Supervisor: Patrick Sakdapolrak in collaboration with Michaela Trippl (both Department of Geography and Regional Research)

Funding Situation: potentially via a VISESS PhD fellowship

Project outline: Migration is a major force in transforming rural areas around the world. While the importance of migration as a livelihoods strategy is widely acknowledged and the role of financial remittances intensively studied, the question how social remittances transmitted through migration potentially fosters innovation processes and contribute to rural development and climate change adaptation is poorly understood. This PhD project focuses on the role of migration and translocality for inducing new social practices in rural areas in the Global South. It seeks to understand the circumstances and mechanisms that enables social remittances to foster rural innovation processes.