Expression of Interest – Postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva 2026/27

Social Sciences, Heritage and Food (SOCIALPAT)

Organisation / Company IPNA-CSIC Department Social Sciences, Heritage and Food (SOCIALPAT) Is the Hosting related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Multispecies & More-than-Human Social Science

SOCIALPAT Research Group | IPNA-CSIC | Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain

The Social Sciences, Heritage & Food Research Group (SOCIALPAT ) at the Institute of Natural Products and Agrobiology (IPNA-CSIC ) invites expressions of interest from outstanding early-career postdoctoral researchers wishing to apply for the forthcoming Juan de la Cierva fellowship of the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI) .

We are particularly interested in researchers developing ambitious work in multispecies and more-than-human social science , broadly understood. We welcome candidates from anthropology, human geography, sociology, science and technology studies, environmental humanities, political ecology and related fields whose work examines how humans, animals, environments, institutions and technologies become entangled in contemporary processes of governance, care and socio-ecological change.

The successful candidate would be encouraged to develop an independent postdoctoral research agenda , while benefiting from close intellectual exchange with SOCIALPAT and the wider interdisciplinary environment of IPNA-CSIC.

We particularly welcome projects engaging with one or several of the following areas:

• multispecies ethnography and more-than-human approaches;
• human–animal relations and human–animal studies;
• multispecies and animal geographies;
• multispecies governance and more-than-human politics;
• anthropology of conservation and biodiversity;
• political ecology and environmental anthropology;
• care, welfare and ethics in human–animal relations;
• rural–urban relations and socio-ecological conflict;
• environmental governance and contested species;
• Science and Technology Studies and Actor–Network Theory;
• veterinary practices and animal health as social and political fields;
• law, expertise, public policy and regulation concerning animals and environments;
• gender and the organisation of multispecies care;
• conservation conflicts and coexistence;
• island and peripheral ecologies;
• digital, visual, participatory and experimental approaches to multispecies research.

Empirically, proposals may focus on any species, multispecies assemblage, landscape or socio-environmental controversy . We are particularly interested in projects that combine strong empirical research with an ambitious theoretical contribution capable of speaking to wider debates across the social sciences.

Research environment

SOCIALPAT is an interdisciplinary social-science research group working across anthropology, sociology, heritage studies, food studies and environmental research. Its members combine ethnographic, historical, qualitative and mixed-method approaches and participate in national and European research projects and international research networks.

The group provides a particularly favourable environment for developing new research on human–animal relations, environmental governance, care, socio-ecological conflict and more-than-human approaches .

From 2027, this environment will also include FRONTCAT – Beyond the Cat Wars: Reimagining Multispecies Governance and the Ethics of Care amid Rural Populism , an ERC Consolidator Grant led by Pablo Alonso González. FRONTCAT will develop comparative research on multispecies governance, care, conservation, animal welfare and socio-political conflict. Candidates whose research intersects with these questions may benefit from intellectual exchanges, seminars, networks and comparative opportunities associated with the project, although alignment with FRONTCAT is not a requirement .

More broadly, SOCIALPAT hosts and collaborates with researchers funded through European and Spanish programmes, including Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowships and national postdoctoral schemes, providing an international and interdisciplinary setting for developing an independent academic profile.

Why Tenerife and IPNA-CSIC?

IPNA-CSIC combines social-science and natural-science research within the same institute, creating unusual opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration across anthropology, ecology, biodiversity, agroecology and environmental sciences.

The Canary Islands also constitute an exceptional environment for multispecies research. Questions surrounding biodiversity conservation, invasive and introduced species, animal welfare, tourism, rural transformation, urbanisation, agriculture and environmental governance coexist within a geographicall