The HSL is accepting PhD students interested in research on human social life with applications to 21st century issues. Students will join the fully funded PhD program at Penn State Anthropology, with options to join a dual degree program like Anthropology & Climate Change or Human Dimensions of Natural Resources & the Environment.
The HSL is committed to collaborative, ethical, inclusive research and to open science practices. For more about our commitments and priorities, see our lab manual.
Training in the HSL emphasizes:
- Integration of theory and methods from across the social, behavioral, and ecological sciences
- Research at the interface of basic science and applied work, often in collaboration with communities, industry, nonprofit organizations, and government
- Preparation for research positions in academia, industry, government, and the nonprofit sector
- Field research - explicitly including fieldwork in the US and remote data collection (e.g., Zoom interviews)
- Mixed-method data collection (that is, both quantitative and qualitative methods) analyzed with cutting-edge statistics
We especially encourage applications from those interested in:
- Pressing issues of the 21st century, including (but not limited to) climate change, natural resource management, and well-being
- Diversifying evolutionary approaches to studying human behavior and social life
- Cooperation, including (but not limited to) collective action, common-pool resource problems, and social safety nets