PhD scholarship in social epistemology & philosophy of science, Melbourne (Australia)

Monash University Arts Graduate Research is offering a PhD research scholarship, connected to the ARC Funded project 'Governing the Knowledge Commons'. The project is led by Professor Toby Handfield, located in the Philosophy program at Monash University, but involves collaboration with researchers in the Department of Economics, the School of IT, and international researchers at University College London and Carnegie Mellon University.

The project uses methods from a variety of disciplines to understand the collective action problems that arise in epistemic communities, including traditional academic disciplines, Wikipedia, and social media platforms. These diverse communities enjoy both success and failure in the mission of improving collective knowledge, but they have very different patterns of governance, and it is poorly understood what makes them more or less successful. The project team uses methods from philosophy, behavioural economics, and agent-based modelling to address these challenges. The successful candidate will be expected to carry out independent research that complements this larger project in some way.