About the project
This PhD project understands migrant-led creative craft enterprises in the UK as resilient, post-growth microeconomies. It will investigate how these practices generate cultural continuity, ethical local revival, and alternative futures in deprived areas, centring migrant agency and third-sector contribution within interdisciplinary debates on resilience, postgrowth futures, and migrant creativity.
This interdisciplinary PhD project concerns how migrant-led creative craft enterprises such as textile work, ceramics, jewellery-making, and repair contribute to resilient post-growth futures in the UK. In the face of economic precarity, climate crisis, and social exclusion, these microenterprises offer alternative models of production and community wellbeing rooted in sufficiency, care, and conviviality.
The project centres migrant agency in shaping ethical local economies, exploring how creative practices from home countries are adapted to new contexts. It examines the environmental, emotional, and social values and knowledge systems embedded in these enterprises, and how they interact with grassroots support systems, charities, and third-sector organisations. Along with ethnography, candidates may choose to focus on participatory methods, with opportunities to collaborate with creative enterprises, local councils or third sector organisations.
The research sits at the intersection of Human Geography and Sociology, contributing to emerging debates on post-growth transitions and resilience. It offers an opportunity to work with a supervisory team experienced in craft economies, migrant entrepreneurship and third sector organisations. The project is ideal for candidates passionate about social justice and transformative futures.
You will be part of Economy, Society, Governance research group at the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, and the interdisciplinary centre Work Futures with access to interdisciplinary training and international networks. Whether you are from migrant communities or committed to co-producing knowledge with them, this PhD offers a chance to shape resilient futures through grounded, theoretically driven impactful scholarship.
Additional technical training or support
Candidates should have a strong foundation in qualitative research methods and a keen interest in interdisciplinary inquiry. Training will be provided in ethnographic and participatory approaches and ethical research. The project is ideal for those with theoretical curiosity and experience in social scientific writing, particularly within sociology, human geography, development studies, or migration studies. Opportunities for collaboration with third-sector organisations will support applied research skills. Candidates will also benefit from workshops and mentoring within the School of Geography and Sociology and broader networks at the University of Southampton.
References
Rennstam, J., & Paulsson, A. (2025). Craft-orientation as a mode of organizing for postgrowth society. Organization, 32(5), 695-712.
Patel, K. (2020). Diversity initiatives and addressing inequalities in craft. In Pathways into creative working lives (pp. 175-191). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Villares-Varela, M., Ram, M., & Jones, T. (2022). Thwarted or facilitated? The entrepreneurial aspirations and capabilities of new migrants in the UK. Sociology, 56(6), 1140-1158.
