One fully funded PhD position “Ethics of care and just mobility transitions” in philosophy within the international research training group C4LaNd-Competition for Land (https://c4land.earth/). This joint PhD project will be primarily based at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with a minimum 12-month stay at the University of Melbourne.
Project Description
A just transition involves respecting the perspectives of many stakeholders. So far climate ethics focuses (mainly) on future generations, energy ethics recently has put the focus (also) onto often marginalized groups that may be severely impacted by an energy transition (e.g Heffron et al 2017, Jenkins 2021). A just transition needs to address both aspects. As an answer to this challenge, care ethics has been suggested to augment considerations of energy ethics (Gram-Hanssen 2024, Frigo et al 2023). Also, in the emerging inter- and transdisciplinary field of mobility and transport justice a potential central role of care ethics has been discussed (e.g. Verlinghieri et al 2020).
The research question to be addressed here is as to how the ethics of care can augment research on fairness and equity of mobility and land use. While often ethical considerations are added as an afterthought in regional and urban planning, the aim of this project is to develop a blueprint of how to integrate ethical aspects into the full cycle of urban and regional planning, including mobility and land use. A particular focus will be set on how to ethically balance competing interests and how to integrate t he uncertainties of potential impacts.
This is a conceptual project and uses tools mainly from (analytic) philosophy. The work involves key fields of applied ethics (mobility justice, energy ethics, research ethics, and engineering ethics) as well as political philosophy (capabilities approach) and normative ethics (care ethics). The project aims to blend philosophy with stakeholder engagement, for example, by the use of public forms of reflective equilibrium (Wolff & De Shalit 2007, 2024) or reflective equilibrium stakeholder workshops (e.g. Brandstedt et. al 2024). While also considering mobility or transport transitions more broadly, the focus will be on indigenous mobility justice and a close link with a twin project.
This PhD project examines how care ethics can help the planners and designers of mobility transitions to identify and address ethical problems that are preliminarily assumed to involve high empirical uncertainties as well as competing values. A moral framework based on care ethics considerations to address value conflicts in design and planning is devised. The PhD project will also examine in detail how such a ‘micro ethical approach’ can be linked to considerations of (transport, mobility or energy) justice. Here it will be explored to what extent the capability approach may serve as a connecting link between the care ethical approach on the micro level and macro or meso ethical approaches to justice, or whether care ethics (e.g. Held 2006, Tronto 2013) can itself provide such a macro ethical framework for mobility (energy) justice.
Supervision team
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT): Prof Rafaela Hillerbrand
The University of Melbourne: Prof Wolfram Dressler
Salary
E13 TV-L, 75%.
Funding is available for 3 years.
Application deadline
June 19 2026.
Please apply here: https://jobs.pse.kit.edu/en/jobs/170520/philosopher-fmd-part-time-75