Summer Lab: Unsettling the Polycrisis, an MIT Political Economy Lab & LISS-DTP Global Collaboration

“Unsettling the Polycrisis” constitutes the development of a new research agenda, global network and doctoral training opportunity, organized around a series of week-long ‘summer labs’, scheduled for June 2024 (London), July 2025 (Cambridge), and June 2026 (London), and based on a collaboration between the MIT Political Economy Lab and LISS-DTP’s partner institutions.
The summer lab’s first iteration (June 2024) – which is the core of this proposal – will bring multiple lenses, sites, histories, struggles and voices together, to unsettle and recalibrate current thinking on one of the most politically significant concepts in appraising global challenges in this moment: ‘the polycrisis’. The lab’s main interventions will confront and challenge how ‘the polycrisis’ is typically framed as a myopic construct for conceptualising contemporary entangled and cascading crises. The workshop will prioritise students’ conceptual and methodological practice, through highlighting the structural and systematic factors that shape the drivers of our interrelated crises; working through their own project lenses to offer new responses, solutions and approaches.
The project is intentionally interdisciplinary: integrating political economy, political geography and sustainability engineering; cultivating tools from sustainability engineering, public policy and urban planning; and treating histories of race, empire and capitalism – and the struggles against them – as essential anchors for this work. All with the aim of 1) developing research attuned to the social, political and scientific grounds from which the polycrisis stems; 2) designing creative interventions that increase social resilience, particularly for vulnerable communities; 3) building projects that contribute towards social, political and climate justice for the present and future.
The project is organised around both collective and individual outputs: An online archive; two special forums, one on ‘chaotic geographies’ (Geoforum), one on ‘unsettling the polycrisis (RIS); a series of panels for SASE Annual Conference and a special issue for Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.

The student will work towards four main ‘targets’ throughout their internship:
1) Supporting the development of the research agenda and network
2) Supporting communications and logistics for the first summer lab
3) Developing the project archive
4) Contributing to the research outcomes/outputs of the project In collaboration with project leaders from MIT (Jason Jackson), KCL (Jenna Marshall), Imperial (Catherine Mulligan) and QMUL (Sharri Plonski), the student will undertake a range of research, managerial and creative tasks, organised into the following workstreams, in order to reach these project targets:

Workstream I/Research Agenda and Network (Primary focus of Month 1, but continue to add to these throughout the internship):

• Developing an initial review of critical and more mainstream scholarship on ‘the polycrisis’
• Developing an ongoing spreadsheet of scholars, literature and policies that intersect with the themes of the project [to be made sharable to all contributors]
• Building/managing a mailing list of network members

Workstream II: Summer Lab (Primary focus months 2-3)

• Join brainstorming meetings, regarding building the programme for the lab
• Support the administrative organisation of the lab (maintain the budget, setting up catering, collecting receipts, managing communication with participants and facilitators)
• Contribute to discussions and document activities, during the lab

Workstream III: Project Archive (Primary Focus of month 4-5, but collating materials is ongoing across the project)

• Collating materials for the Archive
• Working with QMUL/MIT web design teams to develop the online portal
• Working with project participants, to collectively develop key threads, materials and approaches for the site

Workstream IV: Contributing to Outcomes/Outputs (Primary focus, months 5-6; but may be ongoing across the life of the project, during and beyond the internship)

• Contribute to one of the project’s special forums
• Submit an abstract to one or more SASE panels
• Contribute to special issue proposal and work towards their own draft paper

This is an incredible opportunity for any PhD student. It contributes research and methodological skills, project management training, public/impact engagement training and professional network- building; all of which will advance and are essential to an academic career. In addition, the student’s own work will evolve in step with the project’s aims and analytical anchors: facilitators, other students and practitioner-partners to the project will contribute new thinking and approaches to their research. At the same time, the student will further establish themselves as a scholar, as they will help shape the lab’s conceptual streams and will have the opportunity to develop collective and individual outputs, as part of a highly relevant, experimental and interdisciplinary project.

The project’s co-conveners are each experts and leaders of their own research networks that will also be beneficial to the student’s intellectual and professional development: Jason Jackson, Associate Professor of Political Economy in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, focuses on the historical origins and evolution of the institutional arrangements through which states and markets are constituted from the late 19th century to the present, with an explicit focus on political economies of the Global South. In addition to invaluable scholarly expertise, Jason brings his years of experience working with PhD students in collaborative and experimental approaches to shared research agendas and thinking, through his founding and leadership of MIT’s The Political Economy Lab.

Jenna Marshall (KCL) and Sharri Plonski (QMUL), co-led the UK’s leading research network on ‘Colonial, Postcolonial and Decolonial’ work (at BISA) for over 4 years. In addition, Dr. Marshall, Lecturer in International Studies, is a leading scholar of race/anti-racism in international studies, political economy of developing countries and the intellectual traditions of the Global South. She has led multiple research projects and special issues, on imperial/colonial knowledge production and the racial technologies of development. She is also a founding member of the Race and Development working group and the Caribbean Political Economy Group.

Sharri Plonski, Senior Lecturer in International Studies, has led two research projects on the material and imaginary geographies of colonial infrastructures. She also leads three distinct research networks (on green transitions in the Middle East; on urban violence in Brazil and Palestine/Israel; on ‘disruptive geographies’ in Palestine, and international abolitionist praxis). She also co-produces a story-telling podcast on the violence of infrastructure called “Material Crimes”, with hundreds of contributors, activists and community collaborators.

Catherine Mulligan, Advanced Research Fellow at the Institute for Security Science and Technology, is a leading scholar in the transformative role of digital technologies in enhancing societal resilience and sustainability. Her research spans Computer Science, Economics, and Digital Transformation, examining how emerging technologies can drive positive systemic change.
Catherine has extensive experience advising governments, corporations, and NGOs on digital transformation strategies and leads multiple professional and research networks on transformative-data infrastructures, including the European Cooperation in Science and Technology’s (COST) Action on AI, Working Group 1 on ‘Adaptation Strategies’.
The student will be guided by all four members of the team but will also have the opportunity for more one-on-one training and mentorship, depending on their interests.

Finally, the project’s aim is to seed multiple, long-term collaborations that the student will be invited to be part of. This is not a one-off opportunity for the student. Instead, the student will benefit from a durable research partnership, that may lead to further employment (including a postdoc opportunity on an ESRC standard grant that the project leaders are developing), publishing and networking opportunities.

Necessary skills:

• Excellent research, writing and organisational skills
• Experience with one or more interdisciplinary fields that integrate structural, historical approaches to ‘crises’ with social justice and climate justice struggles and grounded movements.
  Some examples include (but may not be limited to): political economy, international studies, development studies, urban studies, political geography, science and technology studies
• And of upmost importance: Excitement, curiosity and enthusiasm for collaborative experiments

Additional Desirable Skills:

• Project Management
• Experience Experience with archival/website design and curation

The student will be able to choose the most relevant mode for disseminating their experience (a report, a video, an online blog); but the outcomes of the project (including their own published work) would act as sufficient documentation for their internship.

1. Please send your CV and a brief cover letter outlining your interest and suitability to the project supervisor(s). Please contact the project supervisor(s) in advance of submitting the application with any questions.

2. If selected by the project supervisor, the student must then complete the Placement /Internship Application form. This ensures that there is approval of PhD supervisor, and the necessary information is obtained to extend funding (for DTP1 students) or confirm placement requirement fulfilled (for DTP2 students), and to fulfil ESRC reporting obligations.  

Please note:

• Research Assistant Internships must not be undertaken with the student’s current supervisor and/or home department.
• DTP1 students (those whose funding commenced before Oct24): a maximum of 4 Research Assistant internships will be funded. These will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Once the 4 DTP1 places are filled, we will inform PIs that only DTP2 students are eligible for the Research Assistant internships. PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL DTP1 PLACES HAVE NOW BEEN FILLED.
• DTP2 students (those whose funding commenced from Oct24): are required to complete a 3-month placement, which is funded through their studentship. No limits to number that can be funded.
• Reports: at the conclusion of the internship, the student will be required to complete an internship report, which will include a question for the internship host to feedback on the internship.

Contact liss-dtp@kcl.ac.uk with any questions.