledge regimes were subject. Such practices and contingencies were a crucial aspect of its role and must be understood historically.

While the social and ecological impact of colonial modernization in Moroccan agriculture is relatively well known, and while newer scholarship has examined the ecological dimensions of migratory agriculture or the role of gender in the rise of export monocultures, the fertilizer nexus has not benefited from historical study to date, outside of research on phosphate extraction, mining towns and fertilizer production. Historicizing anthropological studies of present day fertilizer production and dissemination, this project will produce a history of an agrarian system that shaped phosphate extraction and global fertilizer use, even as it was itself subject to the contested influence of chemical fertilizer.

This PhD will therefore focus on chemical fertilizer’s uneven and gradual embedding in the social, political and cultural worlds of Moroccan agriculture from the 1920s-1970s. It will contextualise the history of phosphate mining, and Morocco’s global significance in the rise of input-intensive food production, within the changing agrarian situation of Morocco itself, analysing chemical fertilizer’s role in that change and farmers’ varied response to it.

Among the expected key research themes are: analysing the various brokers of synthetic fertilizer use in Morocco in this period, and the subsidy, credit, distribution, cooperative, and publicity systems they worked in; the colonial and national policies on fertilizer as they related to agricultural capitalisation and mechanisation, model farms and changes to labour, ownership and ecological regimes; the racialised and gendered migratory labour regimes that linked phosphate mining and agriculture, studied in combination; finally, the regional and transnational role of Morocco as a driver of synthetic fertilizer use in West and North Africa.

You will be expected to work closely with your supervisor to:

• conduct independent archival research and potentially oral history research on and in the geographical area of your work package and complete the dissertation within the funding period
• publish one peer-reviewed article or book chapter and present your findings at international conferences
  actively participate in advancing the project’s overall research goals, collaborate closely with the whole team on the funded project
• help with admin tasks, conference organization, communication tasks, webpage content management.
  
  

Eligibility criteria/entry requirements:

• Doctoral candidates need to hold a strong Master’s degree (or equivalent) in History or a related discipline.
• You need to be fluent in English, our team’s working language. Preference will be given to candidates who bring additional language proficiencies relevant to their work package on Moroccan history, in this case Modern Standard Arabic and Darija or Tamazight, as well as French.
• Experiences in archival research and a robust historical understanding of modern Moroccan history and historiography are essential.
• Finally, you are flexible to travel for the project, and you are able to be primarily resident in Birmingham during your entire contract period.
  
  

How to apply/references:

Prospective applicants are required to apply by sending in:

• A cover letter (this should set out your reasons for applying for the scholarship and why you are suited to the research proposed. It should discuss relevant scholarly literature and speak to the proposed research themes of the PhD.)
• An academic CV (include the names and contact details of two referees at the end of the CV)
• Scientific writing sample (max. 10 pages).
• Official transcript of MA grades.

These documents should be sent to: calscholarshipprizes@contacts.bham.ac.uk by 8 December 2025.

Following shortlisting, interviews will be held. It is anticipated that Interviews will be held via video-call on 8/9 January 2026.

At this stage we will ask for reference from the referees nominated by shortlisted candidates.